From left, Chris Holloway and his two sons, Chris and Mason Quashnick-Holloway, have opened Bonsai Hollow, a new game shop on Marine Drive in Astoria.

Astoria has been without a game store since the closure of Amazing Stories in 2012 and the Arc Arcade in 2017.

Enter a father and his two sons, all avid gamers and collectors who saw an opportunity to turn their hobby and a storeroom on Marine Drive into a new business during the coronavirus pandemic.

Chris Holloway, a tax consultant, runs H&R Block in downtown Astoria. He helped his two sons, 19-year-old Chris and 15-year-old Mason Quashnick-Holloway, clear a storeroom next door and open their new gaming business, Bonsai Hollow, a little over a week ago.

“The kids needed something to do to get them out of the house, and they didn’t want to work at H&R Block with me,” Holloway said.

The shop’s small slot of a showroom is filled with all manner of cards, board games, hobbies and collectibles arrayed on shelves, tables and glass cases. They specialize in role-playing and card games like Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and Pokemon sourced from their own collection and Wizards of the Coast, a game manufacturer based in Seattle.

“There’s a little one in Seaside,” Holloway said of the shop’s selection. “But to get a collection like ours, you have to go to Vancouver (Washington) or Seattle.”

Holloway said the shop also tries to beat prices on eBay, a popular clearinghouse for collectibles. He acts as financier and adviser to his boys, who don’t seem too concerned running their first business during the coronavirus.

“We try to keep it as clean as possible,” Mason Quashnick-Holloway said. “I go over every day, pretty much, at least once or twice — maybe more, depending on how many people we get.”

The business is a first for the incoming sophomore at Astoria High School. It’s a side hustle for his older brother, Chris , who recently returned from fishing for salmon in Alaska with his grandfather and is studying maritime sciences at Clatsop Community College in hopes of working on tugboats.

Game stores have faced some unique difficulties in Astoria. Amazing Stories, a board game and comic shop formerly located in the John Jacob Astor Building, closed after a fire in one of the apartments above set off sprinklers that drenched the store’s collection. The Arc Arcade closed after owner Brad Smithart amassed a large amount of unpaid lodging taxes at the Astoria Riverwalk Inn before relocating to the East Coast.

The Quashnick-Holloway family hopes to expand the storefront farther into the storeroom, creating space for socially distanced game nights and becoming a hangout spot.

“It’s exciting,” Holloway said about bringing a game shop back to Astoria. “We’re looking forward to a lot of fun here.”