A day late and several dollars short.
Not much of a writer, but I'll do my best.
I've been watching people like @brandybuizel host meetups and I thought I'd give it a shot too. Being laid off has left me with a lot of extra time, so that made planning this much less stressful. I put up a poll on the NG Meetups Discord with 3 possible arcade locations and the New Jersey one won with 50% of the vote. Once a date was locked in for Saturday, I reached out to @tomfulp to get it posted on the NG calendar. Thank you Tom again for that and thank you Brandy for the advice you gave me on hosting an in-person event.
Even though it was over a 100 mile hike for me to the Berlin Farmer's Market, it was definitely worth it.
I was so pleased to have had about 15 wonderful people show up for my first ever meetup.
We all had a great time playing pinball and other arcade games, especially the mysterious popcorn machine. (IYKYK)
Most of us took breaks to check out the other offerings there, including a pet store with exotic birds and a game store.
Around 6 pm, everyone gathered and we headed down to one end of the market for dinner at a pizza joint.
It was there that @tamag0 joined us and, since the Gooble lover hadn't had a chance to play any games, we headed back to the arcade for one more round once everyone was done eating.
Around 7:30 p.m., we all said our goodbyes and took our final pictures together. @mantis made some fantastic merch, including a very high quality poster to commemorate the event. (Which will be hanging in my room soon)
Thanks again to everyone who came out or helped organize this in some way. This really meant a lot to me and I had a great time doing this. I will probably do something like this again in a few months.
If you have pictures from the event and want to share them, post in the comments below.