GX Berkeley
From August when I started until December 1999, we were based in downtown Berkeley, on Shattuck near University. Very near to University of California Berkeley.
Gamers.com/FiringSquad Editorial
Berkeley - Fall 1999There was lively street culture; a guy with two shopping carts outside wearing an apparently unattached headset and boom mike; he's broadcasting somewhere. People dressed as Adolf Hitler speaking out for animal rights. Moonies surveying you about marriage. Young people invariably begging for change.
Great eats too - we frequented Great China, which has food that I would travel for even before I worked at Gamers. And a million other restaurants - about every cuisine type you could imagine.
The Berkeley office was old and packed. Many bodies in an office intended for just a few. Joel picked up new Costco desks and chairs weekly.
I sat in the editorial room, pictured above. If I put my arm out to my right, I hit Brandon at FiringSquad. To my left, if I stretched my arm, I would hit Allan the RPG/paper games editor. It was intimate.
And it was fun - there were many spontaneous rubber-band gun fights (serious stuff - duck under the desk and scare off the significant others types of battles). Just after I started, August 8 i wrote about office conditions at gamers.
After months of talk of moving, and being "99% there" to having different spaces, we moved to offices in Richmond in December 1999.
Nat took some pictures at my desk in October 1999
justin's links by justin hall: contact