Visitors

I didn't anticipate the variety of people we'd attract as a game camp. We had one Bulgarian guy named G. who was there almost every day, with or without friends, asking to play more complex strategic games with us. I played many games with them, mostly Codenames and Bananagrams because that's what we could get many people to play.

Some people brought their kids - we had an Asian guy and his young son try to play chess and end up playing with the Star Wars figures of our chess set. Someone brought two small children to play our simple family games when Sushi was on shift and one of them poked his head into our private area to offer him a gift of a wand they had made, the "wondrous wand of wonder."

One guy wandered into our camp confused one morning when several of us were lounging on the couches and hammocks, asking if it was OK to lay down there and explaining, "I took some drug but I don't know what it does." We invited him to rest on our air cushion until he figured it out, saying, "This is a friendly space."

We had a 57-year old guy appear in our public space all excited that there was a game camp. He told us at length about his game collection at home and the game store he used to frequent, where he once bought half a dozen games for $3 because they were $1 each and half off that day. He didn't stay to play anything because he had to get to center plaza by noon to shred some punk music (he was in a band) but we may have made his day just being there and listening to him. It seemed clear to me he was on some kind of stimulant - but he got back in his truck and slowly drove off at 5mph.

An older couple came by after dark one night when we were preparing to go out, asking if they could play Catan with us or borrow it for the evening. We let them borrow it for the night, as they turned out to be our neighbors down the street, and I hope they found someone at their camp to play with.

Giant Jenga was a big draw - we once had a whole party of at least 8 Chinese speakers in elaborate dress come by and invent a version of it where they stacked all the blocks up on one side of the top. Someone in our camp left a Sharpie there saying if you lose you write a rule on a block, so our Jenga accumulated a variety of weird rules like "the next player has to pull a block while sitting on someone's shoulders."

Friday was our last "open" day and Shoelace told me that on his shift he had three groups playing three different games at different tables, the most he'd ever seen. It was more comfortable for people to just walk in and take a game off the shelves when they saw people in camp already playing.

One middle-aged man came by on Saturday after we had already taken down the shelves and put the games away in bins, rooting around for Forbidden Desert. He explained how he'd never played it but wanted to tell his friends the first time he had was in the desert. I felt worn out that day and wanted to do other things, but agreed to play with him and Shoelace and I'm glad I did, because it gave him a memorable story and was a fun short game. Now that box is filled with playa dust, giving it an air of an ancient archaeological treasure.