This month’s Business Spotlight is on Hidden Level in the Walterboro Plaza Shopping Center. Hidden Level is a local hobby shop that specializes in classic toys, trading cards, video games, comic books, and item associated with the hobby world. They also host Dungeon Dragons Events, trading card tournaments, and allow people to come in and play board games. In addition, the store has a wide selection of board games that people can come and just play free of charge.
Dustin Vitale who co-owns the store with Tyler Musgrave, Shane Hiott, and BJ and Jessica Humphries, says, “It’s also a hangout spot. People come in just hang out with each other.”
Vitale, who grew up in Walterboro and worked in the movie industry, has had a hobby store before, “I took a break from my last movie and decided to stay here in town for a while and hang out with my friends. We are into all this stuff and years ago, I owned one of these in Columbia, called Paul’s Central Gaming. We closed in 2018, and I went and did my movie work full time. I came back to be with the friends, and we decided to open a store, because Walterboro was just really lacking for a store like this. We pulled our resources and opened this place, there’s nothing like this in the area. We got tired of driving all the way to Charleston every day to play, so we just decided to open, our own store.”
Vitale has been into comic books his whole life, “My uncle bought me my first comic book when I was for or five years old, and I’ve just been hooked ever since. I’ve been into GI Joe and Batman. “The Gathering” came out 1993 and 1995, I picked it up, and I’ve literally been playing this game my whole life.”
For those who have never played Dungeons and Dragons, they will teach you the game, Vitale explains “Currently, there is a game going on Sunday. They are mostly new players learning the game. We also have another campaign every other Saturday and every other Wednesday. That’s a more established group, we definitely have anything you want to learn, come on in. We’ve got demo decks to teach players how to play Pokémon, how to play Yu-Gi-Oh!, as well as Dungeon and Dragons. Anybody can come in. They can trade us anything they want. They can sell us anything, they can buy anything, they can hang out and they can play games. Yeah, it’s just a cool little hangout, Hobby Store.”
Hidden Levels has a Facebook page that has their phone number and hours. You can also message them directly. The store address is 219 Roberson Blvd.
