I was thinking the other day about some of the places I hung around when I was a teenager. Besides the obvious mall, fast-food restaurant, and movie theatre, I also remembered a couple of places which were like bars, except they didn’t serve alcohol. One, I remember, was nothing but a dance floor and a snack bar, but the others also had pool tables and arcade games. At least one had a cover charge to get in.
I haven’t seen anything like that since. Do they still have places like that for the kids? If not, I think someone should step in and fill that niche. (Not me, though. I’m giving you this idea for free.)
I remember a place like that in Plano, Texas back in the late 80s. Someone got stabbed in the K-Mart parking lot nearby and the place was pretty much forced to shut down.
There was a teen club a few miles out of town when I was a teen. Really stupid place to put it, as there was no way to get there besides driving, and I remember really having a hard time getting rides there/back at times.
They used to have bands at night, and served cokes, chips, stuff like that.
But the real party was in the parking lot, where you could get just about any kind of liquor or drug you wanted. It was a fun club
Santa Rosa has one that is just amazing - Chops Teen Center. The gift of a local guy who left his estate to A Sonoma County organization to be used for just such a place.
The membership cost is one dollar a year for Santa Rosa residents or middle/high school students. I signed my kids up when they were younger, but they didn’t take full advantage of it.
The place is awesome, with a recording studio, a climbing wall, a large gym, computer lab, nightclub, art classes, and so much more.
I used to hang out at the Laser Quest (Laser Tag) and The Cave…
Laser Quest is still there, but The Cave has been gone a few years now. It was basically a dance club for teens. A Christian dance club for teens actually (played a lot of DC Talk and the like and every so often someone would come in and give a talk about Jesus…)
A few months ago I heard an ad on the radio for a teen club. I remember hearing the $25 cover charge, and being surprised to realize that alcohol sales subsidize everything else at a regular bar/club. Even now $25 sounds pretty expensive for a teenager.
When I was in high school we used to drive up to the top of a parking garage downtown and hang out up there. We would smoke cigarettes and try to act badass, and you could stand right on the edge and your shadow would be magnified by the streetlights and projected onto the side of the building across the street, a hundred feet high. Once we convinced two women in a car to make out with each other, and there was a baby’s car-seat in the back of the car. Another time, we urinated in stairwell, and yet another time, Vaughan and I crashed into a parked airport shuttle and then masturbated as we stared at the cracked instrument binnacles, breathing in the smell of the leaking engine coolant as it mixed with the smoke from his loosely-rolled hash cigarette, and the tang of his semen.
My coffee shop was a major teen hangout for fort worth. When we had to close some of those kids put in a 16 hour day helping us pack everything up and move. Good kids…
I haven’t been to them, but as a graphic designer for several nightclubs making their flyers, I know that many regular adult nightclubs will have a “teen night”.
