If You're In Cleveland, And Looking To Game, May I Recommend Critical Hit Games?

…I recommend Critical Hit Games, in Cleveland Heights.
They were a complete surprise to me, as we had driven to dinner on that side of town and I saw a gaming shop out of nowhere.  “GINI!” I said, grabbing her sleeve.  “A NEW GAME SHOP CAN WE STOPCANWESTOPCANWESTOP” and I kept yelling the words over and over and over again until she pulled the car over.
I wasn’t expecting much.  Most game shops are surly places, warehouses for a meager supply of stock, and since it was 8:00 I expected a single clerk to glare at me balefully as I wandered around a mostly empty place.
But no!  I was greeted by not one but two people, both of whom made eye contact – a rarity akin to platinum coins in the world of gaming shops – and unbelievably, on a Wednesday night, the store was filled with gamers.  Two roleplaying games going on, each with at least five people, a pretty rousing game of Dominion, and some third card game I didn’t know.  And the store was – hold your breath – clean.
I talked with one of the owners, and they’d only opened up two months ago.  But they’d made the very wise decision of reaching out to local gamer groups and saying, “Hey, come play here, you don’t have to buy anything.”  (Which is a really smart strategy for game stores, as it gets people trained to go to their store and makes them look successful when strangers like me walk in.)  So they’d contacted the Cleveland Pathfinder’s Group – there is one, apparently – and gotten people in the door, and they’re already sold out on their Khans of Tarkir Magic prerelease tournament.
So that’s going well.
Still, any gaming store needs a little love to thrive in this day and age, and so if you’re interested and on that side of town, I’d check it out.  Their stock is more weighted towards board games than RPGs at this point, sadly – that’s standard, these days – but they’re well organized and super-friendly and they have a signup board for games where if you’re interested in, say, playing Hero System or Vampire, they’ll put you on a list and notify you when they find a GM.  That, I kinda like.
(And I bought the new D&D Player’s Guide.  Because I am a goddamned sheep, my friends, I am a goddamned sheep.)