What’s a place from your childhood that doesn’t exist anymore?

weremacaque@kbin.social to Moving to: m/AskMbin!@kbin.social – 61 points –

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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.

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.

USSR
East Germany
Yugoslavia
Czechoslovakia
Amiga (oh, I hate Commodore eternally...)
Rotary phones
Incandescent light bulbs

I 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

Leaps And Bounds, and Discovery Zone. Not sure if they were local only (St. Louis, MO) but they were sort of combination arcades/jungle gyms for kids to go to.

We had a Discovery Zone in Oregon. Loved that place.

@weremacaque it sounds flippant but seriously: The USA. I find this current view of my home country to be unrecognizably insane...we played outside, we drank and smoked early and generally got along. I grew up in an integrated neighborhood, integrated public school...

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.

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.

We had an amusement park called Geauga Lake close to where I grew up in Ohio. Not quite as big as the famous Cedar Point park which was a couple of hours away by car, but it had quite a history, and was a really popular one for school trips, company picnics, etc. It went through some ownership changes, and was eventually closed and left to rot with many of the original structures still sitting there after the coaster parts were sold off. Haven't looked into it for a number of years, but it was weird seeing that same entrance building we walked through so many times just decaying.

Geauga Lake was featured in Bright Sun Productions "Abandoned" series on YouTube. Excellent channel if you enjoy the subject matter!

Thanks, I do remember the first documentary, but didn't realize there was a follow-up. Sad that nothing good has really happened with the property since then. It could have been reverted to a nice public space around the lake if nothing else, but all they get is a historic marker and apparently too much leftover trash to even develop it commercially.

Bunch of my childhood town is now just more buildings. Used to be more forest and now there's nothing but slabs of concrete. This small mall that used to be there? Buildings now, just tons of buildings.

Gosh, so many places.

It just so happened that the house I currently live in is literally down the street from the hospital where I was born . . . or at least, where it used to be. They closed down and demolished that hospital and built a new one across the city. All that's left in that lot is piles of rubble. The new hospital is legitimately a better one with a lot of great improvements and upgrades, but I still miss being able to walk up the street and look up at the old building and go "I was born in there :)"

Two of the schools I went to as a kid have also long since been bulldozed. Recently, though, a new school went up on the lot where the oldest one used to be (after at least a decade of just being an empty field), and it looks really nice.

The Computer Museum in Boston; one of my favorite places to visit as a computer-obsessed kid.

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.

K Mart, It is now a Walmart.
And the forest reclaims the land.

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.

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 Secondary (High) School - levelled to build houses a few years ago.

If this had happened when I was still a pupil I would have been overjoyed to turn up for School one day and find a pile of rubble instead, but now I feel a bit sad at the destruction of a bit of my personal history.

I'm in San Diego, and grew up here. Open space. Yeah, we are really good about keeping some open spaces (typically national/state parks) but just random open space is all filled with urban sprawl now.

When I was a kid, there was an area of San Diego county that was a GIANT piece of private property. There was one dirt road that ran through it (likely an easement/eminent domain thing), connecting the east and west part of the county.

Decades ago, when I was in high school, we used to party, and do all kinds of dumb shit out there. It had been the same for so long that my parents also partied back there too many, many decades before. I know there were at least 2 cars buried out there. I had gotten a car stuck in the mud once myself (had to dig it out in the dark. that was super fun) It's all but gone now.

Where was this? We always used to go out to Proctor Valley to drink and "look for the Proctor Valley Monster" lol.

Black Mountain/Black Mountain Road. All of that shit along the 56, and west to where Carmel Valley used to end on the east side, up to the backside/south side of fairbanks, and down to mira mesa used to be open space/rolling hills.

this is a little before my time, but this is what I remember it looking like int he 80s/90s <- this was what black mountain rd used to look like, if it hadn't rained in like a month. If there was any rain it was a rutted out mess.

what it looks like now

Ah yes, definitely familiar with that area. The sprawl that sprouted up in San Diego just over the last 20 years is crazy, not to mention the last 30-40. I've legit heard my older family members say "I remember when this was all orange groves" hahaha

My childhood home was built before the 5 freeway. My mother remembers playing in the trench they dug. The road to that house was dirt until well after I learned to drive. I’m old, but not THAT old. At least it doesn’t feel that way.

And yeah it was all groves, open space, and horse farms. I remember when Carmel valley didn’t really exist.

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.

Six Flags AstroWorld. I still can't believe it's gone, and still can't believe it's a freakin' parking lot now.

My elementary school closed down. Good riddance, honestly.

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.

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.

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

Hastings’s stores. They sold books, CDs, DVDs, tabletop game supplies, video games etc. It was always exciting to go and look even if my parents were not going to buy me anything.

Would this happen to be Breakers waterpark? If not, I guess it's just a common story lol

Gone but not forgotten is Gameworks. I still have a card with $7 on it that I'll never get to use

Woah. Did gameworks actually die?

I haven't seen one in person or online in over a decade

I'd love to be proven wrong though!

You perfectly described a water park in my home town, although mine closed down in the 1990s. It had a "silver bullet" slide, a bunch of conventional slides and a tube slide, a lazy river, a wave pool, a pretty decent arcade and a go-kart track, and probably a bunch of other stuff I don't remember from spending big chunks of my childhood summers there. Birthday parties and school trips, too.

After it closed down, some of the slides were moved to a golf course across town that wanted to expand, but it wasn't as good and it was way too far to go by bus. The original park is the loading dock for a Home Depot now.

I'm getting old enough now where this is true for multiple things, but the ones that come to mind would be my schools - 2 of the 3 schools I attended have since been demolished. My high school is still standing, but the elementary and Junior High schools are gone now.

My elementary school was heavily renovated the year after I "graduated" sixth grade. It's not the same place anymore, and I have a lot of memories and nostalgia tied up with that old building — among other things, it's where I met the woman who'd become my wife.

Sega World Sydney. It was a whole theme park based around Sega properties in Sydney, Australia. Rides themed around classic Sega arcade games, Sonic paraphernalia everywhere, a huge arcade and overpriced Sega merch shop. One ride entirely took place in virtual reality, with headsets for everybody. I wasn't even a Sega kid, but it was amazing.

There used to be a very janky waterslides on a hilltop that closed down. The place was notorious for giving kids scrapes and bruises and other injuries for years, my parents were surprised it hadn't closed earlier.

There's no grave marker for the old mall in my home town. Just a new, totally different mall.

An elementary school was torn down and a replacement built right next to it, on the same grounds. The old school I attended is now the new parking lot.

The church I attended as a child is gone. Luckily my belief was torn down years before that happened.

In essence my high school doesn't exist, at least not as it did. It was dramatically reconstructed and hardly resembles the school I went to.

Of course these were things that were old when I knew them, and only continued to age to the point they needed replacing. The oldest stuff in my home town though, will outlast me.

A chain of restaurants called Happy Chef. They were all around the Iowa/ Minnesota area. Used to stop at them when going to visit family.

If this water park is “across the street” (freeway) from an amusement park I think I know what you’re talking about. If not, then my answer is the same. Water park that my family went to and it closed in 2020. I miss not having worries and playing in the water. And also how Dippin dots was the ice cream of the future (for decades now)

A roundabout in my home city was turned into an elevated 4-way intersection. It wasn't an improvement. When I visualize the city I always see the roundabout. It was there all my life.

I grew up in the middle of Miami, with developed streets and houses in every directions for at least 5 or 6 miles. But I lived in the corner of this dead end that ended at a path There was this huge area of woods like two or three city blocks worth, about 10 feet lower than the rest of the neighbor. There was a steep path down, by far the only stretch of mountain bike - worthy riding anywhere around, and all kinds of trails and huge boulders to climb. It wasn't wilderness--I think it was a coral rock quarry, and all of the trees were an invasive species that meant the original pines had been taken down. But it was just a beautiful place, and all the neighborhood kids hung out there for hours and hours. We could cut through there to get to school, and there was also a big covered basketball court. We could literally play basketball rain or shine, in this huge pavilion. The soccer fields were there so we could cut through those words for our games. There was a pool, too.

Hurricane Andrew came through when I was 14 and destroyed that forest, since those invasive trees couldn't handle the winds. The court and pool made it longer, but it's all gone now. Oddly enough, especially for Miami, it became a park and soccer fields, instead of more houses. My kids and my brothers' kids all still go there to play when they're visiting my parents, but that beautiful magical place from my elementary school years, where I could be wild and free in the middle of the city, is so gone.

My grandparents house. Burnt down, now someone lives in a trailer (caravan) there.

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.

I have a similar waterpark story except mine closed around 2005. It was my first job and I would ride my bike to and from there and goofed off with my highschool friends, all while getting paid for most of the summer. It was closed the next year and later demolished and a huge mansion erected in it's wake.

Soviet Union. Not necessarily a bad thing, but there is some nostalgia...

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.

I used to go on holiday every year in a cottage on the cliffs near East Yorkshire, UK. In about 1998 it was condemned so we moved to holiday park just up the coast.in about 2014 some big storms happened and we came back and all the homes on the whole seaward side of the road were gone and the old inlandside were now clifftop with a new road behind