The forest... Birthplace and grave of both creatures and emotions.
How did you meet your best friend?
I met mine the only way I could have: by ditching the group during school-sponsored camping trip and heading straight for the treeline, getting deeper and deeper into the endless green while the rest of the class pressed on, their voices growing thinner and more distant as the invisible axis of the trail separated us all with every step I took on the opposite direction, finally only hearing the faintest echoes of chatter and walking as the cacophony of natural sounds that surrounded us all took a prominent role and silenced us, masking my descent into the unknown as I kept trudging through, stepping over roots and dodging rocks, moving into another plane of existence unobserved by man or beast.
I was so mesmerized by the natural spectacle playing out before my very eyes that the realization that I had already screwed myself didn't dawn on me until a very specific, primal fear made itself heard through the fog and the static of my mind and demanded my attention, whereupon I tried to undo my steps and came upon an unsurmountable obstacle in both the literal and figurative sense: a large hill I had had no problem rolling down but that my nine-year-old body simply didn't have enough strength to conquer back.
I was screwed and panicking, going against every survival tactic they had tried to instill on us by burning precious energy doing nothing but whimpering, suddenly very aware of how small a fry I was in the immensity which surrounded me -- the tall trees filtering just enough sunlight to remind me that it was still daytime, every sunbeam that managed to get through the heavy canopies accompanied by an eerie dust that looked and smelled like forgotten times.
Pictured: One of our actual camping trips from the late nineties.
But then, as if on cue, I remember hearing the rustling of leaves and the snapping of a few branches, something that brought me right back from the edge of despair due to my extensive horror movie "training" -- if something was making that much noise, it certainly didn't worry about hiding, which could only mean trouble. My mind was singing an entirely different tune now, a song of pure panic as I began looking around for any means of defending myself in the way that only small children can... but then, something unexpected happen: the "beast" spoke and I recognized its voice, making me lower the makeshift spear I had amputated off a lanky-looking tree just enough for relief to flood my icy veins with the kind of warmth that can only reach the human body in times of severe fever and glorious, unexpected happiness.
Seb, my deskmate, approached me with the kind of mischievous grin I had already learned to loathe as he wasted no time telling me that he had seen me slipping through and had assumed that I needed to take a massive leak, but then had gotten worried when I hadn't made it back and proceeded to look for "sudden floodings" (sic) -- I had never been so equally mortified and relieved to see someone, anyone. But the problem remained: there was no way in hell we would be able to clear that one hill and, since he had followed my footsteps, he was stuck in the exact same situation, knowing of no roundabouts or shortcuts that could get us back on the trail.
But see? Here's where Seb's superpowers really shone.
He wasn't one to panic and he had an almost mechanical approach to problems, so he just took on a defacto leadership role (that I wasn't going to challenge) and took us deeper and deeper into the woods, reassuring me that the path was bound to bend or change enough for us to cross over. And like a good rescue subject, I blindly followed his instructions as he gave them with the kind of stutter that took him years to overcome but that had marked most of his early childhood, an oddly soothing sound amidst the many others that were playing in all directions. He was right, too, the path eventually changed, dissolving the tall hills that had prohibited us from climbing back up into glorified anthills that we could climb over with little difficulty, making us joke that they were ice cream mounds getting pounded by the relentless summer sun that was making everything glint beautifully.
We could have made it back right that instant, but Seb's second superpower had decided to take that exact same moment to activate.
This beautiful scene from "You Died -- An Anthology Of The Afterlife" perfectly illustrates our time among the trees.
You see? He had one keen eye for details and the thing that had caught his peepers that day was a most unusual sight: a cluster of feathers surrounded by twigs and black-ish shapes, something that didn't seem to repeat itself anywhere else on that accursed forest.
Getting close to it made us realize that we had just chanced upon the hunting grounds of some sort of predatory bird, getting us face-to-face with the remains of its unfortunate victims, pullers of the shortest straws on this natural game of life and death.
The black shapes we saw were all that remained of about half-a-dozen rodents in various stages of consumption: a few were picked clean so thoroughly that only the gleaming whiteness of death stayed, their bones shining in the afternoon sun; the rest still had some fur still clinging to them and made them all the spookier to look at... for me at least, because my friend wasted no time collecting some of the clearer specimens and then tearing the others apart, getting bones into a plastic bag that once contained some long-consumed snack. He worked so automatically that I had no time to question his sanity, being completely hypnotized by the entire process of separating fur from bone and getting all of those little fragments of still life into the most artificial of containers. By the time he was done, very little remained of what used to be both the site of a massacre and an impromptu burial ground. But my friend wasn't done even at this stage.
Without so much as taking a breather and getting a handkerchief to his sweaty forehead, he proceeded to divide up the "loot" on equal piles and to offer me half of them to serve as grim mementos from an unforgettable day.
By the time we made it back to the trail and into camp (without anyone noticing our absence, because that was well above the teachers' paygrade), our every step rattled with the clicking sounds of death, a telltale symphony performed from a place we couldn't quite reach.
Unreachable beauty... it hides quite a few awesome secrets for those bold enough to seek them out.
Amazingly, we got away with this during the whole camping trip... but our luck ran out in style as soon as we each made it home, whereupon we got legendary earfuls and were made to dispose of the whole thing amidst yelling and violent head shakes that rivaled those of bubble head toys, actually getting to bury these unknown beasts in our backyards under strict vigilance from our parents (least we tried to get them back later).
NOW... here's the funny thing: 14 paragraphs in and the article is just now starting! If you feel cheated, just remember that you usually have to pay AAA prices for the privilege of sitting through BS prologues, and I'm providing that for free ;D!
But seriously, that whole introduction section did, indeed, have a purpose: to illustrate our Modus Operandi, the one that was born in a dead forest and still rules our misadventures to this very day: deviating from the path and exploring our surroundings until we find something cool to look at or talk about. This has taken many forms over the years (with one particular highlight being Seb locating a ginormous and very well-stocked model kit shop deep within a largely abandoned shopping gallery), but the one that interests us is the aptly-named "Ciudad Gotica", an oddity that really shouldn't have existed even back then, but that made us all the richer for it.
The year was 2004 and Seb and I (now high school freshmen) were deemed old enough to get our own shit, whereupon we were merrily sent to the city center to get our books for the year, our pockets deep with all sorts of bills and a VERY specific twin list of items to follow to the "T" -- there were no funny business to be had when every cent was accounted for! But that was fine, really.
We got our books by battling our way through the giant bookstore, a bustling beehive of activity filled to the brim with last-minute back-to-school shoppers fighting over supplies in a gladiatorial contest as if in the middle of the nerdiest of Black Fridays. It was nearly a miracle that we even got all of our stuff that day because the books we were requested to get were commissioned by several schools in the area and were --quite literally-- flying off the shelves, so I can imagine that some poor sod ended up being chided for lacking essential supplies after the long summer, and I was only glad that it wasn't going to be us... however, the whole thing had left us quite rattled because of how stupid and unexpected it had been, like a hailstorm rolling in unannounced during a picnic forecast to be perfect.
The site of an awesome battle, believe it or not.
What we did next, I honestly cannot explain: with nightfall fast approaching (and still being literal children, despite the added responsibilities we were being saddled with on the daily), we decided to take a "shortcut" home, a shortcut that, should be noted, involved forfeiting the straight-line, impossible-to-fuck-up route we had taken going to the bookstore and instead taking a right by the enormous butcher shop that sat exactly by the street corner separating Mitre Avenue and Italia street, deeply uncharted territory that seemed to exist in its own sector of the universe, a wormhole in which no activity could be seen despite existing just a few feet from the busiest street in the whole city.
What drove us to this desolate area? The same thing that had pushed us to play around in the forest all those years earlier, a force we knew better than to argue with.
And what did we find there? Mostly the usual collection of random things that seem to exist in the periphery of big cities, shops that you wouldn't think would survive on the edge of the large areas, but that serviced those who didn't enjoy being thrusted in the middle of an eternal human stream that flew in both directions day in and day out: a bakery with no customers but with no shortage of mouth-watering offerings being proudly displayed on its windows, a French tutor promising to make you speak "as good as a native" in a few, short sessions; some sort of art academy with blacked out windows and no signs of life, the tiniest chain supermarket I had ever seen... and the aforementioned Ciudad Gotica, a closet of a shop shoved right in-between two houses and telling you nothing of its content, mission or purpose as you were bound to walk right by it, an unremarkable shell hidden in plain sight whose shelves looked barren to the untrained eye and only became clear once you triggered the bell by the door and went inside to take a closer look.
Ciudad Gotica (which fittingly translates to "Gotham City") was the kind of secret hideout we had always dreamed of: an ode to all things retro that stood undisturbed in the middle of a world that was already moving forward and without daring to look back, a last stand for a movement that hadn't really started yet (and wouldn't for at least a couple more years, until the advent of YouTube and the emergence of the AVGN as the leaders of this whole thing). It was honestly shocking to behold because these people just seemed to have every bit of plastic majesty and circuit wizardry we had always dreamed of since reading about them on yellowed, dog-eared magazines and walking right past them on electronic stores, now being offered here for reasonable prices -- NES games, Genesis controllers, a myriad of VHS tapes lining the right-hand side of the shop and commanding your gaze to follow them until they curved into a staircase crudely made into another display, this one handling the "meat" of the whole collection: SNES and N64 cartridges (which were something that the vast majority of us had never seen in person) displayed next to a Genesis Model II looking both pristine and well-loved with the kind of maddening dust specs that every owner could tell you always managed to get stuck in-between the buttons. To the left of this machine of childhood wonder was a glass display that must once have held wristwatches and now rotated with Gameboy cartridges (all of them not worth it) before dissolving into a left-hand shelf filled to the brim with official Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon cards with hand-written labels saying that they were up for both sale and trade.
This was Nerdana, it was paradise for the terminally geeky.
There isn't a single picture of Ciudad Gotica anywhere on the net (making it all feel like even more of a fever dream). So, here's Camelot instead.
And boy did we enjoy it!
But because nightfall was already approaching (and specifically because we still had more than twenty blocks to go before reaching home), we didn't really linger long enough to take in the spectacle shining before us and just quietly left, being sure that we could just go back to this store next time we were free. Easy-peasy.
... Except that high school happened.
In retrospective, the sheer amount of books we were told to get should have been the first indication that this was no "Middle School: Part 2", but I honestly wasn't expecting to get just this busy right from the get-go.
I remember getting three separate assignments just that first week, with Mr Z (a Slovakian-born teacher and a suit-wearing demon) having us prepare a map of South America for Geography class and doing some other presentation for history class, resulting on a lethal one-two punch because we had those subjects back-to-back and, for the first time ever, in two-hour blocks. There simply was no dodging being called on or running down the clock on that set-up and that made it into an almost fever dream getting all our homework done just to avoid the wrath of Z, someone who a lot of us had a ton of experience with because of the horror tales being passed down to us by our older siblings, survivors of his class.
You'd think I'm exaggerating, but no... Mr Z was really that brutal (and because he was also a professional broadcaster, we got to hear him during the morning and afternoon announcements as well -- there was simply no escaping this nightmare of a man!). Add in the fact that we also had French classes for the first time starting the ninth grade AND that our entire roster of teachers had been changed to reflect this new step and things spiralled out of control so fast that the only way to really keep up and have some semblance of normalcy was to either use our (limited) free time going online and braving the crudest, rawest form of the internet yet or just squeezing every second of every recess until the very meaning chit-chat got lost in a sea of a million conversations happening all at the same time and fighting to be heard over the rest.
They really did try to make books "hip" for the kids...
So, yeah, Ciudad Gotica could wait... I guess that's why Batman only visits during the night.
But because we were stubborn as mules and vicious as goats, we eventually made our way back after roping in some friends and selling them on the idea of visiting a place that, somehow, sounded farther and father the more we tried to convince them to drop by for a visit.
We eventually got our way, though, because there literally was something there for everyone: My old friend Sofia (of Road Rash III fame and still rocking the same ponytail bangs) was really into collecting Pokemon cards and had decided to check the place out to further her collection. Someone else had wanted to get manga sold in there and was actually thankful by the fact that he didn't need to pay for a bus ride to Camelot (the huge store that sold of all of those things two cities over) in order to get it. A few other people tagged along for their own reasons, including signing up for Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments and scooping retro hardware to try and get later, getting into feverish, marathoning save-a-thons to try and buy them before someone else did. It was pretty wicked to behold.
I remember slaying a childhood dragon by getting Sonic 1 for Genesis (a game that was always rented out whenever I wanted to get it) just to find out that it was actually a romhack someone had made and that gave you 99 lives to dick around with, which was hardly something to complain about. I also got a second copy of International Super Star Soccer Deluxe for the same console, a game I had foolishly sold when I needed money to plug another hole in the endless board of teenhood craves and wants.
... which included giving us software of dubious quality!
And, of course, I became a big-time card "dealer" (even admitting that out loud makes me groan and want to kick myself) because I had amassed quite the collection of both Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon cards and was always trading them and selling the lesser ones back to the store for money to get booster packs and whole decks. It was almost a micro-economy I was running on the side, but no different from the bracelets and trinkets some of my friends were making and selling on the schoolyard after tearing into craft kits given as presents by out-of-touch (but well-meaning) relatives.
I remember saving up forever to get this Gameboy Pocket. Super worth it, though.
For a while there, it looked like everything had just clicked in place as if wiled that way by the universe itself: we would spend long, miserable hours getting drilled and grilled by Mr Z and Madame L on a daily basis, but then we would be free to return to Ciudad Gotica and continue on our merry way -- I even got to sign up for a Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament while I was at it, getting promptly and unceremoniously destroyed by the first kid I faced (turns out that learning how to play the game was an integral part of playing the game, who knew?!)... but the universe really does like its dramatic ironies, and it wasn't gonna let us have this little thing.
Freshman year turning into Sophomore year would have been bad enough on its own, but it came with a hidden dagger: extra classes we hadn't seen before and were there seemingly with no other purpose than to wreck our GPAs! (seriously, what the HELL were accounting and philosophy and why did I need them?). To this, we had to add the first wave of the "retro movement" coming on full swing and feeding off the creation of legendary websites like Home Of The Underdogs and a few other Abandonware pioneers, causing prices of formerly disposable junk to escalate both massively and overnight. And once the aforementioned YouTube entered the scene? Just forget about it! You almost needed a part-time job just to be able to afford the cheaper offerings in places like early MercadoLibre and Ciudad Gotica, which made them all decidedly not fun to browse anymore... not when it all amounted to replay of my early childhood days, looking at shiny displays showing consoles and games I couldn't have.
Sonic: "You Win" Edition -- A "Ciudad Gotica" exclusive I'm never parting with.
I stopped visiting entirely about a year later, for reasons I had already gone over in a bunch of other articles and do not wish to repeat anymore (having also forfeited my bid for Guinness immortality on the broken record category). However, that old and stubborn part of me that had pushed me to do some many other things in the past just refused to let this go entirely and almost hijacked my feet, forcing them to go down a route learnt by heart and travelled early and often.
But, alas, this was the 2010s, which meant that this place had gone on for a solid six or seven years since I was there last... God knows what may have happened in the meantime. Would any of the same people still be working in there? Would they recognize me? Would the place even still exist at all? I would have the answers to all of my questions as I made my way past the butcher's, down Italia street, near the French tutor (whose services I really could have used before purging him from memory like an old computer obliterating anything not critical as soon as it was out of sight), and then I made it to the place... except that not really.
A couple of really good finds acquired at a massive discount before the internet made it all stupid.
For a moment there, I honestly thought that I had gotten the wrong street or made a wrong turn somewhere -- I was rusty, it happened... except that I recognized every building surrounding the missing one, so this was the place.
But Ciudad Gotica was nowhere to be seen, the place where it once stood now occupied by a third house sandwiched between the two that had existed at both sides of the shop when I had visited it for the first time as a 14-year-old.
I literally had dozens of these...
This wasn't exactly surprising (a lot of our favorite shops had vanished since, from the epic fishing supply store that existed just in front of my friend's house to the aforementioned model kit shop that went under with its entire gallery as soon as it was closed down), but it still kind of stung. I was an adult with my own money for the first time and I had just gotten a PlayStation 1 afforded by my own blood, sweat and tears, so I was looking forward to satiating that same hunger that had driven me across stores and windows as a much younger lad. Being robbed of this opportunity by the ceaseless march of the so-called progress left a bitter taste on mouth, even though I wasn't really expecting the place to have survived after our current generation (the one it had aimed and "bowled" for) had outgrown it... not at that location, not with those prices.
I get that it is completely silly to lament the "death" of a store for which I was nothing more than just another customer, a glass-wearing nerd whose mere presence seemed to illustrate and confirm the kind of demographic they were appealing to. But this was more than just four walls hidden between an identical "sea" of similar buildings, this place meant connection at a time when it mattered the most, and it did the talking when our changing voices or awkward movements just wouldn't cooperate -- making fun of an extremely silly "One Piece" poster, nerding over a three-button Genesis controller just sitting on a shelf, talking about how awesome it would be to own a Nintendo 64 just to take some of those carts home (and they were $50 even back then, so damn)... it all filled a void that was in desperate need of filling without us risking crossing the invisible line between "devout fandom" and "please, beat me up". And, more than anything else, it allowed me to enjoy my best friend's company as he switched schools at the end of Freshman Year and made our coordination all the more difficult as the age of Internet Cafes was drawing to a close and our schedules were so spectacularly messed-up that the planets literally needed to align for us to hang out at all.
But going to Ciudad Gotica for a few hours during one of those weekends that seemed endless? Yes, we could do that even as our interests began to change and everything we seemed to have in common both dissolved into nothing and was reinforced as the very foundation of our ongoing relationship (I will never forget the massive amount of teasing he subjected me to when I bought Rad Racer for NES for $5 while he had just installed the latest GeForce graphics card on his "NASA-like" computer... we were standing at literal opposite sides of a massive chasm in terms of our interests, as if separated by time and space themselves, but still managed to get into arguments so deep, silly and funny that it all just blurred together until we found something better to do -- it was friendship in the purest sense, as it was meant to be had).
It's funny just how much magic we could uncover by throwing away our compasses, defying authority and heading into the unknown with the kind of sure-footed, reckless attitude that could only be birthed by genuine curiosity. Whether it was a dark forest delivering its treasures to a couple of wandering, scared kids or the urban jungle yielding one of its last secrets to bored teenagers just looking for one last "high" before being shoved back into the grind for another year, there was a lot of fun to be found... if we just managed to hit the delicate balance between legendary bravery and utter foolishness, something we were masters of by complete chance.
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