429 tearing down our youth


More cleaning off the phone. 

Above, my teen years are getting torn down. My first job was at this arcade, which had been converted to a brewcade the last time I was in my hometown, which seemed promising.

The arcade I was manager of, a couple doors down, was torn down a year or two ago and turned into an outdoor bar with volleyball and stuff. It actually sounds fun, but I'll miss the creaky old wood building of my coming of age. Plus, I'm pretty sure they're just waiting to build condos.

The amusement park that was there was torn down back when I was working at the arcades. You can see traces of it in the satellite image above, a circle of parked cars where the carousel (saved by my mom and other community activists and moved a few blocks, still in operation) was, and the former path of the Bermuda triangle. Or is that the roller coaster?

 


It's weird watching your youth torn down. Not uncommon, but weird.

The last couple years the amusement park was open, I had a season pass. We rode this ride so many times, we knew how to jump off our car, hide to scare other cars, then take a short cut and get back into our car. 

Safe? No. 

Fun? Of course!


The "Penny Arcade" in the foreground was the one I managed. And it looks like the track might have been for go-karts? As far as I remember, they didn't exist in my lifetime. They had bumper cars and an electric track called the Indy 500, but no go-karts. I did ride that roller coaster about infinity times once I got tall enough.

It's still going. Ish.

Well, I was going to talk about more, but this seems like a pretty good blog post, so see you tomorrow.

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