Lancaster City is well-known for its population of locally-owned small businesses, with art galleries, antique and trinket shops, local bookstores, cafes, music venues, and various farmers markets located all over. One such business once rested at the heart of the city, nestled in an alleyway neighboring Lancaster’s Central Market.
This place was FARBO Co., a queer-owned hobby shop located at 9 W Grant St. A self-described “general nerdery,” FARBO Co. provided a cozy and welcoming space for nerds, gamers, collectors, and people from all walks of life. Board games, card games, dice sets, Japanese imports, table-top roleplay module books, miniatures, blind boxes, and so much more could be found at the shop.
In the spring of 2026, owner Evan Farbo announced that Farbo Co. and its sister cafe, the Midnight Oil, would not only be relocating in the fall, but also merging into one entity: The General Nerdery.
The shop remained open over the summer, with the final days before its Oct. 10 shutdown celebrated with a 39%-off sale, referencing the future address: 39 N Queen St. The following days leading up to Oct. 15 were dedicated to moving the shop’s contents into storage. A form was posted to the General Nerdery’s website and to social media, reaching out to the community for assistance with the move. Lancaster community members rallied together, carrying boxes of merchandise and memorabilia from 9 W Grant St into a storage unit, where they would eventually be moved to the new location upon its completion.
In an interview with Farbo, she described how her shop began and evolved over the years. Farbo Co was once little more than a booth run by Farbo as part of the vendor co-op Hidden Treasures, formerly located on N Prince Street.
“It was a few shelves,” said Farbo, looking back, “when I was looking at a few photos of it, and I was like ‘well, there’s some board games, there’s a model kit, there’s an anime statue, there’s some dice’…that was 2017.”
Farbo Co. would eventually evolve and transition from a small booth into its most recent location, next to the Central Market and up a few flights of stairs. In those early days, the space that would soon be used for retail was more largely used for board games, card games, and tabletop role-playing games, or TTRPGs.
The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 ultimately altered this formula, and Farbo described the many ways they adapted to maintain the store’s gaming scene, including turning much of the gaming space into retail. These changes would eventually lead to her opening the Midnight Oil Cafe a short walk away as a more sustainable solution..
“I kept playing with different ways to still have gaming events at tables…” said Farbo. “Everything in the center of that room was on wheels, so every Friday night, I’d push all of it away and set up six folding tables and it would be like… the Friday night Magic crew, and then I’d sit in the back and work on administrative stuff.”
“That was unsustainable.” Farbo added. “So I opened up the Midnight Oil as the event space, and it took on a life of its own.
Farbo stated that the renovations to the new location were slated to finish around mid-November, and that Farbo Co. would be in a sort of limbo until that time. There are, however, plans to keep the business from simply dropping off the map during that month.
“We’re gonna have a little pop-up inside the front of the Midnight Oil, so it’s actually gonna be very reminiscent of how the shop started,” said Farbo.
“The new space is also a return to form,” Farbo continued, “because it’s gonna be the retail in the front, and all the tables in the back. It’s just there’s also an espresso machine named Tilly now, you know?”
The Midnight Oil is located at 44 N Christian St, and will remain open until further notice. The combined General Nerdery location is slated to open on 39 N Queen St. in mid-November. For more information, visit the General Nerdery’s website at www.thegeneralnerdery.gay.
