*~* THE WALL *~*

the rules were grandma jean's: every hire, first day, one photo against the office wall, pinned to the corkboard. staff called it "making the wall." every time the company moved — queens back office, the place over the bank on milwaukee ave, the tower — three things moved with it: the corkboard, jean's candy jar, and the first dollar, re-taped to each new wall by whoever was most senior and least busy. the spot was called the founders' corner in every building. the offices changed completely. the photos, the jar, and the dollar didn't.

on september 30, 2016, all three left the building in uncle nick's truck. nobody invoiced them. in 2025 i drove to evanston with a flatbed scanner and we spent a weekend taking every photo off the corkboard, scanning it, and pinning each one back EXACTLY where it was. this page is that weekend. several hundred still to go — i'm doing them in order. — t.m.

1986 — OPENING DAY (the founding six)

the first row, top-left of the corkboard. jean shot all of these on the same afternoon with morty's camera. the butterscotch pinned next to her photo is not decoration. do not touch it. it has been there since 1997.

[ SCANNING... ]

NICK REEVES
founder. day one, aug 6 1986.
yes that is a zapper. yes he brought it to a staff photo. 30 years old and completely certain. he was right for about a decade.

[ SCANNING... ]

JEAN MACY
co-founder. "chief everything officer." 1986–1996.
hand on the candy jar, where it always was. she invented the wall, so hers is the first photo that was ever on it. grandma. i miss you. everyone does.

[ SCANNING... ]

MORTY FEIN
first investor, 1918–2003.
not technically staff. try telling him that. demanded store No. 1 AND a spot on the wall, got both. the cigar was never lit. great-uncle. legend.

[ SCANNING... ]

RAMONA ORTIZ
employee #1. register, day one. store manager by '91.
refused to pose properly. jean kept the photo anyway and said "that's the most honest one on the wall." ramona ran this place. everyone knew. even nick knew.

[ SCANNING... ]

GARY "BIG GARE" PLOTKIN
stockroom, 1986–2016. all thirty years.
holding the console like a football because he had already dropped one that morning. broke exactly one of everything. stayed to the last day. still has all his polos.

[ SCANNING... ]

KEVIN NAKAMURA
repairs, age 16, after school.
fixed what gary broke. the screwdriver behind the ear was not a prop, it lived there. wouldn't look at the camera. jean said give him a year. (she was right. she was always right.)

1997–2003 — THE FOUNDERS' CORNER, FIRST HQ

the first move: the corkboard came off the queens wall and went up over the bank on milwaukee ave — new office, white drywall, teal stripe, same jar on the cabinet, same dollar re-taped. the suits started making the wall too. some of them even meant it.

[ SCANNING... ]

CHIP HARRINGTON III
CEO 1997–2003.
"the best memorial is scale." the teeth are real in the sense that they exist. left with $18M and a fax problem. the wall keeps what the settlement sealed.

[ dark rectangle. unfaded. a photo hung here from 1997 to 2004, and then it didn't. you know whose. the archive remembers what the wall was asked to forget: person_id 4, termination_for_cause. i scanned the gap anyway. history has gaps. ]

M▓▓▓▓▓▓ V▓▓▓
CFO 1997–2003.
removed by order of legal, april 2004. i found a duplicate print in a drawer in evanston. it stays in the drawer.

[ SCANNING... ]

DALE WICKERSHAM
EVP pre-owned & trade, 1999–2011.
the trade-in formula was his. "thirty cents on your childhood," half in store credit. (2025 update: i checked the archive. it really was thirty. exactly. every single year. somehow that's worse.) never broke a single law. that's the scary part. appraising a cartridge in his own staff photo.

2004–2015 — THE TOWER

move two: up the elevator. corporate put the corkboard in a brushed-steel frame with a brass plaque, marble floor, skyline behind it, like it was an exhibit. which, by then, it kind of was. the dollar stayed taped. someone in facilities tried to frame it in 2006 and got a memo from uncle nick so polite it's studied.

[ SCANNING... ]

BROCK ROSSITER
CEO 2003–2009.
rode the biggest wave in gaming history and believed, sincerely, that he was the wave. peak profits, peak stores, peak sweat. resigned to spend more time with his boats (plural).
(the photo is dated feb 2003 — eight months before his official start. he came in for the succession announcement and demanded his wall photo on the spot. the archive says he started 10/01. the wall says brock didn't wait. both are true.)

[ SCANNING... ]

GORDON PYLE
CEO 2009–2014.
"nobody will ever download a video game." held a DVD up for his staff photo like it was evidence. it was, your honor. just not of what he thought.

[ SCANNING... ]

PRISCILLA BLAINE-HURST
CEO 2014–2016.
the last photo ever pinned to the wall. project phoenix. EmporiumBucks™. turned around four companies; all four were later found facing the wall. ours too, in the end. hers is the only photo that's perfectly straight.

THE ANNEX — not the wall

two photos that were never pinned, kept here because the record should be complete.

[ SCANNING... ]

TODD MACY (me)
webmaster, 1998–2016. fansite, 1998–forever.
i never made the wall. jean's rule never reached the webmaster and by the time anyone noticed, there was no jean to ask. this webcam frame is all that exists of 14-year-old me at "work." honestly? correct.

[ SCANNING... ]

NICK REEVES, SEPT 29 2016, 11:48 PM
the last photo of the company alive. not a wall photo — the wall was already in the truck. that's the evanston register, the last sale ($3.67), and the candy jar one minute before he gave it away. thirty years, minus one day, after jean's first photo.