It’s approaching sunset, and a crowd about 40 people strong has gathered at Gamescape with backpacks and duffels filled with Pokémon trading card decks.
Though it’s past closing time, the fluorescent lights are still bright inside. Some people walk out, only to return with takeout boxes. Tom Hamilton, the second-generation owner of the shop, is pulling a wood-top folding table out to ensure that every participant has a place to sit.
It’s become a ritual: Thursdays are Pokémon open play nights at Gamescape, the legacy games shop on Divisadero Street in Lower Haight. It shares space with concurrent events for Digimon and Disney’s Lorcana cards, but the Pokémon trading card game (or TCG) is the main draw. The events are free but ticketed; nearly every night sells out.
Pokémon trading cards experienced a pandemic boom that still has yet to vanish. The cards became a bit of a status symbol for bored homebodies turning to nostalgia for comfort; its clout (and cost) ballooned as celebrities like Justin Bieber and Logan Paul got into the mix. A popular new mobile game, Pokémon TCG Pocket, has only amplified the demand for these cards. While it’s arguably never been a better time to be into the trading cards, their original purpose — playing these cards against each other in battle — is not as popular as the sheer act of opening card packs and collecting the rarest ones. As it goes, most collectors might not know how to use their valuable cards.
The shop has been carrying the cards for at least a decade, if not since Pokémon was unleashed onto the world in the ‘90s — and has a bit of a reputation now among those in the know of stocking every new drop. But, at Gamescape, the focus is on playing with their cards, organized and judged by Pokémon professors.
In the Pokémon games, the professors are the first character you meet; they give players their first Pokémon and are kindly mentors as the game progresses. In real life, these professors are super-fans who have the blessing of the Pokémon Company to organize and judge official league competitions at the shop that count toward larger regional events.
Derrick Shiu is one of the Pokémon professors; the other professor, Rose Barry, is the “league leader” for Gamescape. (Barry is something of a Gamescape legend; multiple players speak about her with a mixture of fondness and reverence.) As Pokémon professors, Shiu and Barry host these casual play events on a volunteer basis for the shop.
Just about every week, Shiu treks from his job in Daly City’s recreation department to Gamescape — even though it’s not the closest games shop in his proximity. He’s one of the shop’s OGs, having attended Gamescape’s events since 2016.
One player told me in between matches that he gravitated toward this “nerd community” when he moved to San Francisco in 2023, and stuck around; his opponent nodded in agreement. Nearly every player I spoke to mentioned how welcoming these events are; and not just because of the volunteer professors or store staff.
“When we pitch the game room, we do include the fact that it is inclusive and we invite everyone to join us at Gamescape,” Hamilton said. “We want them to feel safe and enjoy themselves as well as enjoy their hobbies. There is no tolerance for any prejudice or hate.”
You immediately get the sense that he means it, that the culture of kindness that the store has cultivated bleeds into its customer base.
Andrew Pan started coming to Gamescape shortly after he quit his Silicon Valley tech job. He needed something to do to kill time; he had just gotten into the trading cards in a big way, and Gamescape was the closest games shop to him.
“As a new player, it’s very difficult to play if people aren’t welcoming to you,” he said. “They bring in a deck that’s not well-optimized and get rekt, but what happens after that, they offer to get you a deck.
That goes a really long way to establishing a community, actually getting into Pokémon more. Inclusivity — that matters.”
Pan takes issue, however, with people seeing the game as one for children. As far as strategy-based card and board games, he says, it’s more challenging than most non-Pokémon fans think; even among his nerdier friends, the game doesn’t get as much respect as he thinks it should.
“Fundamentally, this is the root of the misunderstanding but it's a strategically complex game, a large number of moves on any turn,” Pan says.
That’s part of why it attracts so many adult players for a game ostensibly marketed to adolescents, but also why he sees merit in a tight-knit community of friendly experts. Just before I spoke to Pan, I saw him show a relative newcomer the ropes as they ran through a match together. He wasn’t the only one; for every couple of friendly competitive matches, there was one where a more experienced player, step by step, taught a greener player the game’s mechanics.
“That’s the best part about the store offering consistent game nights; people develop relationships,” Hamilton told me. “Sometimes, it’s not even about the game; it's coming to the store to see your friends.”
There’s no real financial benefit, as one would expect, for staying open after hours without any expectation of anyone making a purchase; he even lets people bring in their own food and drink, though he jokes that he doesn’t advertise that publicly. It feels like a family game night for Pokémon nerds.
“We've established a pretty good reputation not only within this neighborhood, but in the city, as being the game store in the city,” Hamilton says, matter-of-factly. “We maintain our sales to the point that we're mainly focused on the quality of the event as opposed to maximizing our ‘profit’ at the time.”
If there’s one glaring disparity, it’s the gender imbalance. Pan acknowledges that the space, for as welcoming as it is, is a fairly male-dominated space — as many geek-y enthusiast communities tend to be. (That makes Rose, the head Pokémon professor, all the more important as the group’s leader.) Nearly every player I talked to was a guy in their twenties or thirties.
Except for Tori, a bespectacled fifth-grader who was at the shop. She’s a relative newcomer, recently shifting from collecting high-value Pokémon cards to playing with them after her friend group got really into competitive TCG.
“When I was really little, four or five at the time, a lot of the older kids would bring Pokémon cards and I eventually convinced my parents to get me a pack,” she told me. Her favorite remains a card from a booster pack her grandmother bought her; a card of the gym leader Erika that runs for around $100 in the resale market. Even though her copy is scuffed up and a bit wrinkled, that card remains priceless — she’ll never give it up.
When I first spoke with Tori, she was midway through her quest to complete her first full deck. She was looking for 15 cards — about one-fourth of a deck. Over the course of the evening, she scurried from table to table asking for spare Pokémon cards. She offered to trade some of her desirable cards, but more often than not, one of the more experienced players just gave her a card without question after she asked. One of those players, Jack Lor, pulled out a couple cards of the character Crispin after she asked. He had a lot of extras at home, he admitted with a hearty laugh.
I watch a few other matches, chat with a few other folks. Within minutes, she has completed her entire deck after another kind player gave her the last card she needed, the legendary fowl Pokémon Fezandipiti. Now, she’s ready for the next Pokémon league competition at Gamescape; hopefully, it’ll be the first of many.
