All,
I wanted to make a dedicated thread for an effort that I (and some others) have started to investigate.
First a little background on me. I have been collecting arcade games since 2013. I basically started after I got settled in my house after moving from CA to MA. I have 24 of them housed in a my basement, home office, and work office. I am pretty active on KLOV (as just DZA) and was not into pinball games at all when I got into the arcade hobby.
I now have 7 pins (bringing my total game count to 31). Currently I have, Gorgar, Genie, Paragon, Flight 2K, Centigrade 37, Black Hole, and Baby Pacman. I am much more into pinball for how they look (I love the old artwork) and working on them (hence I like older games that actually can have their electronics fixed/tinkered with). I do like playing them but collecting them is more of what I am after. Hence my current problem. That problem is that I have no more space but I literally would probably buy a pin every two months if I had the space.
I had a storage unit for a bit but that was not working for me since I want to really see and work on the games. I could regularly sell games but the whole "collection" aspect is part of the appeal for me. I could stop, but that would be silly
So, I decided I was going to get a dedicated space for games. I could do this just myself and have my own little secret stash. However, it seems like a better idea to share the space with locals and make it a "club". I saw the John's arcade episode recently on the Western MA Pinball club, and I said "I can do that". Probably easier said then done
Anyway, that is a pretty good summary.
At this point I have started to reach out to a couple folks and made a couple exploratory posts here and on NEACF. A couple of us have looked at a couple places in Malden MA. We have a solid contact in City Hall there, and there are numerous places that are an option. Frankly, it is just a matter of getting a team of folks together, picking a place, and making it happen. If you get to know me, you will get to know that getting things started is kind of my thing (I have been blessed to have started a couple companies).
Here are some of the key elements for me:
1. It needs to be close to me. I am happy to be part of something that is not close but I am not going to be able to commit to putting a game on location every couple months if I can't drive over within about 15 minutes.
2. It needs to be organized and legit. I don't want to put games into a "hoarder" style location that is a complete crazy mess. I would need to work with folks that are interested in having it be clean, organized, relaxing, decorated, etc. It should feel really nice.
3. It needs to start out as members only. I am not try to be exclusive. Rather I just need to be able to understand who will have access to eventually 10's to 100's of games.
4. I DON'T need to break even on the place. I am fortunate to be in a position that I can spend some money each month on this place. That said, naturally the more members with skin in the game, the better.
Ok, that is enough for now. The "team" and I will start to post more information, pics, etc. Stay tuned!