Reading · CHURCH GHOST · RSS Amplifier

Standing outside the Invention Diner in Milan, Ohio, my idle eyes drifted towards the flyers and adverts hanging in the restaurant’s smudged front window. Against the harsh glare of midday sun, my attention landed on a home printout for “Gene’s Typewriter Repair,” with an image of a kindly old man (presumably Gene) posed happily behind an example of the obsolete technology he services.

It was slop of course.

The old man was both smooth and wrinkly, his welcoming smile stiff and anxious. At a glance the graphic was obviously AI-generated, and closer scrutiny of the mushy and jumbled typewriter keys provided absolute confirmation.

Dirk exited the diner, chin down and wiping crumbs off the front of his black t-shirt. Getting his attention, I pointed at the window. “Look at this: slop for typewriter repair!” Dirk chuckled and got closer. “There’s more,” he said, and I noticed posters for a model railroad event and a classic car expo, all with murky-butter slop colors. Standing in a historic downtown at the corner of Church and Main Street, in the birthplace of Thomas Edison no less, all of this seemed deeply ironic: cold tech in the service of warm kitsch. Abruptly changing the subject, I asked my friend a question.

“How far are we from Sandusky?”

“Not far. Why—wanna go?”

Heading north up Milan (pronounced my-lynn) Road, we passed Kalahari Resorts and Conventions, the Great Wolf Lodge waterpark resort, and a variety of smaller hotels and motels. Near the Lake Erie shore and the Cedar Point amusement park, the area is littered with tourist amenities, cheap attractions, and mosquito infested campgrounds for MAGA patriots. Sandusky Mall (built 1977) is a more stable anchor, serving as a center of commerce and activity beyond the active summer months, and this shopping center was our specific destination. Even more specifically, we were in search of Federation Headquarters.

Sandusky Mall

Federation Headquarters’ lineage is deeply connected to Starbase—a shop and social hub dedicated to Star Trek, which operated out of a commercially-zoned house in the Westerville area, outside Columbus. I had recently been thinking about Starbase, which I was familiar with from my years spent in central Ohio, and was curious to see if they were still open and operational. I expected the worst, but the answer wasn’t so simple and I was forced to follow a trail of sometimes-confusing information, spread across a series of older blog-style web pages.

Established in 1992 by a woman named B.J. Mitias, it was at Starbase where I bought my first Star Trek fanzine, a filthy habit which was later abetted by Cleveland’s Weird Realms store. This collector’s impulse finally reached its apex when I spent fifty dollars on a copy of Odyssey #6.5—an amateur publication from 1983 featuring an astonishing piece of fanfiction in which Trek’s doctor, Leonard “Bones” McCoy, is gang raped by a group of men on an alien world. And this is partly why fandom interests me: Once you get past the corporate-approved material, all sorts of strangeness lurks beneath the surface, and the media property is revealed as a canvas on which devotees often project their kinks, hopes, and fears. Looking at various images on the website dedicated to Starbase’s history, I was reminded just how marginalized and off-kilter these people could be, but was also charmed by the low-res thumbnail galleries of costume parties, birthday cakes with blue frosting Trek symbols, and all the other various examples of sci-fi folk art. The milieu struck me as pleasant, and some part of me questioned how I chose to spend my years in Columbus… and wished I had been going to Starbase events instead of lurking around Times New Viking gigs and doing bad cocaine until sunrise. But then I scrolled deeper into the timeline, into the 2000s, and the photos of furries in Trek uniforms made me feel better about the social decisions of my youth.

Various fanzines, collection of the author

But go to Starbase I did, and on at least two occasions, mostly because I was fascinated that it existed. The store was already clearly past it’s prime as Star Trek: The Next Generation had been off the air for roughly a decade, and much of the wares were covered in dust. Years later, when researching the store’s fate, I learned that Starbase was purchased by “The Federation” (a 501(c)3 charitable organization) in 2016, and not long after, a new location was secured at the Eastland Mall. In 2023 they relocated again, up north to Sandusky, where they abandoned the Starbase moniker entirely and officially went by Federation Headquarters. For some reason this all came back to me while standing in downtown Milan, and now Dirk and I were approaching the mall entrance next to the T.J. Maxx, where we stepped into a narrow Food Court which flowed into the central hub—with intact ‘70s architectural details. We briefly examined a map display, but decided a Star Trek storefront would be easy enough to locate in a mall this size, and we headed arbitrarily towards the North Corridor, passing the familiar sights of Hot Topic, Bath & Bodyworks, and various humans with snakebite piercings—all sucking on slushie drinks as they shuffled to nowhere in their athletic sandals.

Soon enough, we found a Trek-decorated display window and signage that read “The Neutral Zone Science Fiction Film Studio,” but the entrance opened up to an oddly empty waiting room area, with an older man seated behind a desk. Slightly confused, Dirk asked if this was the mall’s Star Trek business. “Well,” said the man, “this is one of them.” He then proceeded to make a vaguely derisive comment about Federation Headquarters before explaining his own operation—which was not yet up and running. The pitch must have been met with our blank stares, so we were offered a quick tour for further explanation, though our guide said he couldn’t be away from the desk for too long. Despite our skepticism we agreed, and we were ushered through a doorway which opened up to a very large space containing various replicas of set pieces from the original 1960s Trek series, complete with hallways and even a “Jeffries tube” (if you don’t know what that is, don’t worry about it). This unit must have once housed a huge retail business, like a sporting goods store, as there was ample room for all the construction and equipment—as well as a complete wardrobe of costumes and uniforms (the familiar shades of red, blue, and yellow). Our host (name of Ray) was clearly proud, and enjoyed showing us details—like the clever design solutions for dealing with overhead sprinkler requirements, or the choice of purple paint in the Transporter Room (an obscure nod to the aesthetics of Season Three).

Neutral Zone Studios, we were told, previously operated out of Georgia, but relocated to Ohio for reasons I didn’t exactly understand. There is a robust enough fan film community that such permanent Trek sets are in demand (apparently), and all the props and materials had been moved at great cost for the new location. Some sets were still being reassembled (like the Transporter Room), while others were nearly complete and just needed some tidying up. I was told I could take photos of the finished sections, so we were brought to the Bridge, and I have to confess I was impressed. The quality and attention to detail was professional (all the lights lit up) and when I was invited to sit in the captain’s chair, nothing about it felt rickety or cheap. It felt good; it felt like STAR TREK.

Neutral Zone

On the way out, we were taken to a small screening room, where a goofy fan film was playing on a flat screen. Business cards were given and we thanked our host, before exiting this ‘60s TV facsimile back into the world of commerce. And then, just a short walk up the same corridor, was Federation Headquarters. Two Star Trek themed businesses, completely unrelated to each other, in the same wing of a declining 1970s shopping mall.

Federation Headquarters

The outside display, with cardboard figures of Spock and Uhura, left no doubt that this was the Trek establishment we were originally in search of. There were some newer items near the inside front corner, like a large model of the Enterprise and a miniature Christmas tree with Trek ornaments, but beyond that nook was the familiar sight of older merchandise: like the spinner rack with enamel pins dedicated to specific episodes of the Original Series (79 pins for 79 episodes). Produced in the early ‘90s by Hollywood Pins, these tchotchkes were clearly leftover stock from Starbase, as was much of the other merchandise (an incomplete set of the Next Generation LCARS Interface-inspired dinnerware set, a Star Trek Conversational Klingon cassette from Simon & Schuster Audio, etc.). Everything was familiar, scooped up from an old house in Westerville and relocated to a (comparatively) slick shopping mall. Browsing the poorly maintained shelves and displays, the only thing missing was a selection of tie-in paperbacks, of which many were produced, and which were once readily available at the old store. But such details aside, Fed HQ is frozen in time—with very little merchandise related to the Trek produced after the ‘90s and early 2000s.

Trekkies like the aesthetics of The Original Series (’66-’69)—but their true fandom tends to live and breathe within the confines of Next Generation (’87-’94) and the programs it directly overlapped with (DS9, and to a lesser extent, Voyager). The love for TOS is real, but it comes with a knowing smirk about Shatner’s acting, bad special effects, absurd episodes like Season Three’s “Spock’s Brain.” The original is great for cosplay and fucking around, but the devotion to Next Gen runs deeper and more genuine—a true and wistful feeling that connects with the more sophisticated program’s unironic utopianism. The fans would prefer to live in this particular world—and not because of the occasional phaser battle or threat of Klingon attack. No, fans are attracted to the quiet moments of the crew, the moments with good and decent people with a job to do, operating within an organized system which is clean and efficient. For better or worse, that’s the real fantasy of Star Trek.

Federation Headquarters, interior

Dirk had grown impatient with my browsing and retired to a bench outside the store; earlier he tipped Ray twenty dollars for the tour, so it was now my turn to support a strange and unlikely business. Justifying the frivolousness as a charitable act, I bought Valerie a novelty Deanna Troi greeting card, and for myself a vintage (if that’s the right word) X-Files coffee mug. The staff of three, who had until now ignored me, consisted of an older man and two older women, one of whom used crutches. And even though I knew the answer, I asked if the store was in any way related to the old Starbase. They brightened and said yes, but the conversation ended there (Neutral Zone Studios was conspicuously never mentioned). A sign next to the register stated the staff were all volunteers, so while being rung up I told the gentleman to keep the change—a gesture which was met with some resistance and confusion. I want these people to flash me a Vulcan finger sign and attack me with an autistic trivia tirade; instead, they are just awkward and pleasant. And while I generally hold adult nerds in sneering contempt, I make a special exception for Trekkies. I feel a warmth towards them that borders on condescension, like the way you might smile at a child with Down syndrome. It’s not pity—it’s more complicated than that, and tied up with the happy-sad push-pull of nostalgia. But then I remember the sexually debased fanfiction these people are capable of creating, and I smile like we’re sharing a secret.

Elsewhere in the mall were more contemporarily-tinged examples of geekdom: the Sweets & Geeks store, with a Superman statue in the window, and its endless supply of candies and sugar drinks; or Tilt Studio and its gambling-but-for-kids toys—like the obscenely large claw machine filled with oversized Baby Yoda plushies. The latter tenant has a footprint so large the location might have very well housed a Sears in the recent past. Those old mall stores are disappearing, replaced with tackier outlets which tap into and exploit the mindless consumerism of modern nerd culture, the jock version of nerd culture with endless fascist Marvel movies and the soul-sucking stare of dead-eyed Funko Pop figures. In short: it’s all slop. And you can say whatever you want about Federation HQ and the Neutral Zone, and even have a chuckle at their expense so long as it’s not too cruel. But the Trek fans I met in Sandusky—despite being obsessed with alien worlds and the future—produced environments that felt delicate and human.

Sandusky Mall

Before returning to the car I told Dirk I wanted to take a piss. Conveniently, the restroom entrance was between a JCPenney and Federation Headquarters, jammed in at a strange angle. Down the long hallway, beneath buzzing fluorescent lights, I passed a metal grid containing all the tenants’ mailboxes—and it became clear that this section of the mall, with its narrow passages and odd position, was once strictly for employees only. At some point a redesign forced this area to include a public restroom, and consequently my mundane actions held the faint allure of transgression and trespass. After a dogleg down another passage, I finally found the men’s room. Inside, before reaching the urinals, I was faced with an absurd vending machine with only four items: Ibuprofen, Armani cologne, Starburst candies, and fake tattoos. For a lightheaded moment I felt the creeping sensation of a lucid dream, but then I saw a totem: Hanging on the back of the restroom door was a regular clipboard, with a maintenance log for a janitor, filled in carefully with blue ballpoint pen.

“This is the real world,” I thought. And someone is scrubbing it clean.