BIG GAME HUNTING: The GameWorks video-game palace, opening this weekend, is the first in the chain to open for business, but not the first one built. There’s a full-scale working prototype on a Universal Studios soundstage, where they’ve worked out everything from electrical requirements and crowd flow to lighting and acoustics. Paying customers, though, are still the ultimate test of any business. The next GameWorks (in Vegas, where it’ll fit right in) is too far along to be radically changed by the company’s Seattle experience, but the chain’s owners (Sega, Spielberg, and Seagram’s/ MCA) will do some tweaking to the concept based on which attractions prove more popular here.

Basically, GameWorks is to your neighborhood amusement arcade what Borders is to your neighborhood tome-boutique. It’s bigger, flashier, and noisier than anything outside Nevada. You really feel inside the frenetic cathode-gaming universe. But see for yourself. There’s no cost to just look around this new building made to look like an old building had been ungraciously “restored.” An “old-timey” look is enforced throughout the place with the Rosie-the-Riveter type posters, some more obviously fake than others. In one corner there’s a mural of a ’50s-dressed couple gaping at a ’70s-era game console, above the script-lettering slogan “Remember Pong?”. There’s a corner for ’80s video games on the mezzanine, next to the Internet-terminal corner (laptop computers attached to comfy lounge chairs) and the of-course-they’d-have-one Starbucks booth. Most of the main-floor game units are have sit-in consoles and big-screen monitors; several race games are arranged in rows of eight for simultaneous competition. You’ll also find video batting-practice, air hockey, and a few Space Jam pinball games. (Sega’s signature game series, Sonic the Hedgehog, was nowhere to be seen on the preview days I was there, but I’ve since learned they’ve got one Sonic unit in now.)

The place is all ages except for the Elysian Brewpub upstairs. (A note on the pub’s menu describes the Greek myth of Elysium as a place of peace and harmony; this joint’s somewhat less tranquil.) Indeed, it’s significant as the only big place in the whole downtown redevelopment juggernaut intended for people of a post-Boomer demographic, the people who do support in-city merchants, gathering places, and public transportation. Speaking of hi-tech wonderlands…

AIRING IT OUT: After all these years, I finally got to the famous Boeing surplus store a few weeks ago. It’s well worth the trip to the daytime nightmare that is Darkest Kent’s vast miles of faceless, windowless warehousery and wide, sidewalkless arterials. Best to get there just before its 10 a.m. opening, to mingle with the mechanics and home-improvement crowd waiting for first chance at the bargains. The day I was there, alas, no airplane seats or beverage carts or 10-foot-tall landing-wheel tires could be had. But many other things were there, all dirt cheap: Sheets of aluminum. Office furniture, including drafting tables. Computers (and their parts and accessories) of varying vintages and operating systems. Drill bits. Welders’ heat-shield masks, a la Flashdance. Safety goggles. Cash registers. Huge rolls of upholstery fabrics, in those reassuring dark blue colors psychologically tested to make passengers less restless. Platforms and podiums. A bicycle with no handlebars or pedals. A huge old photo-typesetter, the kind of machine that made words like these in the pre-desktop-publishing era. Fifteen- and twenty-minute VHS tapes from the company’s in-house production studio, now erased but bearing labels announcing such former contents as Confined Space Awareness, Commitment to Integrity: The Boeing Values, and even Accident Investigation: It’s About Prevention. Speaking of accidents…

GEE, THAT’S ME!: While returning from Kent on I-5, I passed the former Sunny Jim food plant, its still-standing signs harkening back to good comfort-food memories. While Sunny Jim products hadn’t been around for several years, I could remember the labels, tastes, and even smells of its peanut butter, apple butter, jams, jellies, pancake syrup, and cut-price soda pop. I had no way to know the building (which had been artists’ studios in recent years but was now only half-occupied by city maintenance trucks) would go up in a massive fire, started accidentally by a roofer, an hour later.