(uplifting music) (relaxed music) - Gunzil and Bowser as an establishment, as a business if you were, started in November of last year.

Coming up to my, for one year anniversary.

My father was an artist.

And he had written "Gunzil & Bowser," which is actually a story that his father told him.

And he adapted it, illustrated it.

My mother did the calligraphy.

My wife, who is an artist and worked in this town for a long time, worked in the university for a long time, was very influential on exactly where things went.

And she's clearly got a good, great sense of style.

The only thing that really, when we originally designed it, and I can show you some photos, actually if you look through the Instagram, you can see some of the earlier shots was empty.

And that was pretty much where we started.

After that, we just transferred over the house.

I mean, everything you see here, all the toys are things that we have in our house.

There's a sense of whimsy that's in our house, and I wanted to kind of take that and say, "Here, enjoy that, let's have sort of a moment with it."

To be honest with you, initially the books were something that meant something to me.

That was my primary goal.

I wanted to have books that I would've walked into a store and acquired.

I looked at everything and said, "That looks cool, that looks cool.

I like that story, I like that story."

I never really took into consideration would this sell.

And there's a lot of titles anywhere that I really, when I do sell them, it's like a shock to my system.

It's like, "Really?

You want this too?

All right, cool."

A lot of the books that lead here are by people that have that same affinity for certain titles, for certain illustrators, certain authors.

I mean, there are certain titles that I look at and I go, "Okay, I see that as a little bit pandering to an audience."

But that's okay too.

I make a point of not acquiring stuff that I think they can get at a Walmart.

I keep telling people, whenever they say, "Is your competition Amazon, or anything like that, or Walmart?"

It's like, no, people that are looking for a specific book have already acquired it online.

They've already used their phone and said, "I want this, and it's already shipped to me."

This is a place for browsers.

I want people to come in, I want people to have fun.

This is a place for families.

I want to foster that love of the experience.

I want to provide something that this community didn't have.

And initially I thought it was a bookstore, but in the end it was just this moment, that was kind of what I was trying to get out there.

I had a dad, let's see, it was dad, two daughters, mom came in.

And dad desperately wanted to have a conversation with me.

Just really wanted to make those connections with me.

And he just did not wanna be here in any shape or form.

He picked the wrong guy.

I was not connecting to literally anything he was talking about.

He took a step back and he looked up there, and all the Fisher-Price stuff.

And he looked at one particular item, and he stopped and said, "Can I see that?"

And he looks at this and he winds it up and starts telling me about this toy that his mother had.

And that he had these experiences.

And he wound it up, and he was listening to it, and he was suddenly in a whole different place.

And he goes over to one daughter and he starts to tell her about this.

Now, this one daughter is maybe two feet, three feet away from the other one, who's looking at the other shelf.

And he tells her this whole thing about this toy, and how much it meant to him and everything.

And then when he is done telling the one daughter, he takes the three steps over to the other daughter.

Goes through the whole script again.

And that was just such a great moment, that although the books weren't meaning as much to him, I still found something in here that meant something to him.

And that was a great takeaway.

It just made me feel really good about, I'm able to connect somehow to most of the people that walk in here.

And that's pretty darn cool.

When they think of this store, I want them to have a good memory.

I want them to think of a time that meant something to them.

I want them to think of this as sort of an extension of a potential library, store, family, comfort.

It's comfort food.

My wife uses that term all the time, comfort food.

And I really like that idea of coming in.

I mean, this is a, now, not initially, it is a moment to decompress after my week.

I mean, a lot of people wouldn't think that, but there really is a way sort of to distance myself from what my day-to-day job is.

And that's really nice.

Oh, one of my favorite things to do where it always, I'm not sure if it bothers them, but when I have a parent that is desperately trying to control a kid in here, that they're just terrified they're gonna tear the place up.

And I say, don't worry about it.

I mean, there's nothing to break here.

Everything that's breakable, the one thing that is seriously breakable are those music boxes, the case.

But it's really nice to watch a parent sort of decompress a little bit just the same as I am.

It's like, "Oh, so my kid can just fly on the floor in the middle and we can go shop?"

Yeah, cool.

You can do what you need to do, I'm not worried about it.

I'm helping create core memories, and that's really sweet.

I love that I am part of that.

But I really want you to have that family moment.

I want you to sit at the end of your bed and read to your kid until they tell you, "Dad, you can't come into my room anymore."

I really want that to happen.

This can extend.

You can have that love of the child and your spouse and these books.

And they all kind of come together and just have it.

Even if you don't stay together, you're still gonna have those moments forever.

And I want to foster that more than anything.

Our normal hours right now have been, and I'm probably gonna stick with them, we're in about four to six on Fridays.

Which is normally when I do most of my stock.

But that's neither here nor there, I'm open.

And on Saturdays we open from nine to three.

Nine o'clock is normally when the readers, readers, sorry, the farmer's market is open.

I try to keep with their hours.

I also, if you reach out to me with my email address, or that, or social media, whether on Instagram, Facebook, or anything else that we, that's it.

And say, "Hey, can you open up in the evening?"

I have done that a number of times.

I met old families that just couldn't make it otherwise.

That's when they were here, and spend as much time as they want.

I'm particularly fine with time.

(smooth music) - The name Jack's Legacy comes from my dad, who was Jack, known as Jack.

He passed away in the mid 80s, early 80s from cancer.

And it was always his dream to have the pizza place.

And when he moved us out to the country, we moved out to Stockridge, Michigan, bought a little nine hole golf course.

And he put the pizza place in that.

So we grew up with pizza and golf all of our life.

And when we decided to open this place, we didn't have a name.

So sitting around the table with my daughter, we're trying to figure out what we're gonna call the place.

And I said, "Well, pizza is my dad's legacy.

Pizza and golf is my dad's legacy to us."

And it just kind of came, Jack's Legacy just kind of came out from that.

So we decided to open our own restaurant.

I retired from the Air Force in 2013.

I worked on the golf course for a few years after that.

Still wanted to get into pizza.

I knew that was in our future somewhere.

An opportunity came where our golf course up in Michigan sold.

And my father-in-law actually picked up all of the restaurant equipment for us.

And it was something we had been thinking about doing, so it just kind of fit.

So all the equipment, the oven, the mixers, the retarders for the dough storage, all the tables and chairs that we have here, those all came from Michigan, from our restaurant up in Michigan.

So the mixture in the oven, my dad bought in 1975-ish, within a year of that.

When they opened the pizza place, so they're all almost 50 years old.

Still running strong 'cause they built stuff really quality back in the day.

So my potential dream for this facility, this place is to grow it.

Probably not in size 'cause there's nowhere really to expand, but just to be a little busier, serve more people, make a few more pizzas.

Try to get golf going a little more.

We've got an indoor simulator, which in my eyes is a good thing for people in the winter, just to keep their game going, keep their swing loose so that they're ready to go back on the golf course as early as they can in the spring, so.

(pensive music) So our indoor simulator, it's a full swing name brand simulator.

They're one of the best in the industry for simulators.

But it gives you all the data as far as your swing speed, your club face angles.

If you know how to correct that, and you're hitting a bad shot.

And you can fix it and hit another shot, and see immediately that you're fixing that problem in your swing.

It's a real quick, easy way to kind of see what you're doing.

But we also have multiple golf courses you can play in real time.

Hitting golf ball into the screen.

And it's instantaneous.

Once you hit the golf ball, it takes off on the screen.

Pretty realistic and accurate.

In my opinion, it's accurate to within four or five yards of what you're hitting on the golf course.

So when I play in here, I'm hitting the same clubs for the distances in here as I do when I'm on the golf course.

(joyful music) The pizzas on the menu, we've got a few of 'em that are kind of pre-named, right?

So we've got the Mickey Special, which is my mom's favorite.

And it's just a designated item.

So it's pepperoni, ham, mushroom, green pepper, onion and bacon.

It's just an easy thing.

If that's what you want on your pizza, you can just say, "Gimme a mickey special."

And then the people that are dressing it know what goes on a Mickey's special.

We've got the Hawaiian Hole In One.

We've got a supreme slice, which is the slice and go.

The Founder's Favorite is, that's my favorite pizza.

So pepperoni, mushroom, that's me.

And then the rest of 'em is just build your own.

So our menu, we got 11 toppings, you just pick what you want.

So if you don't want everything that's on a Mickey's, you don't have to order a Mickey's, you can just order a pepperoni, ham, mushroom, green pepper pizza or whatever it might be.

(smooth music) - What it's like working for my dad.

It's fun, but also it can be, not stressful, but you live with him.

So I see him all the time.

And see him at work, see him at the house.

So it's like I'm constantly seeing the same people, but it's still fun and I like it.

And he's pretty chill about the way that he runs things, but also not too chill.

So right now, I think I'm just working here to work with my family.

I don't think that I'll work here long term.

I could see myself doing that maybe, but right now I'm not sure that I will.

I'd for sure come back and stuff, but.

- So the employees we have here, mostly, I say mostly, but there's really only three to four of us that are family.

The others that work with us that are just like family.

All great workers, local.

The kid that runs my oven, he was one of my golf team kids.

He's doing a bang up job on the oven just cooking the pizzas.

'Cause our ovens are not conveyor, they're deck ovens.

So when you put the pizza in there, you can't just let it sit there.

You gotta move it around, you gotta spin it, you gotta make sure it's cooking right on all sides.

And he's kind of mastered that.

So another person working our table dressing our pizzas, Charlene, she's been doing a great job.

And Ronya we just brought on, who is a friend of my daughter.

And she's doing a really good job waiting tables, answering the phone.

They work like a well-oiled machine back there in the kitchen.

All I do is throw pizzas out, and then I throw it over to them and they take care of it, so.

For new customers trying us out for the first time, I think you're gonna find a very inviting environment when you come in the door.

We try to greet you at the counter when you come in.

We give you a hello.

I think the environment in here, we always keep it fairly quiet.

As far as the golf goes, if you're a golfer, you bring your own clubs.

We leave you alone.

If you need something, you just let us know something's not working right.

Or a ball went behind the screen, and we'll come get it for you.

But for the most part, we get you in here.

We try to treat you like family, and then give you the best quality pizza we can give you.

(smooth music) (energetic music) (energetic music) (arcade machine clinks) (energetic music) - I'm the president of Children's Community Charity and Retrograde Charitable Toy Video Game Museum here.

So, and I run this motley crew of folks into all kinds of just craziness and good times.

- Here at Retrograde, I am the main guy that takes care of basically all of the arcade machines.

I run maintenance on everything.

I source machines, go pick 'em up, install 'em.

I will crawl through Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, forums, Reddit for just about anything.

Arcade games, board games, video games, toys.

Weird things, kitched things.

Just stuff that I can show off and bring to other people's attention.

Try to share.

- The structure of our organization is, Brian is president and Ryan and I are both co-VPs.

The responsibilities of the VP are basically, we are in charge of the day-to-day is the easiest way to sum that up.

I'm more of the helping move everything around, figuring out best locations for stuff.

Back when we were at the Victorian house, we had a lot of issues with people not realizing that we were an arcade.

We had a lot of people coming in being like, "Well, it looked like a frat house."

And we didn't know of just a bunch of guys who like video games.

And yeah, and we're having to let people know, "No, we're a full functioning arcade and video game and toy museum."

But yeah.

- We wanted to create a community space that was safe for everyone, to where a place that everybody could kind of come in and focus on nostalgia and focus on being a kid, and just kind of rub elbows in that with a much larger plan behind that.

- This isn't what we call our day job.

It's a 501(c)(3) charity, and so it's our way of giving back to the community.

But we're all contractors, electricians, plumbers, - We all work on the maintenance of the building, and of the arcades.

We're slowly teaching ourselves about when the pinball machine breaks.

None of us knew anything about it.

The day we realized that we could pull the glass and lift the whole machine up was groundbreaking.

'Cause we thought we had to work through this itty bitty little tiny window.

And we were like, "How are we gonna do this?"

(laughs) - Well, we've always been collectors.

We held onto our childhoods, we held onto our toys.

We were sitting around one day and just kind of marveling at how many cool things we actually had.

Just happened to be talking about what are we gonna do with these cool things?

And I was running outta space in my house, and Brian was running space outta his house.

And eventually it just kind of came to a conclusion of, what could you do if you could do anything?

And it was like, I always wanted to own an arcade.

That was my thing.

I grew up in arcades.

I thought they were a blast.

Everything kind of just clumped up into, how can we share all of this stuff?

We had a couple arcades at that point.

We can chase some stuff down.

And we just decided to go for it, and just started piling things in there, and started making a show out of it.

Making it something to come see, come check out your old childhood toys.

- We teach about the progression of technology to kids, old technology.

We teach about gaming.

We have different programs and that, that we also use in order to kind of help people heal up from past traumas and that, through gaming and that.

And so we've always looked to take those things, and continue to build and build and build on them.

So in the start of creating this, we were looking at it like the story of "Stone Soup."

And so we brought the kettle here, right?

And the next thing you know, everybody starts seeing all the stuff that's going on and that, and they start bringing the carrots and the potatoes.

And that's the rest of that community.

And so people will bring things in, either towards our various charitable efforts, or bring things in to add to the museum and that.

Toys maybe that we don't have, games, all kinds of wonderful stuff.

The idea is just to continue to bring all those people together, and to build a much larger hub.

And so the idea was to continue to focus on that, and just build and build and build.

And we're really trying to go for the largest collection in the world, certifiably largest collection in the world.

So that's part of that future vision.

And obviously we'll have to have a place larger than this to be able to house that many millions of toys and things of that nature.

- We meet a lot of folks, and they like to talk to us about their childhood, especially when they find out that our fun job is to come here and play with toys.

They like to talk to us about the toys they played with.

And oftentimes when they find out that it's all for charity and that we're all just sharing everything, they want to give as well, and give back to the community, and share their toys with everybody.

So we make a lot of connections all over the place with just about everything we do.

Nostalgia for us is a way to connect people to their inner child.

Everybody remembers what it's like to be a kid.

If you can just find that right toy, that right cartoon, that whatever, it takes them back to when adult problems didn't exist.

And so it essentially creates a neutral ground where everybody's on the same page.

Nobody's worried about their money, their bills, their life.

They're playing, they're having fun, they're reconnecting with their childhood, and generally with each other.

We use that to also help parents connect with their children, and so they can reconnect with their childhood and identify a little bit more with what their kids are going through, or how they're feeling and, "Oh, I remember what that was like."

And so that's really what the nostalgia is for as a key for us to operating and running this place.

- If you're interested in coming in or checking us out and that, you can check us out online.

We do have a Discord.

You can find us at retrogrademuseum.org.com.

You can also get involved through Facebook or various other ways.

- It's $10 a head to get in.

Everything is set to free play.

We have some machines that we couldn't turn free play on.

But if you're down here and you wanna play those games, you just run it to the desk and we'll go throw some credits on there for you and get you squared away.

- The main thing is though, just if you can, come on in.

We wanna hang out with you, we wanna play games with you, and just talk about old stuffs.

(uplifting music) (relaxed music) - So RISE Community Services, we support individuals with intellectual, developmental, physical disabilities, wide range of disabilities, really.

RISE stands for Respecting Individuals' Skills and Efforts.

So within that, ideally we strive to meet the needs of our individuals throughout the county.

That if you think of work, play, and live, we really support everyone in that aspect.

So in their workplace, we support them to be successful.

In their home, we help them maintain their living.

And in their community, we help them access those things that they want to enjoy a quality life.

We have this vocational center.

Then down the street we have our RISE Center for Growth.

So that's our day program folks.

The day program individuals are working on social skills.

They do a lot of volunteering in the community.

They may have some days that they work here, and they may have some days that they are just volunteering in the community.

But they're building those skills to hopefully be employed here or within the community.

And so that creates an opportunity for the community come in and engage with our associates, buy products, invest in the growth and development of the skills of individuals.

Some of our folks, like here at the vocational center, or RISE Racks, or our mobile work crew, they do work for RISE.

But the ultimate goal is that they're building their skills, their competency, their confidence.

So that they can build their resume to then apply for those positions within the competitive employment world.

Because ideally, experience is much more valuable sometimes than being in the classroom.

However, we do provide that skills training and things of that nature.

But they work here with the idea that they will then get employment in the competitive world.

So ideally, the goal is that we don't need to be there 24/7.

So we are considered a shelter workshop through Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

And for years this facility has been kind of the only gateway, the only employment opportunity for individuals coming out of high school.

This is a great option, obviously because it helps build some skills.

They do get paid, and so it's also a partnership with our contractors.

And it's cost saving for them, and it's also meaningful employment for individuals.

The goal is that all of our folks here at the vocational center obtain employment outside of here.

It's just a stepping stone.

And even in the community, it's helping them interact in the community and ensure that they are not being took advantage of, or they have the appropriate social skills to be successful in the community.

(relaxed music) So our staff here at RISE, their main focus is support.

Whether it's employment, whether it's our day program, going out in the community, within the home.

They know our individuals very well.

And through a support plan, they can identify what level of support they need to provide to each person.

So just building their independence every day.

(relaxed music) So here at the vocational center, the different types of jobs would be in the manufacturing.

So we do production of t-shirts, we do products for inter assists.

So anything that might be inter assists next door, they do batteries, and so we have different components that we put together.

We also build street sweeper brooms for United Rotary, so different types of brooms.

We also build black box for a plane, but they're orange boxes for train.

So we build the outside component of the box that goes in the trains, and then they're shipped back to the supplier, that then obviously puts all the wiring and things in.

We do a variety of things, but that would probably be the biggest job that we have.

Our cafe is another great resource for people to learn some skills.

We really strive to, like I said, expose our employees and our individuals to multitude of opportunities.

And not necessarily is it that they want to work in retail or in the restaurant business, but there's a lot of skills that can be developed just by being in that atmosphere.

(relaxed music) And then years ago, when we first started doing some crafting, this is when we did some recycling in the back.

We pulled one of our individuals up and just kind of said, "Hey, we want you to paint a picture.

We're gonna sell it in our new store."

And what we found was that she was a phenomenal artist.

And then working in our store, she was very shy, did not want to answer the phones.

And over a course of a couple years, she then was somebody that we could call on to come fill in at the front and answer the phones.

So with a lot of patience, and skills, and telling them that they can do it, she's been very, very successful, and is actually one of our leads here at the vocational center.

Funding is always a concern, is because to support the providers that are providing these supports to help people be independent within their work and their community is probably one of the biggest hurdles for the overall disability, so that we can maintain and sustain the services that we currently have and to grow.

I guess if I had to say one thing, it's, RISE, we really are a family.

So when you think of your own family, you really look out for their best interest, and you want what's best for them.

And here at RISE, we're all a family.

So we're looking out for each other, whether that's the individuals we serve, the families, or just even each other as staff.

So we wanna see everyone meet their highest potential, whatever that takes.

Whether it's creating opportunities or training, we really strive to be each other's cheerleaders.

(uplifting music)