I’m thrilled to announce that as of 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, The Raygun Lounge has an official Washington state license to sell beer, wine, ale, cider and mead. Yes, mead. This means that tonight’s (Friday, 11/30) invite-only event (a reward for everyone who backed us at the “Soft Opening” level) will indeed feature the very first time we’ll be serving beer. First shipments are arriving tomorrow afternoon in time to be chilled before our guests’ arrival.

The flipside of this stellar news is that as of 5 p.m. tonight – just mere hours from now – The Raygun Lounge becomes an exclusive 21+ establishment. We’re in talks with our new neighbors, the Black Coffee Co-op, to provide alternative gaming event options for our fans and friends under the age of 21. We’ll release more details on that exciting collaboration once we sleep off tomorrow’s inevitable hangover.

The initial buildout projects are nearly complete thanks to the super human speed, efficiency and focus of Nick, Jensen and Dominic. And not a moment too soon with Wednesday’s big Lounge preview event just around the corner. An important note about Wednesday’s event – it does NOT require an invite and IS totally open to the public. The private, invite-only founders party advertised as part of our Kickstarter backer rewards will be happening in September when we’ll have all the pledge rewards ready to go – stay tuned.

And just when we thought things were as busy as they could get, this upcoming week we triple the stakes! In addition to continuing to develop the lounge (upgrading the lighting, installing the sound system, establishing new vendor relationships, forwarding the licensing process, etc), we’ll be hosting FIVE special pre-opening PAX events (some open to the public, some not- stop by and ask if you’re not sure). AND we’ll be building and running our amazing Gamma Ray Games booth inside PAX itself (located in glorious room 305/306 this year- stop by and say hi!).

I will be bouncing between all three locations (store, lounge, PAX) from about 10:30am until around 10:30pm every day for the next 10 days or so, keeping everything moving and trying not to get in the way. If you have any questions feel free to flag me down or ask one of the team. Just know that if it’s me, both the question and the answer will need to be short and I’ll probably be walking or working while we talk. Heck, some of the last people that stopped by to chat with me wound up helping unload a trailer full of benches with a lawyer and a Pentecostal pastor. You just never what’s going to happen around here. Which is why, for the next ten days or so, I’m going to be around a LOT.

See you soon,

-Eric