Status Update - May 2024 - [Andrew Writing]
Hello from the North GA mountains!
This is ANDREW WRITING from ajroach42. You may have subscribed to this from my blog, or from Community Media, or from lots of other places. This is my first newsletter from Buttondown.
This newsletter is late.
In the last newsletter I sent out, about seven months ago, I committed to monthly updates. Shortly thereafter, Intuit (who purchased Mailchimp, who purchased Tinyletter) shut down Tinyletter, which was the service I used to send emails. Then lots of things happened. Now I’m writing to you from Buttondown, which I like a fair amount so far.
This is a quick status update, catching you up on the things that have happened in the last 6 months or so. I should return to our regularly scheduled (media and technology focused) newsletter in short order.
So, what’s going on?
Well, lots! We opened a bookstore! Well, really, we turned our existing coffee shop in to a bookstore/record store/cafe. We also added a pretty substantial online sales portal which can be found at HemlockBazaar.com
We’re selling books, records, movies, and other stuff. It’s in the same physical location as the former Ellijay Coffeehouse, (131 N Main St, in Ellijay) we serve the same coffee and have most of the same staff.
In the meantime, we went to Assembly Required in Asheville with some handmade toys. We went to Toylanta with some new and vintage toys. We expanded Cowabunga Video, and we’ve undertaken a new project called Wandering Ellijay.
Wandering Ellijay an alternate reality mobile game in which you look for small monsters throughout our town, while interacting with various points of interest. It’s powered by an open source game engine (work in progress, but progressing quickly) which we’re calling “all whomst wander”. The idea is to make a mobile ARG that’s designed to protect privacy and respect its users, while still offering the kinds of incentives to explore that are provided by games like Ingress or Pokemon Go.
You can read more about these things on my blog.
That sounds great!
It has been! But there have been some not great things too. I won’t get too deep in to the details, but we’ve had a run of band luck and unexpected expenses that have left me feeling some pressure. If you want the full rundown, I covered it on my blog, but the gist is that we’re trying to raise some extra money to pay for water damage repairs and a new A/C unit.
What else?
Lots! Too much, probably. I’ve been restoring and scoring The Master Mystery starring Harry Houdini. Harry Houdini stars in this 1918 science fiction adventure serial about a criminal organization and a rampaging cyborg. It was filmed several years before the word Robot was first uttered, and more than 100 years ago. It’s neat. There’s a new episode due out in a few days.
I’ve also been shooting a podcast/video series about Power Rangers and Super Sentai with my oldest friend. It’s called Kenkyuu Sentai Podcast Rangers. I’ve really enjoyed working on it.
We released a cassette and CD of public domain music to celebrate Public Domain Day in January. It’s available as a Pay What You Want download. Our record label has also released two new LPs so far this year, we’re taking pre-orders for another LP release, and we have several other new tapes from our Tape of the month club.
Anything else?
Probably! But those are the highlights. Now that things have settled down a bit, I’m back on a regular schedule for blogging, newsletters, video production, etc. Expect to hear more from me in the near future.