Moving to: m/AskMbin!

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.

My elementary school closed down. Good riddance, honestly.

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

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.

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

Zellers

A skatepark near me. Don't know the story behind it being closed.

Very specific, but folks in the DMV of a certain age will remember this.

Story Book Land

Abu’s in Milwaukee, where I had my first solid food

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Wet and Wild

There was an Arby's near my home where I would get Jamocha shakes as a treat either as a reward or after special events. One day it was closed and soon after it became a pile of gravel, and now there stands a parking garage.

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

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.

Fantasy Glades, Port Macquarie, NSW

A child-size theme park owned, built and operated by a family of Little People. The site is still there with several new owners and attempts to redevelop it over the years.

Our drive-in theatre.

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.