When places you love cease to be

[Seventh Pup]

In the last few years I've had a few of my favorite local spots vanish. These where places that I spent a good deal of my younger life and that seemed permanent.

An old family friends' house was sold demolished, and the lot was subdivided with two new hideous house built there. This was a house where I spent a great deal of my childhood. It was a nice house and it seemed perfect. That it is just gone seems like a crime. I feel like the house was murdered, and I know that sounds crazy.

A local Barnes and Noble has closed and been remodeled into a clothing store. The Barnes and Noble was built when I was a teenager. Since I am a nerd, that was where my friends and I would hang out in high school on Friday nights. That's where I waited for the midnight release of the last three Harry Potter books. It was an awesome place, full of comfortable chairs, and where you could read as long as you wanted with out buying a book. It actually hurts my heart that I will never get to take my son there.

The Harry Potter Forums http://www.cosforums.com/ was where I cut my teeth online forums. I was actively there for a long time. After the last Harry Potter book came out, I lost my will to debate and my interest in the series for a while. But I went back there recently, it is a ghost town, and there is talk of closing it. When I was active there, literally hundreds if not thousand of poster would be active every day. Now if you see more then one person logged on it's amazing. I know I am part of the problem for this one as I am an inactive member of the forum (I no longer remember my password, or the email address that was attached to the account.) But damn Gina, it seemed like such a strong and vibrant place, how/ why did it get so quiet?

These are my places that I loved that have either disappeared or are about to. How about you?

[Wee baby Shamus]

Two of the four High Schools I went to no longer exist. I am an Army brat and the schools I went to were in Germany. The bases have closed down.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Some jackasses bulldozed the bar in which I met Mr. X to build a basketball arena. We are not the only people to lament the demise of Freddy's. The new space is just not the same. And the basketball team is ass.

[Recovering forum addict]

Logging. The woods around the small town where I grew up is all cut down in a 50 - 70 year cycle, which means that about a third of the places I used to play in are boring, dry, clearcuts. Of course some of the places that were clearcut when I was a kid are sort of woods today, but 20 - 30 year old trees aren't that exciting.

[Prince of the North]

The idyllic small town where I was born and raised in western North Dakota was always around, oh, 1,700 people or so. It quite literally was the sort of place where everyone knew everyone, everyone looked out for everyone, no one felt the need to lock their doors, etc. And the entire town was our playground as young kids.

Around the time I was 12, we had an oil boom and my home town grew to about 5,000 people practically overnight. That certainly changed the town but it still wasn't too bad. Then the oil boom dried up about five years later and the population shrank back to about what it was prior.

Now, as I'm sure many have heard, there is another much larger oil boom taking place in western ND. My hometown has swelled to... Oh, nobody really knows yet, but I'd conservatively say it's at least 20,000 people now and while I'm sure everything will eventually catch up it's really overtaxing things right now. Everyone and everything has really suffered but, hey, there's money to be made, right?And this oil boom is much bigger than the one in the early 1980s and will last longer so even if/when it inevitably slows things will never return to the way they were before.

Everything changes, I know, and I have long since resigned myself to the fact that the fondly remembered idyllic little town of my childhood is gone forever. But I'll still have those memories for at least awhile yet ;)

[PlainJeyne]

My formative years were spent in pre-Katrina New Orleans, so I know this feeling all too well.

I am glad that some of the places I loved were still there and looked the same. When I went back a year later sometimes it felt like nothing was the same.

Now I live very far away as an adult, and don't get the chance to go back to NOLA very often, when I do it's bittersweet.

[MinDonner]

Vegas. Yeah, it's still there, but my first visit was in the mid-90s when I was 18, and it was a glorious sleazy vice-ridden sin-hole full of feather-clad hookers openly soliciting outside the cheaper casinos, desperate nicotine-stained grannies pumping nickels into slot machines till the small hours, $2 steaks at 5am and no-one even pretending to want to ID me. Went back a couple of years ago, and it had cleaned its act right up, the whole of Fremont Street was covered over with a FFS ropeslide down the middle, everything trying to be a bit upmarket and family-friendly, and it was terrible. It was like a dear old friend had been replaced by a Stepford Wife robot. :crying:

[BigFatCoward]

Not one building, but when I was growing up cinemas were like theatres. One huge screen with 1000 seats. Now they are 15 screen shitty little things, often barely bigger than my tv with 50 seats. Obviously except imax, but I consider that a fucking rip off.

[drawkcabi]

Not one building, but when I was growing up cinemas were like theatres. One huge screen with 1000 seats. Now they are 15 screen shitty little things, often barely bigger than my tv with 50 seats. Obviously except imax, but I consider that a fucking rip off.

This was the first thing I thought of.

Starting at the age of, I think, 2 or 3, but not having real vivid memories of until I was 4, my grandmother took me to the movies every Saturday, and that's how movies became such an important thing to me, it was such a bonding experience with her.

There were 2 movie theaters close by. The Bowie movies and the Crofton movies. Bowie was the town I lived in, but Crofton was right next door. The Bowie movies had 2 screens and closed when I was about 6 and turned into a carpet store, I don't have much memories of that one, except I remember seeing The Blues Brothers there. Then, we didn't have a movie theater in Bowie for a few years and I remember being wistful every time we passed the carpet store.

But there was at least the Crofton movies. 4 whole screens! This is the theater that holds the most sentimental value to me. My earliest movie memories are of this theater with my grandmother taking me to anything as long as it didn't look scary to me. I remember going there getting a large popcorn and an insane size orange soda, like 64 oz. and some candy all for $5.

This is where I saw Animal House, Caddyshack, Kramer Vs. Kramer, The Muppet Movie, Annie, E.T., Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, Tootsie, The Sword in the Stone, Airplane! Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Rocky IV, Gremlins, Stand By Me, The Karate Kid, Transformers: The Movie, The Last Starfighter, and a bunch of others. The movie theater closed in 1998. The last movie I saw there was Pleasantville and I guess, kind of appropriately, my mom and I went that night to get our mind off things for a while, my grandmother had passed away that morning.

They turned that theater into a Gold's Gym and that just felt so, so wrong.

Bowie had another theater open in the mid 80's. They built a new mall and at one end they had a 6 screen multiplex and right next to it was an arcade. Such great times there with my friends mostly. That theater lasted until 1999 when they built another theater in Bowie, a 14 screen modern one that I came to hate. The mall isn't even there anymore, it's all gone.

I guess I also feel sentimentally about no more video stores around, no more Blockbusters or independent ones or anything.

The heaviest one though is my parents restaurant. That was my second home growing up. It was always there, my parents having to divide their attention between it and me, it was like another sibling to me. I thought it would always be there. then in 2003 they closed it and I hear there's a new restaurant opened where theirs used to be, but I don't want to ever go there. I want to keep the memory of how it was and not have it affected by how it looks now.

[Nymeria10k]

My favourite place hasn't been demolished per se, just lived in by someone else.

My grandma's house still stands, but my granddad and the rest of his family moved elsewhere a couple of years after my grandma passed. The house is rented to a different family.

But that house is where I spent a lot of my childhood and I have extremely fond memories of it. I last visited about 4 years ago and it sucks I can't go back anymore.

[GallowKnight]

My grandmothers house is going to be torn down within a foreseeable future. That's fucked up.

[Aemon Stark]

The loss of HMVs has been a sore point, particularly when the Spring Garden location closed in Halifax (about a year and a half ago now). I got tons of stuff there, but admittedly the selection got steadily worse over time.

Otherwise I still remember the old dinosaur exhibit at the ROM in Toronto. It had full-on dioramas meant to show the fossils in "natural" poses. Now it's just a big random assortment of exhibits without any of the "drama", but lots of the white drywall lining the interior to the "Crystal" renovation.

[HexMachina]

Finally, I was utterly heartbroken when the bookshop in my town was bought out by Waterstones, I rebelled against the idea of those hallowed walls being inhabited by a faceless and heartless corporation without the true love of books and the connection therein that myself and Ottakars (the previous shop) had shared. In recent years, I've entirely forgotten my pre-pubescent principles and now Waterstones is the staple of any shopping trip I am part of.

This was my first thought when I read this thread! I used to go into town maybe twice per month as a child with my grandparents, and every trip had a compulsory visit to Waterstones where I would sit and pick out a new book. The they shut down and Waterstones took over...my vow never to go in that store lasted all of two weeks :p

[l2 0 5 5]

My friends' old house was next door to a gorgeous field and rolling valley where we would play paintball and hunt deer during our childhood.

Eventually, a strip mine was being built where these once gorgeous rolling hills were present, and ruined it.

If you were to blindfold me, and take me out to where we used to run around, I wouldn't even recognize it.

A complete shame because these hills and sunset were the muse of a postcard.

[Tears of Lys]

Not one building, but when I was growing up cinemas were like theatres. One huge screen with 1000 seats. Now they are 15 screen shitty little things, often barely bigger than my tv with 50 seats. Obviously except imax, but I consider that a fucking rip off.

My first job was at one of Detroit's old grand movie palaces. If you've ever seen Eminem's "8 Mile," you can see the ceiling of one of the most beautiful of them - the Michigan Theater - that some motherfuckers turned into a parking lot. Nothing's left of it but the ceiling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Building#mediaviewer/File:MichiganTheaterlobbyDetroit.jpg

Detroit had a large number of movie palaces, each grander than the last. How I wish to God I would have taken pictures of the interiors, since that's pretty much all that would be left of them now. Oh, there's the Fox Theatre - that's still around now. http://foxtheatredetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/fox-theatre-detroit.jpg , but I always considered that one to be too gaudy.

"The Michigan Theatre," however, was something out of Cinderella's Ball - white marble, thick deep red carpeting, crystal chandeliers, leaded glass and brass double doors that led to each aisle.

Going to the cardboard and spit cheap-ass holes they call movie theaters now is sickening.

[Lord of Oop North]

Otherwise I still remember the old dinosaur exhibit at the ROM in Toronto. It had full-on dioramas meant to show the fossils in "natural" poses. Now it's just a big random assortment of exhibits without any of the "drama", but lots of the white drywall lining the interior to the "Crystal" renovation.

This is what I was going to post. I hate the new dinosaur exhibit at the crystal.

[Aemon Stark]

It's a horrible renovation. Reasonably impressive on the street but utterly mediocre inside.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

Cigarette City convenience store, as for as local spots go. I remember going there every day as a kid, after school, and getting for bags of Cheetos cheese puffs for $1.00. It's not there any more. Also, the spot where the family would get our chicken and jojos wasn't there by the time I moved back from Mississippi.

As for online, it's xgam.org; it was a community dedicated to talking all things xenogears and the first community I found online where I could be a nerd with people who had similar interests. It's still up but it's a wasteland. I posted there some time last year or early this year and the only person active, the site owner, told me to just let it died :(

[ants]

My main issue is favourite restaurants closing down. There was one place which I swear had the best Tom Yum soup in the world. They only did soups, three types, and they were these huge bowls full of BBQ pork, vegies, great noodles and other meats. For a soup it cost a ton, but boy was it worth it. :(

My favourite Nasi Goreng place's have closed as well. Twice. They never seen to last as long.

[DreamSongs]

I used Google Earth to look up some of the addresses I lived in as a kid. There was one townhouse we lived in which was in a beautiful part of town and very expensive. When I looked it up, it was a dump. It was for sale and I was able to look at a real estate site to see the interior. It made me cry; we had some bad times there, but there were many good times as well.

I don't recommend spending an evening doing this. I was bored and did it out of curiosity, but it was very depressing. Sometimes its just better to keep your memories.