Greg Michaels: Another Teenage Hangout Gone, Bye Bye To Fairlanes

I just read that another part of my youth has disappeared or will soon go away. A while back, I talked about a bar we used to frequent, The Palace, that closed, and now a bowling alley is disappearing. Fairlanes at the Halifax Shopping Centre is closing because the mall didn't want to renew their lease.

When I was 13-15 years old and had a paper route, I used to blow a lot of quarters on video games at the Fairlanes arcade. The sign read, "no one under 16 years old allowed" but no one checked IDs or really even looked to care. Pole Position, Tron and pinball machines while smoking cigarettes, eating fast food and checking out the girls was what it was all about on Saturday afternoons when we were young.

After we were done playing games or out of quarters, we'd hang out in the mall itself and whistle at the girls on the first floor looking down from the second floor. When the girls would look our way we would duck behind the half wall. Amazing how we guys never found dates at the mall. I keep up with most of my friends from that era, but wonder what happened to some of those guys, Perry Fanning, Troy Sammurtok to name a couple others.

At the back entrance of Fairlanes  there was a loading area for rigs, it was known to us as "the tunnel". This was a more private area in the parking lot where those of us who were lucky enough would make-out and sneak smokes and if you were a rebel, do more.

As I get older more and more places from my younger days are either changing or disappearing including my high school, first real workplaces and now my hangouts. All signs of getting old and not taking enough pictures.