The rulebooks for these elaborate games are an inch thick and would confuse the heck out of most adults. The store welcomes children and encourages play on custom game tables - particularly for Warhammer 40,000 and Magic: The Gathering. Once you get over everyone's original cliché reaction ("This place has got to be for loser geeks with nothing to do!"), you'll find an array of challenging activities of the real sort.
And where else in town can you gawk at the myriad forms of your fellow man while getting your ears pierced on a lawn chair?Īre you sick of watching your kids blasting away at video games for hours on that $5,000 computer that was supposed to be an educational device - but is actually nothing more than an expensive joy stick? Then unplug the PC and take 'em on down to Game Depot, where an assortment of challenging games and precision models will jar your youngster out of cyberland and into tangible fantasyland. A pan flute and guitar duo recently hypnotized passers-by with soft, mellow rhythms as worn-out shoppers guzzled beer and scarfed nachos.Īs the time passes, so does a passing parade of diverse humanity, the likes of which you're unlikely to assemble en masse anywhere else in town - or at least until the state fair rolls around again. A seat near the snack bar provides a primo view of the crowd, and a live band sometimes plays background music for an hour or two. Hundreds more vendors sell newer things like packaged socks, luggage, clothes, art and furniture - the list is endless.Īnd if you don't happen to be in the market for someone else's castoffs or a 99-cent liquidation sale? Well, haggling over the price of old eight-tracks is just part of the fun.įor pure people-watching, the dog track is the flea market equivalent of Rodeo Drive. Just grab your dead presidents and head to Phoenix Greyhound Park for one of the pup palace's legendary weekend swap meets.Įach weekend, hundreds of vendors gather to sell all the crap they couldn't unload at their garage sales - old tools, rusty golf clubs, eight-track hi-fi's, and ancient, tube-powered Zeniths. Going to the dog track needn't cost you a bundle. In today's fiercely pigeonholed society, it's heartening to see a pizza parlor that successfully caters to so many, ahem, slices of life.
That toddler will be jazzed by the funky lights, kid-friendly pizza and the enormous sound meanwhile, your great-grandfather will just be jazzed by hearing genuine musicianship on one of the Valley's grandest instruments. Indeed, the Organ Stop and its 1927 Wurlitzer is one of the few places where the term "fun for all ages" actually applies. This organ and its players are awesome, so awesome that the show is entertaining to everyone from the 3-year-old smearing pizza on his face to the 90-year-old smearing pizza on his face. Cheese's meets The Phantom of the Opera by way of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.īut give it a few minutes and the genius of the place catches up with its weirdness. At first glance, there's something vaguely creepy about seeing hundreds of people eating pizza while staring at a guy bathed in colored stage lights as he plays an antique organ the size of a basketball court.