My name is Michael Bahr, and I'm a typically suburban husband and father living in the Phoenix metro area. I have been in the comic, hobby, and video game store industry since 1997.
From 2012 to 2023, I owned and operated Desert Sky Games, with public Local Game Store locations in Gilbert, Tempe, and finally Chandler, Arizona.
In late 2023, we sold the entire operation to Amazing Discoveries, making our Chandler location into their fifth Arizona store (so far!) and allowing the DSG ownership to move on with our careers.
In late 2024, I finally found a job position I had been seeking and hopeful to get, which for various reasons I am keeping incognito for the time being. This job includes access to a lot of sensitive information. In accordance with professional standards, I have discontinued my online writing projects, these two industry weblogs: The Backstage Pass (2014-2022) and LGS Net Income (2023-2024).
I have saved all the content from both weblogs for my personal archive, but all that material will remain offline and unpublished moving forward. Maybe when I retire and write my memoirs it will all be published permanently in some way. We'll see.
It has been a pleasure and a great learning experience writing for all of you these past ten years. I hope you learned a lot of great things about how Local Game Stores operate and how the comic, hobby, and video game store industry works overall. Thank you for reading!
