Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I was not really aware of Ready To Play but apparently it was a gaming center for table-top and card games like Magic The Gathering. Their Facebook page has posts into early January 2022, so I'll use that as the closing date.

(Hat tip to commenter Nobody)

When I became aware of Firefly Toys & Games, it was because they had moved from their Sunset Boulevard location to this spot beside the Chef Store on Saint Andrews Road.

When I was diving that stretch of road recently, I noticed their storefront is now on the other side of the street in the old Fred's location. Looking at their Facebook page I was unable to determine exactly when they moved, but was able to determine that they have a lot going on! If you're into gaming at all, it looks like they have a meet-up for you.

UPDATE 17 December 2019 -- I had the date in the post title as '2019' for lack on anything better. Commenter Erick supplies the date "September 2018" and I have updated the title to reflect that.

I had driven past this Firefly location dozens of times over the past year or so, and never really cosidered the "& Games" part of the Firefly name. Since it was a bit off the beaten path, I had it mentally pegged as some sort of specialty toy store, perhaps educational toys, but never really considered that the "games" might be for "gamers".

In the event, it appears that they are, and the new location at 657 Saint Andrews Road continues to host gaming events.

(Hat tip to commenter James)

Well, I don't really need much of an excuse to visit Fernandina Beach, one of my favorite places, so when my sister noticed that there was an Amelia Island comics, steampunk, gaming and anime convention, , I decided to check it out.

Compared to the Charlotte Heroes Convention, Ameliacon was quite small. There was one exhibit hall, in the park on Atlantic Avenue which houses the municipal swimming pool, with gaming and presentation events in the town womens' center behind the park. It seemed to me also that the convention focus was definitely more on gaming, costuming and cosplay than on comic books, though there were some authors and artists there.

I certainly felt out of the loop on some issues! Magna/Anime character design generally hurts my eyes, so I was pretty clueless about one of the properties that seemed to be a very big thing Attack on Titan. There were a number of costumers basing their characters on that. I was also completely in the dark about what is apparently a very popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale, something the contest winning cosplayers based their presentation on.

I missed the morning presentation on Steampunk, having somehow convinced myself that it was in the afternoon, but did catch an interesting presentation by Joshua Johnson on doing video special effects on, basically, zero budget.

The audio for the presentations was the most problematic facet of the convention. I got the impression from listening to one of the organizers talk during the costume contest that someone had promised the convention a PA system and then left them totally in the lurch. I could follow ok during the effects presentaion, and parts of the Marvel/DC artist's presentation, but I gave up during the Homestruck panel where the panel were all using their indoor voices, and where I was only sitting in to try to figure out what Homestruck actually was anyway.

The costumers were out full force in the exhibit hall, and then at the closing costume/cosplay contest.

During the costume contest, it was announced that the convention would be shifting out of the fall and into February, so there will be no Ameliacon 2015. The next will be Ameliacon 2016 though they did announce a sequence of local get-togethers in advance of that. I certainly enjoyed myself -- I don't know that I would have driven that far for a convention of that size in a place I didn't have other motives to visit, but in the event, it was a nice trip.

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