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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
someone messed with Texas. I do believe there were specific instructions against doing so.
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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.
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.
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.
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…
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
I graduated high school in 2000. we where the last free range generation, the next year high spiked security fences started going up around schools.
I couldn’t imagine going to school behind a locked gate, man fuck that shit.
This may be a weird answer, but I played Celtic music with the family band as a teenager and our favorite place to play was Santa Rosa Brewing Company in Santa Rosa, CA. Great vibe, good food—I of course was too young to partake of the brew 😉—but it was a lot of fun and we had a crowd of regulars who’d come to see us perform every time. When they eventually closed down, it felt like the end of an era…
My elementary school closed down a few years back. They had a small reunion with any students that attended before they closed for good. It was a definite blast from the past as there were a few teachers that still worked there and many of my old classmates attended. Unfortunately, I didn’t receive the news until after they already shut down but I was able to see pictures on Facebook.
There was a roller skating rink called “Sweet Feet” that I had two birthday parties in but it collapsed sometime in middle school and was never rebuilt.
Those wooden playgrounds. There was one I went to all the time as a kid. It was so much fun and had all kinds of rooms and nooks and crannies to play in. It got replaced with a generic plastic playground at some point, I think for safety reasons.
K Mart, It is now a Walmart.
And the forest reclaims the land.My elementary school closed down. Good riddance, honestly.
Zellers
MY HOUSE
Had to get demolished to make way for a lightrail
kinda cool to have the key to a place that no longer exists at least
