GOD DAMN IT.

Progress can kiss my ass.  

I was going to take my niece and nephew to the St. Pete Beach Amusement Center - yes, THE arcade zone on St. Pete Beach. The one that maintained in pristine condition all of our favorites from throughout the years.

You could still play Tron, Frogger, Crystal Castles, Tempest, and Donkey Kong. They had air hockey. They had skee-ball. They had pool, pinball machines, and weird pre-video game games that were so fucking cool they made my knees buckle just looking at them. Gone. All gone forever.  (And if Treasure Island Fun Center thinks for ONE SECOND that I am going to visit them in their new, "updated" location where fat children have pizza parties and scream and eat Laffy Taffy, they can KISS MY ASS.)

Observe:

When the Amusement Center opened on July 4, 1969, it had all the latest crazes in Florida vacation fun. Indoor miniature golf. Bowling. Ski Ball.

Founder Jerry Rodgers opened two other amusement centers in the area and pioneered indoor bumper cars, which rolled around with poles scraping the metal roof.

Sunburned kids would finish off a day at the beach with some air conditioning and button-pounding. They snacked on soda, junk food and ice cream. There were never tokens or quarters to worry about. Just an admission fee and hours of fun.

Before they moved to the area, Lenny Stamos and his grade-school-age son visited as tourists from New Jersey. Derrick Stamos sat on his dad's lap and drove a bumper car for the first time.

"It had the biggest collection of pinball machines I'd ever seen in my life," Derrick Stamos said.

In the 1980s, the cars gave way to the golden age of stand-up video games — Galaga, Asteroids and Pac Man.

read the rest of this gripping article here

Barefoot Mailman, Foxxxy's, Ollie-O's, Tracks, Piggy's Place. All of the cool shit, one zone after another, has been tainted. Even our beloved beaches, once lined with whispering pines and palms, have been desecrated by pink stucco abominations and fast-food chains to the point that you can't even see the fucking water.

One of the few remaining things that made me happy about coming to Florida is now dead. Everything I loved about this place has been razed and transformed into a craptacular strip mall. 

THEY HAD TRON, GOD DAMN IT.