3 for 1$ king sized candy, then selling them in school for 1$ each.
If you lived close by, you could turn that 5$ allowance into an easy +100$ for the weekend.
the Blizzard of '97. i was a little kid, but the snow on the corner of my street was so tall i could touch the top of the street sign :,) i have a feeling we'll never see anything like that again...
additionally: fun for all, and everyone having their bday party at sports plus in that dingy back room. the cake was always mediocre, but DAMN did i love the lil rides in that place. and the laser tag!
also farms. i miss all the farms where i lived. they got bought out and replaced with shitty gated communities for rich pricks and golf courses decades ago though :(
I fucking loved fun 4 all, that giant tower in the middle was amazing.
I was going to say farms too, specifically Davis Peach Farm on the corner of 25A/83.
RIGHT? that place ruled.
i like how theres that ONE farm by the southern edge of heritage park thats still there, right on the corner. keep on keepin on 🤘
That reminds me. I lived in Atlantic Beach when Hurricane Bob hit I think it was, and I distinctly remember riding my bike in the rain back to my parents house because they wanted me home before it got too bad.
Wooden playgrounds in general. Slides that were made out of metal.
That wooden maze thing from the 90s that existed at North Woodmere Park
Using my friends parents gold and ivory rotary phone to call my parents who lived literally right in front of her house. She had a walk in closet full of toys and the og American Girl doll, Felicity. Her parents had a waterbed in their bedroom lolololol
Birthday parties at Hot Skates in Lynbrook
There was a restaurant I used to go to on Jericho Turnpike as a kid. El Torito. I used to go there after school as a kid because I went to Whispering Pines in Old Westbury, it was close by.
Roy Rogers in Inwood, it Wendy’s now I think? And the Bay Harbour Mall in general back on the day. Like when it had the pizza place and KB Toys.
Toys R Us in Valley Stream
The Wiz
Fun Zone
Hiding in the ground level garbage cans in Atlantic Beach. I was a hider. I hid in all parts of places Iike dryers, crawlspaces due to my then tiny size. Thanks, puberty for ruining that 🤣🤣🤣
Spaceplex, sports plus, Adventureland. The Nathan's on Jericho in commack, the emporium, that was in the same building. The flea market/roller rink in commack, commack bowl, the pool hall in huntington village by L&L camera, I dont know if its still around but qwong ming in levitttown/Wantagh area. So many long island memories
My Adventureland-specific memory that can't be recreated is the haunted house obviously, though I'm glad they still have the animatronic displayed, but especially the arcade, it was a normal arcade back in the day and now it's all tickets on a card and just lame. Same could probably be said about most arcades but most probably just went away.
Tri County Flea Market when the mezzanine was a bunch of different collectable card sellers and beanie baby dealers, the basement had random arcade games, and the main level was stands selling junk like cheap make-up, car window decals, random printed t shirts, and for a while a stand that sold bootleg old school anime items.
Nathan's arcades.
There's a hut remaining at a parking lot in Franklin Square. Can't remember where exactly but I recall seeing the building and it's been repurposed into something else.
LOVED this place as a kid. My parents pretty much never let us eat there because the food was so bad/overpriced but just walking through it and the store made me so happy.
The trucks that used to cruise our neighborhood like the ice cream trucks still do today.
Judy Ann, Good Humor, and Bungalow Bar Ice Cream (ours also helped us get fireworks). Kruger's (sp?) baked goods. Hoffman Brothers soda. The knife sharpener.
There was also a truck that had a carnival-like ride in the back.
Pergaments (first store was at the corner of Franklin Avenue and Hempstead Turnpike).
The Franklin National Bank (formerly the Franklin Square National Bank), at the time it was the largest bank failure in the history of the country, but they were the first with drive up windows and the Franklin Charge-All was the first general purpose credit card (long gone).
Gouz (rhymes with Cows) Dairy which was such a great dairy with great iced tea and fruit punch too.
Gosh, I miss the Franklin Bowl and Andy Varipapa's Bowl Mart.
There were woods everywhere. Scary woods. Deep woods.The middle of the island around Oakdale all the way to the Hamptons were woods. In April it was brush fire month. You could look in all 4 directions and see smoke. There were big wooden lookout towers in the woods where firemen would look through binoculars trying to spot fires. Veterans Highway was all woods and it really scared me. I wish we could have the woods back. There were quail, salamanders, turtles, Bob whites, muskrats, frogs, toads everywhere. At night in summer the woods sounded like a soundtrack from a jungle movie. So many different insects, owls, mysterious clicking creatures. You could literally feel the trees in the woods breathing. I miss those living, breathing woods so much. They made me feel safe and ….. home.
You could walk into the Great South Bay with a rake and go clamming. There were young guys who lived a kind of beach bum life. They’d live in summer cottages in winter. They’d fish, clam, get mussels, crabs. In sumner they’d share a dive..practically a shack back then. They didn’t care because it was affordable. They’d get free veggies from local family farms, make clam chowder, or have a clambake in the sand. They lived like that all the way into the late 1990s. One lived next door to me and was supporting his mother. They were LI natives and didn’t realize this age-old way of life was over. It predated suburbia by a couple hundred years and was more native than it was white. A few years later, the man and his mother were kicked out and the house sold for $750k.
I've heard first hand stories about cranberry bogs out east. Can't imagine how good they would of been with our soil. Yeah, LI vegetables taste better because of the water. Fact
IROC’s. Malibu’s
Hempstead turnpike
Syosset bagel master or Hicksville bagel boss
Wearing my Syosset Braves football jacket to broadway mall knowing we were going to get in to a fight.
Nuclear war drills in school where you all got in the hall, faced the wall, put your head between your knees, and (if it were real) kissed your ass goodbye.
Republic flea market, pitch and putt at Robert Moses, Hammerheads in W Islip, Great South Bay frozen solid most winters, drag racing on rt 231 in Babylon, 18 drinking age 👍, seeing 1000 clam boats on the great South Bay, Bar cars on the LIRR main branch, waiting on line at the Ticketmaster in Lindenhurst or actually driving to the venue to buy tickets, drive in movies, aviary in the Walt Whitman mall
Ding dong ditch in Greenlawn. Taught to me and all my neighborhood friends by my grandmother, while visiting every summer from Tennessee. Best days of my life.
I wish I could find some photos of when Sunrise Highway in Suffolk had lights instead of exits (east of the Lindenhurst area). I remember the construction to get rid of them in the mid-90s or so, but just wish I could see again what it used to look like.
That's a good one. You're saying the "end" of sunrise "highway" was extended further east. Going east, I always noticed that wierd stretch of new concrete and high fenced walls. I always liked sunrise because once you pass 112, you are now out east lol. Times are changing though
In the 60’sMy HS had a shooting team with a rifle range in the basement. On shooting days guys would bring their .22s to school in over the shoulder cases either on the bus or if they were seniors in their cars. All ammunition was provided by the school and the team either practiced that day in the school or had a shooting match with another school at the school range and if they had a match at another school they’d carry their rifles on a school bus and travel there carrying their equipment like a hockey or lacrosse team would . It wasn’t considered peculiar or unusual or dangerous it was just another HS sport and no one ever gave it a second thought. Obviously gun safety was a huge ingredient in teaching young people how to handle guns properly. I hope there are still gun teams in some parts of the country primarily to teach gun safety. Obviously Alec Baldwin went to a different HS
I lived in Old Westbury when they were building the LIE and we used to race our go karts on it during the weekends when they weren’t working on it. We had our own private racetrack and we never got stopped. Wonderful memories!
The trip from Queens ( Woodside) to the "country house" in Calverton... Before the expressway.
Seemed like an all day affair... Queens Blvd ..,. Main St. in every town...
I got all of you beat.
In Bay Shore, near the Sunrise Mall (also a past memory now), there was a tiny fast food burger chain called Wesson's. It looked a lot like an "old school" McDonalds. I have no idea if they were affiliated with the cooking oil brand (also defunct?). Also can't remember if the burgers or fries were any good. But I think they did milk shakes.
Walking to Dairy Barn after school to get a carton of iced tea.
75 cents for the best Iced Tea ever
Best Tea ever when your stoned coming back from the sump
Lol, I only walked through those tunnels once.
D.B.I.T. that's a throw back for me
I worked there. We used to stab them with a pencil(they didn't give us pens) and put a straw I. It.
Sports Plus
I see your Sports Plus and raise you Spaceplex
Spaceplex got bonus points for having adjacent woods to smoke in
I see your Spaceplex and raise you Our Place
Definitely spent my teens there. Walked there all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tQQ-7OctCQ
I'll take the same approach but go back even further - SpacePlex.
I barely remember that place
Playing manhunt with a group of 15-20 kids and hiding in backyards and not having to worry about getting shot or arrested.
The best strategy is to lay down in the middle of a yard. Works everytime. Also, kids can't play manhunt anymore because (us) parents are too involved
That shit was the best summer nights my friend who lived next door would host.
This really was crazy looking back on it. Like a band of kids running around at night hiding all over the place. Def can’t pull that shit anymore.
The kids in bethpage still play it.
Word. That’s pretty cool. I feel like there’s a few of my neighbors around the area who would 100% call the police
Whole neighborhood playing. Even that weird kid.
Legends say he is still hiding
And cutting through peoples yards to meet up with some friends on the other side of the neighborhood.
Yup..hopping fences. Strolling right thru. You’d prob get shot today.
1 pump bb wars.
I was coming to say this
Fun zone
Discovery zone for me
Being able to wander around the inside of Oheka Castle because it was just an abandoned building….albeit a really cool one.
I didn't know about that one, nice
Same with Montauk Manor
Woah when?
Late 60s & 70s
Cheap johns
3 for 1$ king sized candy, then selling them in school for 1$ each. If you lived close by, you could turn that 5$ allowance into an easy +100$ for the weekend.
I remember going there as a kid and getting those shitty Halloween costumes with the plastic masks lol
I’d get the balsa wood planes. I think they were 5 for a dollar. Another good spot was “Shane’s circus of values”
Used to love getting the large 3 pack of baseball cards there for real cheap. Used to save up for just for that
They had the best candy section and model car kits !!!!
Nunley’s
That's LI specific, the carousel is still around.
Yes!! I have some great memories there!
FUCK PEP BOYS FOREVER
the Blizzard of '97. i was a little kid, but the snow on the corner of my street was so tall i could touch the top of the street sign :,) i have a feeling we'll never see anything like that again... additionally: fun for all, and everyone having their bday party at sports plus in that dingy back room. the cake was always mediocre, but DAMN did i love the lil rides in that place. and the laser tag! also farms. i miss all the farms where i lived. they got bought out and replaced with shitty gated communities for rich pricks and golf courses decades ago though :(
I believe that was ‘96
ah, couldve been!
92 also
76 too
I fucking loved fun 4 all, that giant tower in the middle was amazing. I was going to say farms too, specifically Davis Peach Farm on the corner of 25A/83.
RIGHT? that place ruled. i like how theres that ONE farm by the southern edge of heritage park thats still there, right on the corner. keep on keepin on 🤘
That reminds me. I lived in Atlantic Beach when Hurricane Bob hit I think it was, and I distinctly remember riding my bike in the rain back to my parents house because they wanted me home before it got too bad.
White post before they sold the majority of their land.
Noodle Kidoodle
Followed by Zany Brainy
What did commas ever do to you? Lol
Wooden playgrounds in general. Slides that were made out of metal. That wooden maze thing from the 90s that existed at North Woodmere Park Using my friends parents gold and ivory rotary phone to call my parents who lived literally right in front of her house. She had a walk in closet full of toys and the og American Girl doll, Felicity. Her parents had a waterbed in their bedroom lolololol Birthday parties at Hot Skates in Lynbrook There was a restaurant I used to go to on Jericho Turnpike as a kid. El Torito. I used to go there after school as a kid because I went to Whispering Pines in Old Westbury, it was close by. Roy Rogers in Inwood, it Wendy’s now I think? And the Bay Harbour Mall in general back on the day. Like when it had the pizza place and KB Toys. Toys R Us in Valley Stream The Wiz Fun Zone Hiding in the ground level garbage cans in Atlantic Beach. I was a hider. I hid in all parts of places Iike dryers, crawlspaces due to my then tiny size. Thanks, puberty for ruining that 🤣🤣🤣
Hot skates!
I loved that maze! And I was going to say Hot Skates too!
Aww! I remember a sunny afternoon coloring my kids menu at El Torito back in the day ☀️🥹
I remember that wooden maze!
Awww, I’m glad it’s not just me! I loved it. I think there was a lookout tower and that to me was the best part.
>Her parents had a waterbed in their bedroom 80s parents with waterbeds and satin sheets, and a porn collection on vhs
Forts and bike trails in the woods
There's still bike trails, forts though nope. I had a "fort" when I was a kid in the woods
Those little old school coffee shops… usually open just for breakfast and lunch.
It's probably wrong but I think they were called dinettes
Luncheonettes
Oh yes that’s right! We did call them that back then too.
There are still some around. Station Coffee Shop in Huntington
CJs in RVC and House of Donuts in Hicksville have that vibe
One right by the train tracks in St. James. Great food, run by a great family. It gets packed on the weekends. They also have like 10 specials a day
Busy Bee flea market in Massapequa
Yes and before Busy Bee it was Mays department store !!!
What now??
Ground round
How about a $2.75 baconeggncheese that came with coffee?
Yes, breakfast of champions on a budget
I guess I'm ancient. I remember a 75 cent egg on a roll with a coffee, ... Polish Deli off the traffic circle in Riverhead.
For a $1.50 I could get a Yahoo and a buttered bagel before school
I think you mean Yoohoo as in my favorite artificial chocolate milk drink. The hot dog guy on sunrise Hwy always had em in the glass bottles. 😂
Ha, yes. I haven’t had one since college. But my son drinks them now, the bagel shops often have the glass bottles.
The beverage distributors get em too, but ya gotta buy a case. They're so good cold.
Houses costing less than 250k in Nassau County
Spaceplex, sports plus, Adventureland. The Nathan's on Jericho in commack, the emporium, that was in the same building. The flea market/roller rink in commack, commack bowl, the pool hall in huntington village by L&L camera, I dont know if its still around but qwong ming in levitttown/Wantagh area. So many long island memories
Adventureland is still open
My Adventureland-specific memory that can't be recreated is the haunted house obviously, though I'm glad they still have the animatronic displayed, but especially the arcade, it was a normal arcade back in the day and now it's all tickets on a card and just lame. Same could probably be said about most arcades but most probably just went away.
Ah, then. "Adventurer's Inn."
Spaceplex
Remember when you missed a day of school and a classmate would bring what you missed to your house? That shit is over these days.
Sclice and a soda for 75 cents.
Flea markets Attias flea market in sayville Commack at the long island arena Tri county in smithtown
Tri County Flea Market when the mezzanine was a bunch of different collectable card sellers and beanie baby dealers, the basement had random arcade games, and the main level was stands selling junk like cheap make-up, car window decals, random printed t shirts, and for a while a stand that sold bootleg old school anime items. Nathan's arcades.
A lot of that stuff is still at tri-county, the arcade is super scaled down but a lot of bemani games still there
You dont see kids playing in the sump much anymore
I was gana say sump parties
"Ice Cream! Frozen Fruit Bars! Fuuudgy Wudgy Bars!" - Styrofoam cooler dude running up and down the beach.
You just unlocked a memory
Or the girls selling beaded jewelry. It all looked the same
Photomats
I remember those!
What is that
Drive up photo developing. They were really little huts in shopping center parking lots
There's a hut remaining at a parking lot in Franklin Square. Can't remember where exactly but I recall seeing the building and it's been repurposed into something else.
Going to the artful dodger underage and getting shitfaced on Long Island iced teas
I remember that place
The dodger raged circa 1996
Playing in the kings park psychiatric center and going up to the top floor of that huge building scared shitless breathing in asbestos
So basically your memories were of the abandoned buildings.
No I was a patient
Hollering and hearing yourself echo while walked through the tunnel to smith point beach
Is it still there?
It is, and it's as echo-y as it has ever been.
Same with jones beach tunnel
I haven’t been to smith point beach in forever. the tunnel connected the parking lot to the beach.
Nunleys in Freeport or Nathan’s in Oceanside
The Boardy Barn RIP 🙂
Screen hopping at the Commack movie theater. Snowy winters.
Yeah, I miss that theatre because of its location. Deer Park seems too much of a schlep.
Bullwinkle’s!!!!
Commack movie theater..
Rainforest cafe at the Source Mall
LOVED this place as a kid. My parents pretty much never let us eat there because the food was so bad/overpriced but just walking through it and the store made me so happy.
THIS
Laces and Our Place II and Sterling Bowl for parties
Green Acres movie theater
Isn't that in NYC
Nope. Valley Stream.
Murderplex or the other smaller theater that only had a few screens?
The 5 and 10 diner at Roosevelt field. OG pizza supreme.
Pizza supreme lives across the street! Had it 2 weeks ago and was just as good as I remembered from my childhood :)
I’ve had it. It in the same lot that used to host Caldor and a nice used music store. But my memory won’t let it be as good
Is it in the Barnes & Noble and Ben’s shopping center?
Sledding down bald hill hoping you wouldn’t hit anything at the bottom and crack your head open
Did that on the AB bridge. Busted my lip open from sliding under a car parked on the street and hit the underside.
Getting seriously underaged wasted at Dizzy Lizards.
The trucks that used to cruise our neighborhood like the ice cream trucks still do today. Judy Ann, Good Humor, and Bungalow Bar Ice Cream (ours also helped us get fireworks). Kruger's (sp?) baked goods. Hoffman Brothers soda. The knife sharpener. There was also a truck that had a carnival-like ride in the back. Pergaments (first store was at the corner of Franklin Avenue and Hempstead Turnpike). The Franklin National Bank (formerly the Franklin Square National Bank), at the time it was the largest bank failure in the history of the country, but they were the first with drive up windows and the Franklin Charge-All was the first general purpose credit card (long gone). Gouz (rhymes with Cows) Dairy which was such a great dairy with great iced tea and fruit punch too. Gosh, I miss the Franklin Bowl and Andy Varipapa's Bowl Mart.
Knife Sharpener still roaming around Franklin Square
Brett saberhagens
The old food court at Roosevelt field mall
The Zeppelin will forever be engraved in my memory
Not seeing one other car on my drive home from exit 66 east at 2 am.
It's getting so bad, merrick road is becoming a parking lot
Being able to get a lot of food at the diner for not that much money.
Time out arcade in Broadway mall.
I remember the Time Out in the Smithhaven mall very fondly
Jolly Rogers!
Surprised no one has said it yet: OBI.
crazy not a *single* person could name anything specific to LI that has commented……🤣🤣 except the person who said Dairy Barn
My friends came to visit in college and were amazed by dairy barn
wait dairy barn is LI specific?
I did!
Roosevelt Raceway Flea Market
Attias flea market
The pickle guy at shoppers village
There were woods everywhere. Scary woods. Deep woods.The middle of the island around Oakdale all the way to the Hamptons were woods. In April it was brush fire month. You could look in all 4 directions and see smoke. There were big wooden lookout towers in the woods where firemen would look through binoculars trying to spot fires. Veterans Highway was all woods and it really scared me. I wish we could have the woods back. There were quail, salamanders, turtles, Bob whites, muskrats, frogs, toads everywhere. At night in summer the woods sounded like a soundtrack from a jungle movie. So many different insects, owls, mysterious clicking creatures. You could literally feel the trees in the woods breathing. I miss those living, breathing woods so much. They made me feel safe and ….. home. You could walk into the Great South Bay with a rake and go clamming. There were young guys who lived a kind of beach bum life. They’d live in summer cottages in winter. They’d fish, clam, get mussels, crabs. In sumner they’d share a dive..practically a shack back then. They didn’t care because it was affordable. They’d get free veggies from local family farms, make clam chowder, or have a clambake in the sand. They lived like that all the way into the late 1990s. One lived next door to me and was supporting his mother. They were LI natives and didn’t realize this age-old way of life was over. It predated suburbia by a couple hundred years and was more native than it was white. A few years later, the man and his mother were kicked out and the house sold for $750k.
I've heard first hand stories about cranberry bogs out east. Can't imagine how good they would of been with our soil. Yeah, LI vegetables taste better because of the water. Fact
IROC’s. Malibu’s Hempstead turnpike Syosset bagel master or Hicksville bagel boss Wearing my Syosset Braves football jacket to broadway mall knowing we were going to get in to a fight.
Nuclear war drills in school where you all got in the hall, faced the wall, put your head between your knees, and (if it were real) kissed your ass goodbye.
Lol yeah, but thats not LI specific.
Republic flea market, pitch and putt at Robert Moses, Hammerheads in W Islip, Great South Bay frozen solid most winters, drag racing on rt 231 in Babylon, 18 drinking age 👍, seeing 1000 clam boats on the great South Bay, Bar cars on the LIRR main branch, waiting on line at the Ticketmaster in Lindenhurst or actually driving to the venue to buy tickets, drive in movies, aviary in the Walt Whitman mall
Big Barry's, castle playground (wooden playgrounds shaped into sort of castle spires), Spaceplex
Ding dong ditch in Greenlawn. Taught to me and all my neighborhood friends by my grandmother, while visiting every summer from Tennessee. Best days of my life.
Dowd’s Beefalo. There really was a *scene* at that place. Great burgers!
United Skates
Growing up with Mom at home cause only Dad needed to work to pay the bills and mortgage.
Spencer Gifts in every mall, used to be a thing. I understand it's still around as Spencer's, but I dunno if the kids have any interest in it.
The circus train coming down the LIRR
Target in sayville off of sunrise (27) use to be a flea market
I wish I could find some photos of when Sunrise Highway in Suffolk had lights instead of exits (east of the Lindenhurst area). I remember the construction to get rid of them in the mid-90s or so, but just wish I could see again what it used to look like.
That's a good one. You're saying the "end" of sunrise "highway" was extended further east. Going east, I always noticed that wierd stretch of new concrete and high fenced walls. I always liked sunrise because once you pass 112, you are now out east lol. Times are changing though
In the 60’sMy HS had a shooting team with a rifle range in the basement. On shooting days guys would bring their .22s to school in over the shoulder cases either on the bus or if they were seniors in their cars. All ammunition was provided by the school and the team either practiced that day in the school or had a shooting match with another school at the school range and if they had a match at another school they’d carry their rifles on a school bus and travel there carrying their equipment like a hockey or lacrosse team would . It wasn’t considered peculiar or unusual or dangerous it was just another HS sport and no one ever gave it a second thought. Obviously gun safety was a huge ingredient in teaching young people how to handle guns properly. I hope there are still gun teams in some parts of the country primarily to teach gun safety. Obviously Alec Baldwin went to a different HS
General education plus respect for safety goes a long way.
DPA after 10 pm
The delicious taste of lead paint
I forgot one, waldbaums green olives. They were the best
Cruising the Pike (Hempstead TPKE, lightening bugs, hanging out at the bleachers on weekends and drinking, jones beach toll booth,
DPA too.
Lol, hung out on DPA a lot, went to "The Pike" once, said this is lame, went back to DPA to do the same effin thing. SMH
Sportsplex
I lived in Old Westbury when they were building the LIE and we used to race our go karts on it during the weekends when they weren’t working on it. We had our own private racetrack and we never got stopped. Wonderful memories!
I’m trying to remember this arcade where I sometimes went for birthday parties on Hempstead Turnpike around the Levittown/ Bethpage border.
Roy Rogers bacon cheese burgers.
Playing handball on the back of waldbaums..
Swenson's ice cream (also Zip's Make Your Own Sundaes) Jolly Roger Amusement Park in Farmingdale/Bethpage
Hot Skates
Does anyone remember those slides that like stung the shit out of you as you went down them? Also. See saws! How my spine is still intact. Beyond me.
Waliking to School with/without your friends ..every day was an adventure honestly some of the happiest moments of my life.
Ground round!
The trip from Queens ( Woodside) to the "country house" in Calverton... Before the expressway. Seemed like an all day affair... Queens Blvd ..,. Main St. in every town...
Wineries before they charged tasting fees.
All the fights at Raspberry’s during fleet week in downtown Port Jeff
…chain link fences???
I got all of you beat. In Bay Shore, near the Sunrise Mall (also a past memory now), there was a tiny fast food burger chain called Wesson's. It looked a lot like an "old school" McDonalds. I have no idea if they were affiliated with the cooking oil brand (also defunct?). Also can't remember if the burgers or fries were any good. But I think they did milk shakes.
Getting a roll of film developed at the drive up Fotomat .
Barhopping and then ice cream shop hopping after drinking in Port Jeff
You can still do that
Hearing dinner bells. Now it’s just a text.
Okay, gold coast.
Skiing bald hill