Sex. Minus the “deeply personal.” Well, minus the “deeply.”

McChickens and McDoubles burgers both being on the dollar menu. It wasn’t that it was even good, but it was something my brother and I bonded over snacking on after midnight for years when we lived at home still.

I know both exist still, but it’s not the same. The value is just gone and so went our little cheap late-night snack ritual.

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.

mh150 sunglasses from decathlon. Wayfarer shape but they fit my rather large head just fine and I liked the colours. They were cheap (£10) so it didn’t matter so much if I lost or broke them. They were mirrored.

For about 6 years I relied on them and now I need to find a new brand or supplier.

I wish we could roll back the last 30 years and have a do over. Everything is shit anymore.

Altoids Sours, specifically the mango ones. Those were my absolute jam. Probably for the best, in regards to the structural integrity of my hard palate.

In-N-Out pink lemonade. They switched to fake sugar and it just isn’t as refreshing as it used to be.

The city made my grandparents cut down their weeping willow because it was taller than the electrical lines. That tree was like 40 years old and massive. Then they cut down all of the willows at the city park to build in a stupid marina. We used to have willows.

This is just stupid of me, but I hate how they changed the grocery store I had been going to for a decade. Everything’s there, just in a different place. It has been over a year and I’m still not over it.

I miss incandescent Christmas lights from the 70s.

the colors they had were warm and magical.

you could go down the street at night and the whole neighborhood was filled with this technicolor dream rainbow that you just can’t make anymore.

A certain stuffed animal I had when I was a kid. It got lost in one of the numerous moves in my life. It was worn and creased and it’s eye were cracked but it was special.

I’ve lost so much which would be considered deeply personal that none of it matters anymore, but you know what I don’t miss? Fucking fast food. Sounds like a giant ad in here.

Dead pets. Miss em. Wish they could have stayed with me forever.

Playing in a band. It’s never been easier to play on my own, and in some ways I think it’s hard to be in a band since it involves a lot of compromise. But I do miss the feeling of regularly playing and making music with friends.

Mechanical fountain soda machines with free refills. This stuff costs like 2 cents and is always the best way to drink soda, but they seem to be dying out and disappearing.

Playing video games with friends. As I get older and tastes diverge it feels hard to get a group together to play games. It’s even more rare to play games together in the same room, staying up late into the night.

Finally, I miss that feeling that life is ahead of me and the ability to focus on dreaming and thinking about the future. As I get older, a lot more stuff is in the rear view mirror, the possibilities of the future seem more limited, and it’s easy to look back and question how you spent all that time in the past. I get more sad and scared thinking about the future, even though I’m sure that good things will happen too.

The Choco Taco, rip

Hudson’s department stores. It was an upscale regional chain comparable to Macy’s or Marshall Fields. The buildings themselves still mostly exist, but the remaining ones got converted into Macy’s years ago.