On May 22nd, 2025, the Insanity Complex closed permanently.
The gathering now takes place at Starlight Arcade, and has been since May 29, 2025.
At the time this was happening, I was extremely burnt out and stepped away from organizing the arcade events, and as such, I have not written a descriptions for these events since May 8th, 2025.
The insanity complex was a unique location. Lots of different people used it as a place to build community. There were these cheap plywood benches covered in strips of roller rink fabric that we would always pull over to the DDR cabinet, forming rows like church pews (some of us called it “gay church”). People would hang out, chat and take turns playing DDR. I would buy a bunch of tokens and let people use them, because I knew some people were strapped for cash and I still wanted everyone to be able to play if they wanted. There was a time I was giving three separate people a ride there every Thursday.
Eventually we started paying a worker at the arcade (we called him Patrick Arcademan) $30 to put the machine in free play mode. He would usually play a song or two during the evening; he was insanely good at the game. I saw people in our group slowly get better at the game throughout the two years I organized events there.
I miss that place and think of it often. It was a third space, and those seem to be disappearing. If you were a part of these events, thanks for adding to their magic and for giving me a reason to write a funny little story every week. Stay weird, stay loud.