My parents took ours down a year or two ago. It was in the wooded part of our yard and some kids started playing on it (apparently thinking it was a vacant lot despite out house being visible from it) and my parents didn’t know how sturdy it was or how safe it would be if our dog noticed them
An empty lot on my old street had this absolutely enormous pine tree that had blown over, but was still rooted and thriving. It made an amazing tree house just as it was. To us neighborhood kids, it was no different than the Lost Boys’ City in Hook; it was freakin’ magical.
Holy crap, I called it!!! They went to Mount Baldy!!!
Sometimes growing up sucks for reasons that have nothing to do with crappy parents and intolerant indoctrination. Stop being a heavy-handed metaphor, Nature!
What, just because it’s an unstable uninhabitable disaster of light-color that will swallow you up whole if you try and go back onto it that will never feel like it did when they were young?
I don’t see anything metaphorical about that or representative in their town. In the exact same way that Joyce driving in circles at the beginning of the comic is totally not reflective of her panicked brain after her mom’s words about pulling her out of school.
I grew up in (actually slightly outside) a small mill town. About all that’s still open on main street is the grocery store, the tavern, and the tourist-trap restaurant. Everything else either has little placards in the windows saying what it used to be, or has been converted into an antique shop.
…Seriously, how many fucking antique shops can one town support? A town that has no other business in it?!
I swear to god, there’s a Walmart, a Kohls, a McDonalds, and fifty goddamn places I can buy an 80 year old sewing machine and a china doll that is so creepy you could put in in a horror movie if you needed a red herring so people will be shocked when it isn’t possessed by a demon.
To be fair, malls are dying out all over the place. My hometown’s not hurting economically by any stretch of the imagination, and it lost a big one a few years back.
They are magnets for kids, who drive away the paying customers. People are destination-shoppers, these days. Park close to the shop they need (in a strip mall) rather than mosey all over a huge mall, looking for the *one* place they want. We’ve had two close, in Austin. The open centers are thriving. Unfortunately, they are all the same set of shops.
StClair
(not disputing any of that, just wondering:)
And how much of that is because there’s f-all else for the kids to do?
Dana
A friend of mine was trying to put into words what she and our friends did in high school. He was active in football and other school activities. Eventually she settled on “loitering”.
Yeah, our town’s last real indoor mall is about to get closed for…many, many reasons, not least because about a third of the stores have been empty for months if not years
metropotamian
Oh yeah, because those make PERFECT sense in the midwest where the prime shopping season is during the cold months. You hope it’s actually cold enough for snow at that point, because walking back to your car is pretty loaded down with packages is great fun in the Nov-Dec rain. /sarcasm
(can you tell I loathe those stupid things? At least regular malls made sense: you could shop all those stores and NOT be out in the elements.)
Nobody wants 80s-style interior malls anymore. They’re all getting replaced by those “phony main street” malls. You know, the ones that look like a small town square lost in a a sea of crossover SUVs.
You don’t know small. The town where I went to high school had a sign at the road (note THE road) that said population plus or minus 100.The school secretary once got a call from some supplier asking where the school was. She told them 101 S. Lincoln(a made up address to tell fedex and ups). They asked again and she told them the same. Then they said,” No, where in Oklahoma are you?” A bus driver there related this-some delivery company wanted a physical address-which we didn’t have. So she asked her- how close are you to the highway? Several miles. What color is your house? White. What color are the other houses around? White. What’s around your house? Cows. And do you know what she asked me then, she asked me. Yep. What color are the cows!
The random sinkholes were caused by the soil erosion, which in turn was caused by the excessive foot traffic. Of course, if those two decide to break the law and trespass anyway, $20 bucks says they fall in a sinkhole and have to get rescued by the Browns.
Bonus trivia: Mt. Baldy spent a few years with just a few patches restricted due to the erosion, then a sinkhole swallowed a kid (he lived) and they decided it’d be safest to just close it entirely
227 thoughts on “Circles”
Ana Chronistic
this is like every time I go home
…
Dad just told me the treehouse he built for us when we were kids blew down in a windstorm =(
Resident SnipeFish
Stupid childhood innocence, always inexorably fading away.
Durandal_1707
Hey, at least you’ve still *got* your dad. Gotta appreciate what’s good in life, while you’ve got it.
spider
Yeah, he can always make you another one. Mush, father, mush!
Marie
My parents took ours down a year or two ago. It was in the wooded part of our yard and some kids started playing on it (apparently thinking it was a vacant lot despite out house being visible from it) and my parents didn’t know how sturdy it was or how safe it would be if our dog noticed them
Kryss LaBryn
The woods I used to play in behind the field on the other side of the street was logged. 🙁 And the field has houses on it now as well.
You bastards, you cut down my childhood. ;_;
ChrisHerself
An empty lot on my old street had this absolutely enormous pine tree that had blown over, but was still rooted and thriving. It made an amazing tree house just as it was. To us neighborhood kids, it was no different than the Lost Boys’ City in Hook; it was freakin’ magical.
Now there’s a house on that lot. 🙁
Ana Chronistic
better than the woods at the entrance to our development became a parking lot and new wing for a church
DarkoNeko
Better than having your car stuck in the sand~
Bagge
Holy crap, I called it!!! They went to Mount Baldy!!!
Sometimes growing up sucks for reasons that have nothing to do with crappy parents and intolerant indoctrination. Stop being a heavy-handed metaphor, Nature!
Cerberus
What, just because it’s an unstable uninhabitable disaster of light-color that will swallow you up whole if you try and go back onto it that will never feel like it did when they were young?
I don’t see anything metaphorical about that or representative in their town. In the exact same way that Joyce driving in circles at the beginning of the comic is totally not reflective of her panicked brain after her mom’s words about pulling her out of school.
Dana
I hate sand.
Cholma
It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
The Chosen One
You were supposed to bring balance to the dunes… Not leave it like this God!
inqntrol
But things are more interesting that way.
Deanatay
Read the sign – this was clearly Man’s doing, not God’s. Stupid free will!
Willoughby Chase
The tragedy of the commons.
HMRC4EVR
Sand probably sponsored this comic.
First Aladdin’s wedding, now DoA!
Joey245
Oh god, that was one of the best lines from the movie.
“Sand! It’s everywhere! Get used to it!”
Doctor_Who
My home town is basically a black hole now. Visiting it is depressing. Ten years ago there were two malls, now there are zero. I can relate.
StClair
I grew up in (actually slightly outside) a small mill town. About all that’s still open on main street is the grocery store, the tavern, and the tourist-trap restaurant. Everything else either has little placards in the windows saying what it used to be, or has been converted into an antique shop.
Doctor_Who
…Seriously, how many fucking antique shops can one town support? A town that has no other business in it?!
I swear to god, there’s a Walmart, a Kohls, a McDonalds, and fifty goddamn places I can buy an 80 year old sewing machine and a china doll that is so creepy you could put in in a horror movie if you needed a red herring so people will be shocked when it isn’t possessed by a demon.
Alden
Where do all the antiques even come from?
thejeff
The locals spend the winter making them, so they can sell them to tourists in the summer.
Willoughby Chase
*hides scuffing and weathering tools*
A-hem. You may well ask. Can I interest you in some Antique Quaker furniture?
StClair
I think of it as a history mine. Eventually that, too, will dry up, and that will finally be it for the town. 🙁
Queen Anthai
Doc, the more you talk the more you sound like you’re describing my hometown. You’re not from the suburbs of Chicago, are you?
Doctor_Who
Nope. Ohio.
No Name
Was there a great forest with massive cliffs in your backyard? Because I always suspected…
JustCheetoDust
Not even a dirt mall?
Doctor_Who
The dirt mall was first to go. The real mall just closed this past year.
JustCheetoDust
I see the mall in a friend’s neighborhood every few weeks, watching it die slowly
before the inevitable gentrification.MM
To be fair, malls are dying out all over the place. My hometown’s not hurting economically by any stretch of the imagination, and it lost a big one a few years back.
merbrat
They are magnets for kids, who drive away the paying customers. People are destination-shoppers, these days. Park close to the shop they need (in a strip mall) rather than mosey all over a huge mall, looking for the *one* place they want. We’ve had two close, in Austin. The open centers are thriving. Unfortunately, they are all the same set of shops.
StClair
(not disputing any of that, just wondering:)
And how much of that is because there’s f-all else for the kids to do?
Dana
A friend of mine was trying to put into words what she and our friends did in high school. He was active in football and other school activities. Eventually she settled on “loitering”.
Cerberus
At least 98%.
Jed!
Really? I heard it was the other way around. Teens have been the target audiences for lots of mall retailers for a while, but teen shopping is on the decline, and malls have suffered with that. http://time.com/money/3660041/teens-millennials-clothing-wet-seal/
Shiro
Yeah, our town’s last real indoor mall is about to get closed for…many, many reasons, not least because about a third of the stores have been empty for months if not years
metropotamian
Oh yeah, because those make PERFECT sense in the midwest where the prime shopping season is during the cold months. You hope it’s actually cold enough for snow at that point, because walking back to your car is pretty loaded down with packages is great fun in the Nov-Dec rain. /sarcasm
(can you tell I loathe those stupid things? At least regular malls made sense: you could shop all those stores and NOT be out in the elements.)
Needfuldoer
Nobody wants 80s-style interior malls anymore. They’re all getting replaced by those “phony main street” malls. You know, the ones that look like a small town square lost in a a sea of crossover SUVs.
Derek
Sandwiched between two enormous parking garages hidden just out of view.
metropotamian
(my reply above was supposed to be to Needfuldoer, so
Kathleen
I grew up in rich suburbia and I have never heard a more apt description.
me
You don’t know small. The town where I went to high school had a sign at the road (note THE road) that said population plus or minus 100.The school secretary once got a call from some supplier asking where the school was. She told them 101 S. Lincoln(a made up address to tell fedex and ups). They asked again and she told them the same. Then they said,” No, where in Oklahoma are you?” A bus driver there related this-some delivery company wanted a physical address-which we didn’t have. So she asked her- how close are you to the highway? Several miles. What color is your house? White. What color are the other houses around? White. What’s around your house? Cows. And do you know what she asked me then, she asked me. Yep. What color are the cows!
Leorale
I think I need a comedic relief comic.
Bagge
Quick, Becky, say something about… how growing up sucks and how your childhood will gradually loose is magic.
OK, shit, Walky! Walky, say something about… your strained relationship with your sister and parental favoritism.
um…
Disloyal Subject
Dina, say something about… your insecurities about your awesome girlfriend not being here right now.
Fuck it; Carla, Malaya, or Mike, tell someone they’re an asshole and why.
Dana
Just to be an asshole, Mike does nothing.
modulusshift
Mike would probably go compliment someone and then glare at someone else who expected him to be an asshole out of their own small minded ness.
Kryss LaBryn
Sorry; Mike’s drunk.
Falling Star
Who drank him?
Disloyal Subject
A coalition of moms.
Benjy
For a nickel.
Cephalo the Pod
When I first saw panel 2 in the previews, I thought Joyce’s parents were waking Joyce up and they were about to do something awful.
Stephen R. Bierce
*plays America’s “A Horse With No Name” on the public address speakers*
Stephen R. Bierce
*followed by David & David’s “Swallowed By The Cracks”*
Falling Star
*plays Enya’s “A Day Without Rain”*
Boltizar
The pain of growing up. You have the means to do just about anything you wanted to as a kid, but you still don’t get to.
TJ Pittsburgh
Soil erosion, and not the random sinkholes that could swallow you whole and kill you in minutes?
Dana
Sarlacc pits.
Disloyal Subject
Those don’t actually kill you until about a millenium goes by. Something about weak stomach acid that somehow prevents aging or starvation.
No Name
The random sinkholes were caused by the soil erosion, which in turn was caused by the excessive foot traffic. Of course, if those two decide to break the law and trespass anyway, $20 bucks says they fall in a sinkhole and have to get rescued by the Browns.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Nah, Dina steps out from behind a bush and tosses them a rope.
Romanticide
this is just not a good weekend isn’t it…
Falling Star
she’ll be needing stitches
[I’M SORRY]
Mr. Mendo
Do it, Joyce! Complete your turn to the Dark Side!
Marsupial
Bonus trivia: Mt. Baldy spent a few years with just a few patches restricted due to the erosion, then a sinkhole swallowed a kid (he lived) and they decided it’d be safest to just close it entirely
Tan
Forget hurricanes and earthquakes. When THE LAND IS SWALLOWING CHILDREN, the local community needs to reexamine what it has been doing to anger God.
sjmcc13
Problem is they are likely to double down on what they are doing wrong, and scapegoat something else that unrelated.
Strangeshapes
This strip made me think of all the “don’t bust the crust!” national park signs to protect the cryptobiotic soil. Now I want to go hike.
Dean