Northgate Mall

In the early 1980s, mom worked at the Northgate Public Library in El Paso when I was a kid. There used to be a chess club that met Saturdays 1-3 pm in the auditorium there, and I'd go down there and play a little. I wasn't very good, and I don't even remember the impetus behind going or how long I went there.

But when it was 3 o'clock and everyone packed up the pieces and boards and went on with their lives, I hustled a few bucks from mom and went over to the Detour video arcade across the parking lot. I'd go home with mom when the library closed at 5:30 Saturdays, so I had a few hours to kill. More on the arcade in a moment. 

The library was a separate building in the mall parking lot, next to the old Northgate Twin Movie house (where I saw Red Dawn and Ferris Bueller's Day Off), a GFC Insurance place and I think the driver's license office. The mall was across the lot from these two buildings, and housed The Popular department store, which  was where local Cub Scouts got their accoutrements. I think it was at this store where the famous Talking Christmas Tree story originated. As a wee lad, I didn't realize someone could possibly be using a microphone from a little ways off. I was pretty mesmerized. Anyhow, The Popular also had the old Viewmasters, which had round discs that slid into the camera and showed 3D photos to little kids. Pull the lever and the next picture would come up. It was great.

The mall also had the first Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, which hooked up studious kids with game tokens for stellar report cards. It opened when I was in fifth grade, and we couldn't get enough. Pizza, coke, video games-- man it was great.

Anyhow, back to Detour. The vids of the time were very rudimentary-- graphics were the best we had at the time, but nothing compared to now. Pinball (lots of it), Tank, Atari two-on-two basketball, skee ball, even a trap shooting game that I think I only tried once or twice. An old favorite was the tabletop Atari game that featured 11 Xs against 11 Os. Each side had a track ball (remember those?), a 'pass' button and four offensive/defensive plays to choose from. I liked this game, and it was a good day if I had enough coin to play a little bit.

And then there was the annual carnival that would camp out in the parking lot for a week. I wasn't (and still am not) a big 'rides' guy. Even the tilt-a-whirl makes me nauseous. I liked the midway games, even though the odds are stacked in favor of the house. Favorites were the squirt gun race and the pinball/horse race game.

So I have a few memories of old place.

But when I was home for a few days this month, I saw that the old Northgate/Northpark Mall had been reduced to rubble. I don't really know much in the way of details, but after a few tries at building it back up, it had fallen on hard times and there were fewer and fewer tenants for the place. This pillar of the Northeast, gone, a victim of big honking malls on the east and westside of town. There are those who spent more of their teen years there than I did, so I can't really say I'm disappointed, but I am a little sad. I moved away too long ago to be disappointed-- I've gotten along a long time without it. 

Just kind of a bummer, that's all.