Fanfare — Attraction in Kalamazoo

I love the selection this store has, and I enjoy the fact that they do drop-in D&D sessions for all age groups. For miniatures, cards, comics, and more, they're great. However, I can only give four stars because of a repeat interaction.

For everything good I've got to say, there is one staff member who always makes me feel unwelcome. And it is the same staff member despite me having come in several times now. He has short white hair and always says to 'ask him if I need help finding anything or have any questions', even when I am clearly on my way to a specific spot in the store to pick up something before a game session. (It isn't that large of a store, if you've been twice or more and have a good spacial awareness, you can tell where things are.) I've noticed the last two times that he doesn't do this as condescendingly to anyone who is masculine presenting who walks in at the same time as I do, just me, a clearly femme presenting person. It's honestly really insulting as I've been playing since I was fifteen and am now in my thirties. My clothing styles and such also do show me to be the geeky sort, it's not like I don't seem to belong in a shop like that. (Shirts with references to 'geeky' shows and such.)

I don't know if I just keep catching him on a bad day, or if he needs to work on how he treats some of the female and femme presenting customers. Either way, that's my only problem with the store, and fortunately he's not enough to drive me away because I do truly enjoy the gaming sessions done by the volunteer DMs who put on those one-shot...

I think the store and the space are good. They carry a good amount of product with a lot of variety for collectors and gamers alike. These are the only things keeping this a 2 Star Review. Most places don't have the variety they do. However, when I drove here from an hour away to play in one of their weekly Yu-Gi-Oh! Tournaments, I was surprised at how they handled things. This is the first shop I've ever been to that cuts gaming short (when they have customers who I witnessed drop lots of money in their store minutes earlier) just to accommodate their hours. While I respect that a business holds hours, I don't think its fair to their customers and gamers that they ended tournaments before they were even finished. Either the hours aren't long enough or they host tournaments on the wrong days. Their prize support is also store credit. While I'm okay with this, the person in first place of a 20 man tournament at most places will end up with 40-60 dollars of store credit or prize packs totaling the same dollar equivalent, not 11 dollars with no option to take a different prize. This is just pure greed and indicates they don't care about their players and the experience. I've traveled all across the country visiting comic and gaming stores and this is unfortunately the worst one I've been to. Lastly, which wasn't surprising, I overheard the staff say some off the cuff comments to players and customers that didn't offend me, but could easily have been taken...

I have been a long time buyer at this location. I saw they had moved into a new beautiful location. I had walked around the store and found a Galactus (marvel zombies game) that caught my eye. I wasn’t happy it wasn’t painted so I walked away. I came back to it, when someone saw me looking again they engaged me in conversation and said it had a different arm and head to it. I became very interested In it. I asked to see how it looked with the alternate head and arm on it. I asked to see them swapped and if I liked it I would buy it. The one guy said he wasn’t okay doing it so he asked another associate to do it. He said “no, you already said you didn’t like it because it wasn’t painted.” I again said I’m thinking about purchasing it if I liked it. He walked away from me and didn’t respond. I looked around and couldn’t believe they had refused to try to sell this item to me. I asked if anyone in the store would swap them out. The 2nd guy got an attitude and started to change the head. He was super annoyed with me and made it very apparent he didn’t want to do it. at that point I said never mind, you clearly don’t want to sell the item. I walked to the register and cashed out. I’m very upset with this interaction and can’t believe how I was treated, especially after I said I was going to spend money. I’m reluctant to ever come into this store ever again. If I can’t get help when I want to spend money, how will it be when I’m unsure about...