There used to be a water park in my hometown that had a bunch of slides and a wave pool. I used to go there all the time as a kid, and even went there as a senior on a trip. I went to birthday parties there, sometimes.
It closed in 2020 and never reopened because they had apparently been avoiding paying bills for years. It wasn’t just the pandemic. It was visible from the freeway, so I watched it slowly being demolished over the next couple years any time I passed by.
I haven’t found a water park that really compared to it yet. Most are either too small or part of a larger theme park, which is fine. It just seemed like the fact that it exclusively was a water park allowed it to focus more on the atmosphere and types of slides it had.
Toys R Us
the feels i feel from probably another country
(i’m from australia; most people that would post this i assume are US)
We also miss Toys R Us in the UK 😢
Isn’t toyworld the same?
Hard part about being an immigrant. I am permanently detached from all the places from my childhood
I feel that. Went back home for a visit last year and so much has changed. It’s bizarre, feeling disconnected from where I live and yet like home has moved on without me.
What’s preventing you from going back? It has everything changed in your home country?
The quality of life for my daughter is way better where I live now. I am doing it for her.
The Texas from my childhood, most Texans dont give a shit about identity politics, you would think there are a bunch of brown hating cowboys - that was not the case Texas was incredibly tolerant.
someone messed with Texas. I do believe there were specific instructions against doing so.
.
I feel the same way about my home state. The hate and bigotry in the area is just heartbreaking. Maybe I was just too young to see it was always there.
You can’t step in the same river twice. ~ Heraclitus.
I’m just glad I realized this early as I did. I made sure to cherish each place, knowing full well it would eventually disappear.
You can’t even step in the same river once
Heraclitus was a genius.
There was a forest we use to play in behind my friends house . It had a few giant trees. They must have been hundreds of years old. One was 3-4 meters in diameter. We used to climb them using the coarse bark up to the branches and see how high we could go. You could see the whole neighborhood. Wonderful memories.
That whole area is filled with Mcmansions now.
This happened on a much smaller scale to me. My grandparent’s home was demolished to make way for a McMansion after they sold it. They were the only people to ever live in that beautiful house.
We had an incredible ravine that got destroyed for a highway that I’ve driven many times as an adult. It’s a rare trip that I don’t think back to the beautiful place where I spent countless hours of summer breaks being wild and free.
Same where I grew up, worst part was the developer bought it like two decades ago, sat on it for five ish years (logged a single dirt road), then put in paved roads/utilities and a demo house for another five with empty lots cut, and the last ten or so have built maybe four more. So it’s not even utilized, they cut down huge swaths of forest and it’s just sat most of the time.
There are some woods in our neighborhood, which aren’t owned by anyone in the neighborhood. The risk is obvious. I would like us to buy those woods so we control them, but every time I say it, they start screeching, “I don’t want an HOA!” Neither do I, I have two RVs sitting in my driveway. But I would like some limited partnership simply for owning those woods…
Two big ones for me:
1- a local arcade. Spent so many summer days there with friends. TMNT, Street fighter, Mortal Kombat, etc etc etc.
2- laser quest! Lots of birthday parties there.Arcades were the promised land
being able to go out alone in the woods at the age of 8-12 or just go down to your friends house. or have any unsupervised time alone time.
you cant do that anymore?
nope. police will be called for child abuse and neglect.
sure they would
Mom handcuffed and jailed for making 8 year old son walk home - 2022 Reason magazine
Neighbor calls police on 8 year old girl walking dog alone -2018 CBS Chicago
Free range parents found responsible for child neglect after allowing kids to walk home alone -2015 ABC News
The farm I grew up on. They flattened this HUGE hill to do it as well. They removed a creek, natural lake, and tons of forest. For a flat, treeless, subdivision.
Depressing, I’m sorry you had to see that happen.Theres is something about never wanting the place you grew up to never change.
Paradise by John Prine
The mall. Technically it’s still there, but it’s a shell of its former self.
The mall I used to ride my bike to as a child, where my favorite Arcade (Aladdin’s Castle) & had a toy store (K.B. Toys) was leveled to the ground about 20 years ago, with the exception of like two restaurants at the corner of the building.
It’s now some fake ass ‘downtown’ like outdoor mall, in Michigan, with terrible parking & it’s just gross.
I miss Meadowbrook Mall, man, I miss it a lot.
I was gonna say “The Arcade” but you made me remember the entire mall it resided in got blown up.
Town centers and outdoor outlet centers are just malls, but worse. No AC, fewer small businesses somehow, parking shoved in between the stores, and (in the town centers) half-assed (at best) mixed use.
For all of their many, many flaws, a lot of malls actually fell backwards into accidentally doing some interesting things in terms of being community spaces.
USSR
East Germany
Yugoslavia
Czechoslovakia
Amiga (oh, I hate Commodore eternally…)
Rotary phones
Incandescent light bulbsI could do this all day ;)
edit: yeah, these are not things that were just “around the corner”, but it is amazing how much world changes actually and we are so used to it
Obligatory Grosse Point Blank
And his friend brokered the deal, such a good film.
Every block Buster video i went to lol
Just video rental stores in general. In my area there was a little rental place called “video to go”. It was a small, and probably unremarkable as far as video stores go. Pretty much your stereotypical small town rental place. Every once in a while my dad would take us there to pick out a movie and some snacks for the evening.
That place went out of business long ago, and you can’t even recognize the building anymore it’s been remodeled so many times. We had a family video move into town after video to go went under, and they stuck around until family video went out of business. I miss being able to actually go somewhere to pick out a movie rather than mindlessly flipping through a streaming catalog.
This goofy ass restaurant that served the food to your table on model trains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKoCam8WqC4
RIP, their food was probably just OK but I was a little kid so it was all totally amazing.
As a bonus, the very end of this video has one of the old Seattle trolleys, which also aren’t around anymore.
There used to be an ice cream place near where I grew up. Old style bar with stools to sit at while you ate ice cream and a huge ball pit with a slide. I loved that place growing up and it’s sad that kids now can’t experience it. I’m sure there are places like that out there somewhere, but not anywhere close to that area.
The World Of Sid And Marty Krofft in Atlanta. It was a mindfuck of an indoor amusement park located in what’s now CNN Center. Granted, it was only open for six months in 1976, but I was able to go, and as a six year-old kid, it was amazing.
