<\/a>
\nRESPAWN! Look left, look right, GO! <\/em><\/p>\n

Back when I was 12-15 yrs old, my Da use to take me with him on business trips to Toronto. I would love the 4 1\/2 hour drive from Brockvegas to the big city and would eagerly sit on the edge of my seat as downtown came into view. <\/p>\n

We’d either stay at my grandparents house or if it was a quick visit, a cheap hotel somewhere near the big malls. Breakfast at these hotels was always a C Plus orange soda (“Don’t tell your mother. At least it has Vitamin C in it”) and some greasy spoon fare. Then Da would hand me some money and drop me off downtown. He would then go off to his “business” meetings, which I now know were some sort of tryst-like affair that involved an intricate network of homosexual men communicating their desires by mail. Can you believe it? PRE-INTERNET! They actually wrote letters to each other! Meeting up took months! Chemical based, thick paper backed images were swapped! That must have taken so much effort to meet up…<\/p>\n

I digress.<\/p>\n

Getting back to me downtown: It’s a changed world, people. Back in ’79 – ’83, nobody would think twice about a 13 yr old walking around unescorted in the city. I use to stop by the shop where my sister worked in the Eaton Centre and have lunch with her. Or I would scope out the “dirty” books at The World’s Biggest Bookstore (family health issues isle – they had an open copy of Joy of Gay Sex<\/em>). <\/p>\n

But mostly I spent the money my Da gave me at Funland.<\/p>\n

Funland was a massive arcade just north of Dundas on Yonge. It had the latest games in a big smokey room (when you could smoke inside) that went on forever. The front 1\/3rd was filled with cutting edge technology machines: Frogger, Qix and the mind blowing Dragons Lair. I even remember a 3D “holographic” game where video was projected up onto nearly invisible blocks in a basin-like game, played in the round – true Logan’s Run stuff. The name escapes me. <\/p>\n

I got pretty good at some games, but I can remember never, ever “finishing” a game, but I did watch lots of other guys complete a few story driven consoles. Despite not being good enough to go all out on any games, I was able to carefully drag out the $20 Da usually gave me over the course of a couple hours. It was heaven. Typical to my extremely boring life, I was never offered drugs, sex or crazy shit the entire time I spent there (the “family issues isle” is another story). <\/p>\n

I see the Star mentions it’s finally closing it’s doors<\/a>, blaming crime, the home gaming industry and crappy games. <\/p>\n

I’m getting waaay too old. It closes on my birthday. I think I know what I want to do that night…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RESPAWN! Look left, look right, GO! Back when I was 12-15 yrs old, my Da use to take me with him on business trips to Toronto. I would love the 4 1\/2 hour drive from Brockvegas to the big city and would eagerly sit on the edge of my seat as downtown came into view. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":430,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[8,12,3],"tags":[618,619,621,605,613,622,607,615,603,608,617,612,614,620,606,609,616,610,611,604],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WjY-yI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/430"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deadrobot.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}