Super Arcade in danger of Closing

So this year's Christmas has been an extremely difficult one for me to swallow. I don't think I realized exactly how tough it was until last night when people just asked me casually how my holidays were going and if I enjoyed Christmas. I'm not sure if people were surprised with my answers or not but I don't think I even replied once in a very positive manner and I guess that's the time I truly realized that I am tearing myself up. This Christmas has absolutely, positively, and without a doubt been the absolute low in my life. I can honestly say I bought zero presents for anyone in my family and I did this out of respect. I didn't mention this before but I have had to borrow money from friends just to keep Super Arcade open. I have literally gone into debt just to keep this place alive for the community while making sacrifices in every other part of life. These sacrifices are fine if you are only taking away from self wants and needs, but when they start to affect people around you, and you are taking away from them too, now we have a very serious issue. It brings a serious tear to my eye as I type this but since I'm keeping everything completely honest I want the readers to know how bad it is. So I wound up not getting anything for even my wife and my eighteen month old kid, but that's not to say I didn't try. I made one of those half ass last ditch efforts and went online to pick something out, but guess what? My credit cards were all maxed out........ Now tell me this, how bad can things possibly be when you cant even charge $150 on your credit to buy a Christmas gift for your own immediate family? I have literally spent everything I have, sold personal items including jewelry, watches, and even pawned a family heirloom just to keep an arcade alive. And for what? So I can see a dwindling turnout week in and week out? So I can see my investment crashing and burning right before my own eyes? Don't get me wrong, we do have some extremely loyal customers here and these guys make an unquestioned effort to support as much as possible, but, these rare people are far too few to keep things running. I do want to take the time to say thank you to this small group and tell you guys that you have honestly motivated me and just in effort alone helped me work harder to keep this sinking ship afloat. I honestly want to pop off at the fake people out there, the one's that always come around when it's too late, the people that are always first to say things like "oh man, it's so sad this place is gone," or "wow, I can't believe this place is closing." The list goes on and on and but you know what? The people who were here week in and week out, you know who you are and just know you have done as much as you could possible to help out here.


Super Arcade is 100% without a doubt on thin ice right now. I cannot and will not sugarcoat this so if you really do care you better start doing it now. There were a couple instances where I was really close to just shutting it down for good and walking away. Right before the Ultra SF4 location test I told a couple people that I had a goal in terms of money brought in for that weekend, and if I didn't reach it I was done for good. This was probably the first time I had set anything like this and it was serious enough that for the first time the people surrounding me took notice that Super Arcade might really be closing. See, the whole thing with this place is that this community has a huge place in my heart. It's comparable to that notion of first love, and we all know you never ever forget your true first love. I have poured my heart, my soul, and everything I own into Super Arcade but now it just feels like I am not receiving the love back and I'm trying to hard to force things to happen. What else can I do at this point? A couple weeks ago for our Thursday tourney, the turnout was so low that I was five minutes away from telling people to come get their money back and I would be closing early that night. Around 9:10pm we had something like 15 people for Marvel and like 3 or 4 for Killer Instant, BlazBlue, and Guilty Gear. I was not going to stay open till 3am and run a tourney for such a poor turnout, and being as it may seem selfish this was definitely a time where I felt I had to put my foot down and set an example for these guys. If you do not want to come support, then there is no reason to have a place for you to play. Fortunately for everyone in the next 5 minutes the turnouts doubled for every game........ amazing right? And there's another story of how TRB survived that week and just how close everything is to crumbling.