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Trading card craze

Players gather at a Town 'N Country business to battle with Yu-Gi-Oh cards and other popular games.

By LESLIE PAREDES
Published August 12, 2005

TOWN 'N COUNTRY - This could be any strip center storefront. A gray curb, a blackened street strewn with cigarette butts and candy wrappers, here and there a receipt or a flattened bottle of aspirin. A sidewalk, dusty and gum-spattered. A lone shopping cart sits desolately from the U-Save store across the street.

That's where they wait, standing, sitting in the debris, loitering in the noon summer sun. Occasionally they'll turn to the mirrored windows, hoping to catch a glimmer of activity within the darkened store on W Hillsborough Avenue. They want to be sure no one has sneaked up while their backs were turned.

"Are they always this late?" asks David Schueler, 18.

Gilberto Dominguez and Fernando Rodriguez answer without looking up from their bikes.

Yes. They're always late.

What's another five minutes? It's only a matter of time before their clubhouse will creak to life. Only a matter of time before they'll get to do what they've been waiting for: play Yu-Gi-Oh. Play Yu-Gi-Oh all day long.

Yu-Gi-Oh began as a television show, Japanese anime that came to America in 2001. Its arrival had young children and even some adults riveted by the animated adventures of Yugi Moto, a high school student with dangerously spiky hair. Yugi fights all that is evil in the world, not with guns, not with lasers, but instead with his magical trading cards of fury.

The trading card game featured in the series made the jump from the television to dining room table soon afterward. Much like its predecessors and peers, Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering, the game created a counter-culture obsession of frenzied buying and trading, playing and losing, and above all, playing and winning.

Still outside, the congregation of kids grows restless. The sight of a white SUV starts them shuffling toward the front door.

A woman steps out first, her sunny-white hair, jean dress and gold-rimmed glasses giving her the appearance of a gentle schoolmarm.

"How you doing, Ms. Marianne?" Dominguez asks as Marianne Weintraub props open the door, allowing the players to enter.

Skip Weintraub, Marianne Weintraub's husband and the bombastic wheeler-dealer of the Baseball Card Clubhouse, enters followed by Roxy, their dog; Adam Gonzalez, 11, a Clubhouse fixture who often helps with the register; and Josh Russell, 8, the Weintraubs' grandson. The odds-and-ends procession marches in, and the store fills with sound and life once again.

Gary Benson, 13, gets down to business immediately, pulling out a sock of change: quarters, dimes and nickels. He counts out enough to buy a pack of cards and a bag of Doritos. At a long playing table, he shreds the silvery wrapping and shuffles through his cards. Nothing of great interest.

He moves on to his bag of Doritos with a shrug.

At a tournament table, Kevin Koulon, 16, flashes his next opponent a barracuda smile.

"I'm going to lay the pain on you," he says, finishing the sentence with a burst of faked-maniacal laughter.

His opponent smirks, and the game begins and ends with little talking. The final blow is dealt by a ravenous-looking monster card. Its 1,200 points of damage give Koulon the victory he was seeking to reclaim his honor. He'd lost to the same player once before in a tournament.

"I'm so happy I got my revenge. I'll admit I was a little greedy, but I beat him," Koulon says, leaving the table to make his win official with a signature.

Beside him, Gregory Aviles, 14, is not having the same luck against Zach Holloway, also 14. Holloway says he is Koulon's apprentice, and together they usually place high in the tournament.

"I'm losing a lot now because I'm missing like one-fourth of my deck," Aviles says, playing his cards with little interest and an annoyed expression.

Aviles could be a poster boy for Yu-Gi-Oh as a good influence for kids and teens. Before moving to Tampa, he says he was getting into trouble in New York, having run-ins with police, teachers and his parents regularly.

"I was just always looking for trouble. I was bored, and this just became something to do with my time," Aviles said. "I guess the trouble starts when you have too much time on your hands."

After losing another match, Aviles notices his next opponent is half his age.

"Now, all I have to worry about is having the little kids demolish me," he says.

The store's roar ebbs for a moment as Skip Weintraub stomps from behind the counter in the tiny baseball card store within the larger business. He begins shouting out numbers for a raffle for a pack of the newest edition of cards. The final two numbers come only after some of his favorite kind of trivia: baseball.

"Who can tell me Yogi Berra's jersey number?" he asks with a smirk. The kids groan and finally, one of the adults pipes up with the answer: 20.

After the winner receives his prize, Weintraub shouts that he's open for trading, and shuffles back to the register.

At a table nearest the window, in the dwindling afternoon light, David Bollenback, 15, is playing the last game of a Saturday tournament against Samuel Jones, 17, the player-to-beat who placed in the top eight at a regional tournament the weekend before.

Their lips are pursed, and cards fall from their hands in quiet patterns of damage and defense. The room is the quietest it has been all day. Around them the defeated players huddle, barely breathing.

While Jones scribbles sideways on a little white pad, the numbers signifying his life and death, something rings in Bollenback's pocket.

"Uh. Hi, Mom," he says, awkwardly flipping his cellular phone open. "I'm kind of in the middle of something important." Bollenback closes the phone without waiting for a reply and looks at the crowd surrounding him before they all erupt into hee-hawing laughter.

"Dude, that was your Mom," Koulon says, and the crowd laughs harder.

Jones shakes his head, laughing too, and plays the card that wins him the game.

The tournaments always end with one winner who gets store credit, as high as $100. He'll also wear the tournament champion "trophy," a gaudy-red belt inspired by the ones that pro wrestlers wear.

It's more of a joke than an actual prize. In the end, for most of these kids, it's a winning proposition because they have a place to play their game.

"I tell them that this is their home," Marianne Weintraub says. "I tell them we're family."

[Last modified August 11, 2005, 09:07:35]