Wendy’s changed the spicy chicken sandwich. The new one isn’t bad, but the old one occupied a very specific spot in my memory that will be missed.
North East US. There used to be a fsst food chain called D’Angelos. Their #9 sub was Legendary. Everyone got it. Too bad, They’re gone now.
What I miss can never happen again. There was some mystery of the world lost with the internet. I miss opening a pack of magic cards and that was what you got, no hand picking the best build online. I miss hearing my friend say some bullshit in a game, and the only way to discover the truth was to try it. I am thankful for the speed of information nowadays and how much more accessible the world is. But sometimes I’d like to recapture that magic of the unknown, the closeness of having to converse with others to even guess at the depth of your hobby.
Taco Bell and the Quesarito.
Fuuuck, why did they remove it? It was the whole reason to go to Taco Bell!
Byron’s Drive In is gone
Freaking out my friends BBS modems by calling it and whistling into the phone.
There was an helado shop very near where I live now, just a wonderland of flavors, nice lady with a hundred tubs of different interesting mostly fruit flavored ice creams. Not expensive. It’s been gone for years and I still miss it.
Also there was this house I used to pass on my way home that had a crazy paint job, I think it had been orange and someone tried to cover that with green - the result was a house that looked like it was ripening and I just loved to see it. Eventually someone “fixed” it by making it gray, I miss it.
Being able to eat peanuts. Developed an allergy 4 years ago.
The park in Oregon where I used to walk every day and see the most amazing water birds.
The scent of my grandparents’ house.
It had a very distinctive sweet aroma. I was never sure what is was, and I never asked. The scent followed them when they moved into a condo in a retirement facility. The last time I visited them in their condo was 2019, and they’ve both since passed away.
They gave me a book many years ago, the pages of which used to smell like their house. I know if I dig that book out of storage, it might still have a trace scent in it. But otherwise, it is now just a memory.
My grandparents had one of those ottomans that you could open up and put things in. I grabbed it after my grandpa died and will occasionally open it and take a big whiff of that granparents’ house smell.
The Cheesy Gordita Crunch used to be $0.89. Not 99, EIGHTY-NINE cents. Now it’s like $3.79. Used to be my favorite thing on the menu, but there’s no way I’m paying that much for it now. I tolerated $0.99, $1.09, even $1.19 but $1.29 is where I said “no”. Haven’t had one since.
Seasons 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 of Firefly.
I also miss Sobeys (Canadian grocery chain) Take n Bake pizza. They changed to a new recipe many years ago. I bought one of their new pizzas, it was very disappointing.
Living in an old, small house for the first 10 years of my life. When I was 10, my parents built a McMansion on a hill on the farm. Rubs be the wrong way every time someone complements it.
Trader Joe’s Belgian Chocolate Pudding. It made any other chocolate pudding taste like milk. Petit Pot comes close but it’s not in a tub and it’s not quite as rich. I used to eat it with fresh strawberries.
Seafood Sub from Subway. It was my childhood. WhichWich comes close but it’s not the same.
Here’s a couple:
Reebok DMX shoes. Most comfortable shows I ever owned.
Interior decor of Taco Bell and other fast food places in the mid 90s. It looked like a fun place. Now it just reminds me of a POW camp on Guadalcanal.
Watching Star Trek with my grandma at five o’clock on our local TV station. I’d always say that one day I’d be on the Enterprise and she’d look up from her knitting and smile gently.
Interior decor of Taco Bell and other fast food places in the mid 90s. It looked like a fun place. Now it just reminds me of a POW camp on Guadalcanal.
I was just talking about this with some family members. Wendy’s, McD’s, and Pizza Hut all had very distinct exteriors (and often interiors). You could readily identify them driving down the highway just by the building’s silhouette. If you somehow woke up from a coma inside a Pizza Hut you could instantly know where you were just by the decor.
I’m sure there are a lot of factors that contribute to this but I think it boils down to real estate prices. It’s easier to resell a generic box than an obvious Pizza Hut.
I miss places that weren’t overrun with traffic.
I lived in LA right at the end of “it’s LA. Everything is 20 minutes from everything else.” Which was mostly true other than a rush hour that politely lasted from 3:30 to 6:00pm. Only places like The Valley or Long Beach or Montebello/West Covina took 30+ minutes.
Every time I visit now, everything is stop and go traffic. Not just there, every major city. Road infrastructure hasn’t, and can’t realistically, keep up with basic population growth. Sprawl is a disease. It’s urban planning cancer.
I think you missed the “ultimately inconsequential” part of the prompt…
That sounds pretty cool tbh, sometimes I’m still a little bummed that the American Dream™ can’t be a sustainable thing for everyone…
Yeah, it was awesome. Beach? 20 minutes. Work? 20 minutes. Every friend? 20 minutes.
It really is something special to live in a time and place when infrastructure matches demand. Life becomes about living, not about the logistics of daily life as a struggle.
