When I talk about how much I miss the 90s McDonalds, I’m mostly complaining about the loss of a third space. My parents would go to McDonalds so we had a safe, climate-controlled, indoor play space, and we could spend hours there for the price of something off the dollar menu.
I don’t know of anywhere comparable these days. Anything indoors is going to be expensive, you have to get the city to unlock the local hoops, the cops start asking questions if you just want to hang out with friends, and if you have too many friends they make you get a permit to use the public park.
Discovery Zone, man. I actually feel bad for the kids that never got to experience Discovery Zone. Lasted for like 2 years. It apparently failed because they had a mountain of debt (all those plastic tubes are capital intensive buildouts) and adults had to sit around while their kids played.
I feel like if you made it work like a gym membership for your kids, and had something for adults to do off to the side, you might be able to make the numbers work.
Libraries are basically the only remaining third space, but they don’t fill the same need as the original commentor. Libraries don’t have places for kids to run around, be noisy, and climb things. That would be awesome though
Some do. My library has a play area set up for littles and another area set up for infants. On Saturdays they have a sing along story hour thing, and other events like that throughout the week. We also have plenty of local parks with playground equipment. No free place with indoor slides and ball pits though like McDonald’s used to have.
When I talk about how much I miss the 90s McDonalds, I’m mostly complaining about the loss of a third space. My parents would go to McDonalds so we had a safe, climate-controlled, indoor play space, and we could spend hours there for the price of something off the dollar menu.
I don’t know of anywhere comparable these days. Anything indoors is going to be expensive, you have to get the city to unlock the local hoops, the cops start asking questions if you just want to hang out with friends, and if you have too many friends they make you get a permit to use the public park.
Discovery Zone, man. I actually feel bad for the kids that never got to experience Discovery Zone. Lasted for like 2 years. It apparently failed because they had a mountain of debt (all those plastic tubes are capital intensive buildouts) and adults had to sit around while their kids played.
I feel like if you made it work like a gym membership for your kids, and had something for adults to do off to the side, you might be able to make the numbers work.
Library? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Libraries are basically the only remaining third space, but they don’t fill the same need as the original commentor. Libraries don’t have places for kids to run around, be noisy, and climb things. That would be awesome though
And the right+libertarians want to destroy libraries too.
Some do. My library has a play area set up for littles and another area set up for infants. On Saturdays they have a sing along story hour thing, and other events like that throughout the week. We also have plenty of local parks with playground equipment. No free place with indoor slides and ball pits though like McDonald’s used to have.
Libraries don’t have playgrounds, and don’t allow food, drink, or birthday parties with friends.
Actually a lot of libraries do events. They have separate areas for it
Whaat, my library barely has computers.