Weekends 1988

[captain_slinky]

It's a Summer Saturday in 1988! My Mom has dropped me off in my small home town of Anacortes! I have my bike and $20 of bi-weekly allowance! My only chore this Saturday is to make it to my Grandma's house "By Dark", which thanks to the long summer days won't be till 9:30 or so! What's a 15-year-old fat kid to do?

• ISLAND VIDEO: One of those great Mom-N-Pop video stores that used to be everywhere before the advent of Blockbuster and other video chains, Island Video would rent you a brand-spankin' new Nindendo Entertainment System with TWO GAMES for $8. You could ge tthis deal on any day of the week, but you REALLY wanted to do it on a Saturday night because Island Video was close don Sunday - TWO DAYS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE! The only problem with renting a Nintendo, though, was that Grandpa wasn't about to let me hook "that crap" to his TV, and the only other TV in the house belonged to Uncle Chuck (the 40-year-old Uncle who still lived with his parents). Odds were in my favor that Uncle Chuck would be gone all weekend long getting drunk, but if he showed up at any time then my Nintendo would be forfiet! A risky use for my money.
  
  
• STORKS BOWLING ALLEY: The Bowling Alley was one of three places that had arcade games in Anacortes. They had the coolest games and the best pinball tables, but it was also a bowling alley/diner/bar. So any game you wanted to play would constantly be interrupted by drunks on their way to the restroom and that great cigar/booze/urine smell. I'd spend maybe a dollar here then move on.
  
  
• TUBES: A back-room in the building right next to the bowling alley, Tubes was one of the OTHER arcades in town. They had an old Real Estate Office and had gutted it, filling it with the newest and the best arcade games, and it was a real shame when they got shut down because it was nothing but a front for a drug dealer. If I wasn't careful, I just might end up spending $5 at this place!
  
  
• CAUSMAN DRUG STORE: An old-fashioned drug store with the most incredible Comics Rack I had ever seen! Sure there was a little spinner rack of comics at the 7/11, but these people had a LARGE spiunner rack, PLUS a double-tier Magazine Rack FULL of comics! They even carried Comics Scene, a magazine ABOUT comics! Luckilly this is back when most comic books were 60 cents, 75-cents at most. I could spend $10 here and have a STACK of comics. No question of if I should spend my money on the comics, I WILL be buying.
  
  
• VILLAGE PIZZA A great little pizza joint that used to be the local mortuary/crematorium, also host to the third and final Arcade in town. The back room where they had the games was cramped and the games they had weren't the newest or the best, but they had a TOKEN MACHINE! $6 of tokens for $5! They also had an excellent lunch deal of a personal-size Calzone, small Pepsi and $2.50 of tokens for $5. How could you go wrong?