RIP Champions Fun Center: A Nostalgic Eulogy

First they came for my Starship 9, and I did not speak out —
because: Netflix.

Then they came for my skating rink, and I did not speak out —
because I no longer couples skated to K-Ci & JoJo songs.

Then they came for our Chuck E. Cheese and I did not speak out —
Because I have always secretly thought Pasqually was a terrible drummer.

Then they came for Champions and there was no one left to speak for me.

— Ancient German Poem

Getting older means realizing that places that meant something to you as a kid may not exist in your adult world.

That these places are finite and so are we.

It means realizing that the place we used to go to for a sweltering 18-holes of July mini-golf and the pitched naval battles of the bumper boat tank, might not be there for the next generation.

It means that the memories of that one pinball machine that always glitched and gave you an extra game if you shook it just the right way, and the way you knew no one would see you shaking the machine because you were buried way in the upstairs corner of the arcade where no one except die hard Q*bert fans ever went.

They tell you that nothing lasts forever from the moment you first learn about the concept of time.

But, it’s hard to wrap your head around the terrifying notion of human impermanence when you’re trying to shoot a coin through a slot to win 30 tickets.

And when you’re jumper is utterly wet and you just noticed a cute girl from your class at Everett Elementary watching you shoot on the mechanically moving basketball hoop, you truly feel like this place and your life will stretch on past eternity.

On April 16, 2021 Champions Fun Center announced they would be closing their business permanently after 20 years in the game on their Facebook page. The arcade/Go-Kart track/bowling alley/bumper boats/mini-golf/legitimately anything I’ve ever loved is no more.

Another casualty of Covid-19 and the struggles to keep particular kinds of places open as demographics age out and kids’ interests shift.

It was, frankly, a kick right in the nostalgia.

There are places that kind of tug at your core, places that seem to invisibly grab ahold of you with some kind of magnetic childhood longing that reels you in as surely as a tractor beam in an old sci-fi movie.

You feel that dull ache of aging and that slight twinge of longing for the forgotten freedom of your youth? That’s Champions.

That’s a place where everyone in Lincoln went to for at least one 10th or 11th birthday. A place where everyone got kid-sweaty, slid around in the impossibly unclean plastic labyrinth of their play place, and then stumbled over, exhausted and fully buzzing with pre-teen endorphins to grab some overpriced daVinci’s pizza.

While my initial reaction to another of my childhood monuments closing down (*Author’s note: RIP Downtown Amigos) is to howl at the moon like a wounded werewolf that just caught some silver shrapnel in the ass, I try instead to think of that joy that place brought me and how I can replicate that feeling — albeit in an entirely different…everything that my son is experiencing as a kid — for my own children.

I remember reading years ago that some of the stars that we see in the sky aren’t actually active stars. They burned out years ago, but are so distant from our planet that we’re only just now able to see their light.

(*Example: Star 1 is 10 million light years away. It stopped shining 5 Million years ago, but it takes so long for the light to travel that full distance, all the way to earth, that we still see it here, even if it’s actually not active anymore. I don’t know if this makes sense, writing it but I do know that this aside is taking way too long. Sorry.)

Maybe that’s how our memories will be. Maybe that’s how I want our memories to be.

Sure, Champions Fun Center — and all the youthfulness of its heyday — may have burned out. But that light is still getting here in my own galaxy and I’ll make sure my son gets to see it.