Saying Goodbye Was Hard

Early this morning I headed north to an Indesign workshop in Montlake Terrace.  For those who don't know, Indesign is a page layout program that is a wonderful tool  It can do far more than the Pagemaker 2 I started out with so many years ago.  Nevertheless, I am such a miserable schlub with the program.  I have CS3 at home and at school and it's the program we use to lay out the paper.  I am little or no help to my students, so I thought it was important to take the class the Washington Journalism Education Association was offering.  All I proved was that I need a lot more practice as well.

I made myself a promise to stop by American Eagles on the way back.  I've wanted to go the last couple of weeks to take advantage of the sales.  No, that's not really true, I really wanted to stop by to pay my respects.  I knew from visiting the shop after Drumbeat there wasn't a lot I was interested in, but I was sure I could find something, even if it was a token amount, I could use for one project or another.  I arrived at the shop at about 3:00, and it was pretty busy with a fairly consistent line at the register.  I was really hoping to find a nice 1/48th sale model of a P-6E Hawk.  The army flew these in formation at the Cleveland Air Races, and I thought it might be a fun addition to my collection.  Alas, there was no such thing, much to my chagrin.

So, I spent a lot of time looking.  There were lots of model planes, but not one that really floated my boat.  There were tons of role-playing supplements, but not many sets of game rules, definitely none of interest.  There were many leftover copies of Seekrieg 4.  There's a reason for that. Lots of very nice Clash of Arms games, but board-gaming really isn't my gig.  I finally settled on a a couple of 1/700 ship kits.  One was a Spruance class destroyer.  Designed in the 70's and retired after 2000, I figured I couldn't go too far wrong with that.  The Taiwanese picked up four of these just prior to 2000, so I can maybe use it in an Airwar C21 game.  I also picked up the Tamiya set of Japanese auxiliaries for World War II.  Comes with three handy small vessels.  Unfortunately the labeling is all in Japanese, so I'll have to check on what I actually got.

 There was something deflating about the entire shopping trip.  Though I never went to the Lake City shop enough to feel at home there, it did seem that I was saying goodbye to something familiar.  I've been going to American Eagles for years.  I remember George Edwards when he was a little boy running around the shop making his mom crazy.  I went to American Eagles when I was first married, and when I was carrying Patrick around in my arms. Today is Pat's 31st birthday.  And today I'm saying goodbye, as I said goodbye to Escape Velocity in the 80's and American Eagles in Tacoma a few years back.  They're places I grew up with, and now they're gone.

Good bye American Eagles

We got the word a couple of weeks ago that American Eagles in Seattle would be closing its doors. That's too bad, not because Eagles was a big loss to the gaming world--it's not.  I think it's just symbolic of what seems to be happening to hobbies like miniature gaming, plastic modeling and model railroading.  These are hobbies that seem to have generational appeal and unfortunately the generation of enthusiasts is slipping away.

American Eagles in Lake City.  Currently holding a closing business sale, its last day is April 9th.

I'm not going to bash younger people for their interest in video games or other interests.  Nor will I bark at those of my age for not doing more to interest kids in their prized interests.  I've been out there and recruited and it's really hard.  I feel for people like my father, who is a lifelong Freemason, and represents generations of Masonic members, but couldn't draw me in.  My generation walked away from service organizations like the Elks, Lions, and Kiwanis in droves, and now for whatever reason, our interests too may be doomed to the utter fringes of hobby interests.

American Eagles will be missed.  I was a frequent visitor in the late 70's and early 80's.  Though I never found it to be the mecca for gaming supplies, I was also forgiving of this failure.  As miniature lines grew, Mike Edwards simply couldn't stock 'em all.  Like many of my friends, I ordered from Modeler's Mart and other catalog operations.  Still I bought what I could there.  Rules, books, the Courier, were all frequent pickups on the way home from my job in Crown Hill.  For a while we held monthly game days at the Ballard store.  But the gentrification of Ballard forced the move, and Mike's retirement pointed toward the end for AE.  It was just too far out of the way for me down here. What the move didn't kill, the internet did.

Seattle Times photo of George Edwards contemplating.  Like me he's probably wondering where the next axe will fall.

In the  South Puget Sound community I worry about losing those bricks and mortar stores.  Where can we get simple hobby items, the foundation of what we do like, CA glue, Testor's spray paint (which I use for primer) and Dullcoat, sheet styrene without having to find an online source, or resort to craft shop giants like Jo-Ann's and Michaels which are completely under resourced.  We see this in the shrinking number of paint lines.  While miniature ranges have exploded and we have more choices than ever, those fundamental building blocks are more difficult to come by.  The last hobby shop in Puyallup closed nearly a decade ago.  The Hobbytown store in Parkland, a delightful shop catering to RC aircraft enthusiasts, where I can get styrene, brass wire and tubing, and CA glue is frightfully quiet and located on a recovering Garfield St.

 In any case I wish George Edwards well.  There was a great article on the closing of American Eagles in the Seattle Times this morning.  I don't believe he could have done more than he did, and while I'm sorry to see the shop go, I understand.