In our pandemic times, many people are looking for safe places to gather.
Sure, you could keep bingeing Netflix or baking with the same people you’ve been staring at for nine months. Or you could button your jeans (or lace up your sweats, like me) and venture to a board game café.
The Harrisburg area has two board game cafés with an open gaming culture on the west and east shores: Game Table Café and UrTurn Café, respectively. Open gaming culture means everyone can join, maintaining the family atmosphere in both cafés.
For a nominal cover charge or membership fee, you can stay all day, play any of the board games from the vast libraries, and eat one-handed while you move your game pieces.
With a library of over 700 board games and floor space for 56 people, Game Table Café has been in business in Hampden Plaza in Mechanicsburg for five years.
“Most restaurants are looking to ‘turn tables,’” said owner Tom Keegan. “We’re an anomaly in that we want people to feel welcome to stay as long as they like.”
Most of Game Table Café’s clientele are young professionals in their mid-20s to late 30s, not necessarily interested in bars or nightclubs, and want to socialize with others in an interactive environment.
UrTurn’s co-owner Mary Ann Bonn sees a lot of families and adult males aged 25 to 60s.
“We see date nights, couples’ nights, private parties,” she said. “Some come singly, looking to join a group. Some meet virtually and then meet here in person.”
And, sometimes, love grows as players pass go.
“Some people who met here are getting married and having their reception here,” Keegan said.
Try Then Buy
Board-gamers tend to be a supportive bunch, and that spirit is reflected in how these venues are run.
Owners greet each customer, explain how the library and pricing work, and ask questions about your group so that they can make game suggestions. They may even link you up with someone else looking to play.
“People like to try games here before they buy them,” Tyson Bonn said.
Advanced games with a series of expansions can cost over $1,500. Some more exclusive games can only be purchased directly from a vendor.
Not every game represents a competition for the players.
Carlisle resident and UrTurn regular Brian Walsh has introduced people to new games and different ways of playing.
“You can experience other levels of fandom from casual to serious gamers,” he said. “In some games, players play together against the game, building a community with people. For example, European Monopoly is played much less competitively than the American version.”
In this same spirit, Keegan and the Bonns are not competing. In fact, Keegan reached out to offer advice on the Bonns’ business model when he heard of their plans to build a similar business nearby. With a master’s degree in entrepreneurship, Keegan teachers business classes at Shippensburg and has advised several similar businesses in the northeast region.
Take Turns
The local gaming community at UrTurn Café existed long before its grand opening in July, immediately after Dauphin County softened its COVID-19 restrictions on small businesses. Some of their regulars used to frequent Game Table Café, plus random west shore pop-up meet-up spots with roving locations and irregular hours.
Harrisburg resident and UrTurn regular John Tasevoli has been an avid gamer for the past decade.
“The gaming community was here first, and the venues grew from the community,” he said. “I made friendships [at Game Table Café], and I’m hoping to create that same following [at UrTurn Café].”
UrTurn regular and game developer John Sergott helps to promote UrTurn through his podcast.
“I’m impressed [UrTurn] was able to launch and get such a following during a pandemic,” he said. “And the food is great.”
Some people come just to eat or grab take-out or coffee at both cafés. UrTurn chef Nick Pozza specifically designed handheld, non-messy menu items.
“We took careful time planning to alleviate some of the damage to the games,” Pozza said.
You’ll also find plenty of sanitizer and masks. Reduced occupancy laws due to COVID notwithstanding, there’s obviously an existing community, and “business has been great once [UrTurn] opened, with room to grow,” Walsh said. “It’s the safest thing I can think to do on a Friday night.”
Peter Rubinic regularly brings his family as a learning opportunity, plus he loves the “positive vibe.”
“The kids can socialize and meet other people,” he said. “Playing games helps them learn the rules of life: no cheating, take turns, be friendly.”
The open table concept is in contrast to the more cliquey niches in role-playing gaming leagues, in the vein of Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering and Adventurer’s League. Niche games usually focus on the fantasy realm and are linked with a specialty gaming or collectibles store.
Keegan acknowledged that certain gaming communities are not known for being welcoming to newcomers.
“It is something of a closed community for the hard-core gamers,” he said. “The ‘nerd culture’ tends to be more exclusive. They sometimes need a little help socializing, and a framework to do it.”
If you want to venture into one of these elite realms but don’t know how, both cafés host welcoming “learn-to-play” events.
In the end, Walsh looks at gaming as not only great for socializing but also for skill-building.
“Playing games promotes skills necessary for people: communication, logic, reasoning and math,” he said.
Game Table Café is located at 4900 Carlisle Pike, Mechanicsburg. For more information, visit www.gametablecafe.com.
UrTurn Café is located at 7710 Allentown Blvd., Harrisburg. For more information, visit www.urturncafe.com
Central PA Game Club is another great resource for board-gamers. Visit www.centralpagameclub.com.
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Writer and Harrisburg University professor, Robert E. Furey, writes in his story titled “Ouroboros” that “… a monster slouched into the awareness of our lives. They told us it was coming.”
10. Land Shark. In this annus horribilis, let’s begin on an upbeat note—perhaps the one unalloyed, unexpected joy to come out of 2020. Naturally, I’m talking about Harrisburg’s one-and-only skating fish, Sharkman. Back in May, he glided into our lives, a vision in blue-and-white felt, offering fleeting comic relief for a pandemic-weary city. Before long, Sharkman sightings abounded, the costumed critter becoming a social media celebrity and even making a Burg cover. A few months later, a young musician named Jordan Dandy took up the inspirational cause in Harrisburg, holding up signs with messages like, “I value you” and “You’re so important.” When I look back on the chaotic, divisive, dark year of 2020, I hope that these two selfless people come first to mind.
9. Crime & COVID. Now that I’ve built you up, let me bring you back down. Like in many U.S. cities, Harrisburg experienced a surge of gang activity, which, inevitably, led to turf battles, disputes and violence, especially in certain city neighborhoods. The pandemic seemed to play a big role, with jobs lost, schools closed and youth idle. The city and county responded by gearing up its anti-gang task force, but not before numerous young people took a wrong turn or even lost their lives.
8. Vote, Somehow. In my annual list, I typically keep to stories exclusive to the Harrisburg area. The presidential election was not that, but the changes to our long-established ways of voting affected people in this political town tremendously. In Dauphin County, cautious voters cast more than one-third of their votes through the mail, while many others anxiously masked up and headed to their polling places. Kudos to our election officials for pivoting quickly to what amounted to an entirely new way of holding an election, doing so with speed and accuracy. In just months, they built a hybrid voting system, a legacy that is certain to stay with us, changing our voting habits, perhaps permanently.
7. Off the Cliff. A late-year story squeezed into my Top 10 this year—the state legislature’s rather surprising decision in November to let Harrisburg retain its elevated earned income and local services tax rates. The average city resident may give this a shrug, as their tax bill will not change at all. But it’s a huge relief for city officials who feared falling off the “fiscal cliff” in a few years, when their extra taxing authority would have expired, forcing them to somehow make up $12.4 million in annual revenue. With this matter settled, the city now feels it can move beyond its decade-long fiscal nightmare, finally putting the profligate Reed years and resulting financial crisis behind it.
6. Major Developments? The announcements began early in the year at the former Bishop McDevitt building, headed down to South Allison Hill, took a turn onto N. 6th Street and then bolted over to the red-hot Reily Street corridor. Italian Lake, downtown and the Shipoke area even got caught up in the frenzy. I’m referring to major building proposals in the city. From pro athletes to ambitious developers to several nonprofits, everyone, it seemed, wanted to build something—often something very large—in Harrisburg. While there was no lack of plans, there was a definite lack of hammers, nails, bricks and mortar. Will 2021 see anything more, um, concrete? I’ve been around this town long enough simply to wish everyone the best and then sit back and see what, if anything, develops.
5. Home Work. The Harrisburg School District has been through the ringer in recent years: a discredited administration, a bitter school board race, state receivership and a whole new leadership team. Just as the dust began to settle, the pandemic hit, sending kids packing for home instruction. Nearly a year later, they still haven’t returned to the classroom. Credit the administration for quickly cobbling together a virtual program and the teachers for implementing it. However, all-Zoom, all the time has been a poor substitute for classroom learning, so much that even the kids yearn to return to school. If you look up the term “no-win situation,” you just might find a picture of the district’s stressed teachers, students and parents.
4. Committee Compromise. Every year, Harrisburg has at least one policy issue that makes it onto my annual list. For 2020, that initiative was the Citizen’s Law Enforcement Advisory Committee. The city first proposed the legislation in June after weeks of Black Lives Matter protests, though the ordinance didn’t pass until November, following several public meetings, hundreds of public comments and numerous changes. For some residents, the legislation went too far; for others, it didn’t go far enough. We’ll now see how this compromise plays out as the committee is populated and begins its work in 2021.
3. Year of Protest. I’ve long considered Harrisburg to be a sleepy capital city. Each morning, state workers zip in and, each evening, they zip right back out. Most of the time, that’s about the extent of the state’s impact on the city. Not in 2020, when Harrisburg became a magnet for protests. The year of outrage began in April, with noisy anti-lockdown protesters gridlocking city streets, then continued in May and June with demonstrations and marches in support of Black Lives Matter, before wrapping up in November with election-related protests and counter-protests. Along the way, there were some tense moments, especially in the neighborhoods near the Capitol. However, as they say, all’s well that ends well. Violent incidents were remarkably few given the thousands of people who participated in dozens of protest actions, even if police sometimes literally had to stand between opposing sides to keep the peace.
2. Small Business Battered. The pandemic has wrought tremendous collateral damage (see several items above), but the impact on the small business community has been especially profound. Harrisburg is a unique place. Snubbed by major chains, local people have stepped in to fill the gap, with each restaurant, bar and shop its own individual, often quirky, creation. As of this writing, most have survived, though some have not, and many are teetering still. As I have before, I renew a call to support our wonderful small businesses and arts groups, which add so much life and character to this weird little city on the Susquehanna River.
1. COVID Is Everything. In my three decades in journalism, I have never before seen a single story so dominate the news cycle and our lives, affecting everything from our health to our economy to our schools to our social lives to our housing. In fact, you can overlay the pandemic atop of each of the prior nine stories on this list. Since March, it’s been the stormy sea we’ve all been forced to swim in, and, here at TheBurg, we’ve slapped on our masks and tried to cover it from every possible angle. I hope we’ve been of service to our community during this time of trial, though I pray we’ll never have to endure anything like it again.
