My children are on "fall break", which is some random point in time roughly 2 months after school starts in which everyone decides that it is time for a four day weekend. I don't know if this happens all over the country, or if it's just us, but I think it's a relatively new occurance; I certainly don't remember being gifted with arbitrary long weekends. Even if I had, there would have been not much to do anyway, except sit at home and make a nuisance of myself or spend the weekend at a friend's house if their parents were braver souls than my own.
That's another thing about about living here; there isn't much in the form of entertainment except nature and golf. When I was a teen, we had a skating rink - it was actually the first job that I had. It was located in a very out of the way spot right off the highway in a part of the county that not many people have a reason to travel to, and therefore the skating rink only lasted for a couple of years. Having a video game console, and even a personal computer of some sort, in your home was still an exception, and not a rule. Being largely a rural county, the majority of us were scattered across many miles, and walking to a friend's house wasn't [and still isn't] safe or practical. There are also no bike trails and very few actual sidewalks except for the ones in the heart of downtown. What are the kids to do?
There is an acquaintance of mine who opened up our town's visitor's center. A handy place where the droves of tourists we get during the various seasons could stop and get information about our town and perhaps purchase wares from the local artisans who consigned with the visitor's center. The shop owner and her husband ran the visitor's center and had a hand in organizing, and indeed, revitalizing, that particular area of downtown - it's the seedier part of town, or I guess I should say, more historic. Most of the buildings were vacant and the homeless shelter is sandwiched right in between the lot of it [which is also probably why most of the buildings were vacant]. The homeless are often found hanging around outside the shelter, and who can blame them - they don't have anywhere to go, either. It is a little odd seeing them hang around outside of the upscale shops that moved into the area once the visitor's center livened the place up. The homeless aren't the panhandling kind, however, they are pleasant enough and keep to themselves, though they usually ignore the polite society's rules about alcohol consumption.
The family that ran the visitor's center have several various school-aged children, and also lamented the lack of activites for kids. Being the proactive bunch that they seem to be, they decided to convert part of the visitor's center into a club for teens. There were pool tables and video games, a snack bar, and places to just sit and hang out. A safe, supervised environment in the heart of downtown, where many of the junior high kids could easily walk to. Brilliant! It was a great idea, a great asset to our community, I thought. However, the building owner wasn't as happy about it. After thousands of dollars spent by the family to remodel [with permission] the interior of the building, the landlord abruptly gave them notice to vacate the premesis. He'd decided that he didn't want kids hanging around and he didn't want a snack bar in there. The family lost their business in one of the worst economic periods in our history. To add insult to injury, a month later not only did they find out they were bringing another child into the world, but the landlord of their previous building rented the space out... to a cafe. A few of the upscale businesses closed shop, and now that most historic district of our town is looking worse for the wear again.
I think the moral of the story here is that our sleepy little town needs to wake the fuck up. If it's fine for the homeless to hang out and the area still thrives, then it should be equally fine for the kids to hang out, as well. There was police observation and adult supervision, so there wasn't a question of safety. It seemed more like the building owner just had a thing for hating on kids. They're only most troublesome when bored and unsupervised, in most cases [I should know, I have three of my own], and that teen club was a great remedy for both. Now we have come full circle, though; the kids are bored and unsupervised and have nowhere to go again. And the guy still ended up with a stupid little cafe in his building.
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