Monday, July 21, 2008

Places That I Miss


Living in suburbia when I was a kid was actually a good thing. There was always something to do and somewhere to go. A couple of years ago I was having a discussion with my step father about all of the places we used to go when we were kids that are now gone. A huge part of my childhood was spent roller skating and playing video games at the local arcade. Back in the 80's we had four local roller rinks. Two of those are still around. One is just down the street from where I live now. My daughter goes just about every weekend. In the summer of 1982 I lived at the roller rink. My favorite rink was Roller World. I'd go to back to back sessions. I couldn't get enough of that place. Once in a while I'd hang out at Long Lake Roller Rink. Back then nothing could beat skating, listening to music, and chasing girls at the roller rink. Roller World has been gone for years. The last time I went there was probably 1989. I was drunk as a skunk. A lot of the time after skating my mom would pick me up and take me a couple buildings over to a place called The High Wheeler Ice Cream Parlor. It was a really cool place with old school decor. The place was named after those really tall high wheel bikes. They had a couple of those here. As you may have guessed this place is also gone. My ice cream of choice was bubble gum flavored ice cream with real bits of gum.

Here in the Kalamazoo we also had quite a few arcades. Star World was my favorite. Star World was a huge arcade that always had all of the latest games. It was also the best value. You'd get double the tokens for your money. I'd go with 20 bucks and get 40 bucks worth of tokens and spend hours there. Yep, Star World has also been gone for years. The last time I remember going there was back in 1990. There was also this cool arcade in town called Aladdin's, but that didn't last very long at all. It couldn't compete with Star World. We also had Fun Factory which was on the other side of town by one of our malls. The mall and Fun Factory are both gone now.

Pretty much every place I went when I was a kid has been ripped down or just plain went out of business. I could give many more examples of places that are gone, but it's quite depressing. These days kids sit at home on their fat asses playing video games, surfing the net, or watching tv. Some still do go to the roller rink though. I'm happy to see my daughter enjoying one of the things that I enjoyed as a kid.

5 comments:

Repro said...

My nascar auction is ending in an haour. I sold that crap game back but its so shitty I might get half my money back. You can get it off ebay now for 30, on avergae. The idiots that made this game no nothing about the real sport.

I will use the money to buy Madden 09 August 12th.

Robert said...

I like Nascar 09. It got good reviews, and I think the game deserves them. I haven't played it on the PS3, BUT I had heard there were some frame rate issues on PS3. What didn't you like about it?

Repro said...

The game just isnt to my liking. The crashes are weak. They almost never crash unless you cause it. I had to turn off black flags cause it was giving me a black flag EVERY RACE. I would be leading the race for a long time, some bastard hits ME from behind, I get black flagged and sent to last place. Worse sometimes cause you have to go to the pits, you get lapped too.


I win a championship and thee is no celebration, no ceremony, nothing. Just asshole Gordon telling me I did a great job.


When you spin out you pretty much are sent to LAST PLACE every time. In a real race, the racers are frozen at a certain point. All the time I am leading, someone hits me from behind and spins me out. I go from 1st, to 43rd place. It's terrible.

After turning off black flags it was better, but still there could be so much more if they put some effort into the gameplay.

I ended up selling it for $39 plus shipping. I only lost about $12.00 and I played it for about two weeks.

The damn EA MADDEN better be god. I have to have it. I will play that online ALL the fucking time. I love football.

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Unknown said...

You may or may not know me . I worked at Oshtemo Rollatorium in the from about 76 to 86 . After they sold to rollerworld I only lasted about a week . It was like an Ozzy Osbourne concert at the rollatorium and new kids on the block concert after the sale . The DJ from the downtown rollerworld , Eddie , Weese died a couple years ago . I was usually floor guard at the rollatorium . Many people don't realize and when I tell them they don't believe me , but back then if we only had say , 200 people , that would be considered somewhat of a slow night . Back then we had a lot of skates , from little tiny size 6 up to a pair or 2 of size 17. I can remember nights that every pair of skates would be rented and we had to turn people away because there were no skates left for them to rent . It almost seems like 440 people were the most that were allowed in the building , due to fire codes at the time .Now when they get about 75 people it's like what a crowd .The old guy I worked with was 60 years older than me and our birthdays were on the same day . He was a riot ! He liked a lot of the girls and usually would comment about many of them . He had me just about rolling on the floor (laughing ) many times with some of the stuff he said .

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About Me

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Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States
I'm 38. I'm addicted to Xbox 360 gaming and Dallas Stars hockey. I make a decent living at a boring job where I run two autoclaves and do various other tasks. My escape from this boring as hell life is video games, hockey, and music. I generally listen to Metal music, but I also love 80's tunes as well as 70's tunes. I have an unusual love for the band Overkill. They do it for me for some reason. Blitz is GOD!

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