Another Local Hobby Store Disappearing

The Ann Arbor area is losing another hobby store with the announcement that Riders Hobbies is closing down in the next few weeks. We lost Labyrinth Comics and Games last year, a GW store and Planeswalker Magic Bag the year before. Each one for its own reason but still quite a toll.

I have been and on an off shopper at Riders. For a while I would shop there often since they had an accessible location with parking but I had some problems with the attitude of one of the RC/Train hobby staff in helping me find a special order from GW that the store had called to tell me had arrived. He solution was to come back another time when the gaming people where in but as it is like a 15 miles from my house I did not really like this option.

I moved most of my purchasing over to Ryan at the Labyrinth since I got along well with the crew their but even after their closure I did not go back to buy much at Riders since my hobby money was not going for current GW products anymore and more OOP stuff and Lego Star Wars stuff to play with my daughter. I would still go in to look around. I went in a few weeks ago and even mentioned to my wife that the stock level looked pretty low. They used to have a GW aisle where the boxes where filed likes books but now less stock was filling up 2 aisles with the boxes set to up to show the front with spaces between them.

I used to go to another Rider's location for RPG and Magic stuff when I was a teenager but it closed many years ago. I am sorry to see another hobby store go leaving only one nearby to me but in an annoying location downtown for people who live on the outskirts of Ann Arbor. Add in the loss of Borders where I have been buying most of my gaming and black library books to liquidation officially announced today, just not a good day for nerd related shopping.