A Pocket Full of Quarters: The Las Vegas That Raised Us

Every city gives its kids somewhere to go.

No lake. No boardwalk. No woods to disappear into for an afternoon. We had asphalt that could burn through a sneaker, and a handful of places built for exactly that.

Scandia opened in 1984 on Sirius Avenue, six acres of it. Miniature golf. A go-kart track. Bumper boats. Batting cages. An arcade running along the back.

You know what six acres of that is worth to a twelve-year-old in a city with no seasons. It was everything.

The mini golf turf had gone pale in the sun and lifted at the seams, so a clean putt could hop and die a foot short of the cup. Everyone had a theory about whose fault that was. The turf never came up. The karts smelled like two-stroke and hot rubber. There was always one kid who took the go-karts far too seriously and one parent in the shade pretending not to keep score. Birthday parties were held there for twenty-one years, which is long enough that Locals who met at Scandia as children later brought their own kids.

Mary K's was the other one.

A video arcade, in a strip mall, which in the eighties and nineties was where most of a Las Vegas childhood happened. Dim as a matinee, loud as a slot floor. You went in with a pocket full of quarters and a plan to make them last. The plan died somewhere around the third game. Somebody's older brother owned the good machine and would not surrender it. The carpet had a pattern on it that has since been scientifically proven to exist in every arcade in America.

Nobody photographed any of this. That is the thing about ordinary places. Cameras came out for the wedding. Tuesday went unrecorded.

So what is left is testimony, which is less reliable and somehow better.

The kids who spent their allowance on Sirius Avenue are in their forties and fifties now. They have their own kids, who are growing up in a Las Vegas with a hockey team and a football stadium and no Scandia.

Ask any of them where they went as a kid. Watch how fast they answer.

For the ones who still have the quarters

Shop the Scandia tee →
Shop the Mary Ks Arcade tee →

More of the city we lost: The Las Vegas Bars and Restaurants We Lost, and Still Talk About and Remembering the Alpine Village Inn.