re: Happy 2023 to OT - "Mecca" AKA Monroe the GOAT CITY to grow up in LA (PIC heavy)

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Was it The Toggery?

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that was on 18th.

i remember this place sold perry ellis and really high end suits. Kimmel Burnley with his red hair was like the sole employee for years. small store dead center of the shopping mall between tg&y and the 7-11.

i measured my high school experience by the arcades around town.

- there was the one next to the car wash across from Gibsons/Howard Bros
- campus rec
- nickelodeon in mall
- small one next to gene cox when he moved next door to cascios
- one on 18th street near the pharmacy w/ the great burgers
- one in the little A frame swiss chalet in west monroe
- one in the west monroe mall
- then of course showbiz pizza arcade by NLU and the one on louisville next to Sunflower.

---- time passes ---
- pecanland mall arcade

thats alot of arcades for a small town.

Anyone ever visit TAC Amusement off Washington? They were very busy for a long time reparing pinball machines and arcade games.

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When I worked at the Twin City Fields, I remember we called everyone that came in after 5pm until we closed at 6 "the toothpick crowd" because they were all walking down from the Picadilly....

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that picadilly was the jam. didnt mind the lines stretching all the way to the courtyard because it moved right along and i knew i was about to get the best damn food ever.

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Sparkie or Coach McDuffie was cool. Had him for PE in JH. He showed us a video of him wrestling a bear

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That wasnt Sparkie. That was Mr. Cleveland. The Principal

My father would enjoy a lot of these pics.



The GOAT cheeseburgers in Monroe, only picture I could find of Aron's pharmacy & grill is of when a car drove thru it.

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In it's final days I think termites holding hands is what kept the original Melvyn's from collapsing and holy shite they got some mileage out of those menus. That had to be a health violation just handing them to customers, but yes, their steaks were glorious. Maybe not Doe's glorious but pretty damn good.

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From what I've heard over the years, they only leased that building and the property owner for years was wanting to tear everything and build something else. Melvyn's was able to be the last holdout because of its popularity, but eventually even that wasn't enough.

So much of that end of North 18th is so incredibly different from what it was 20-30 years ago.

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Had no idea that Twin City Mall was so nice at one time. It was pretty bare as I was growing up

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Twin City Mall was the shite back in its day. If you were going shopping in Monroe, the mall was likely one of your destinations.

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Where was the moon burger????

For some reason I don't remember it.

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i have verrrrrrrry fleeting memories of it so much that i almost thought i had made it up.

it was in the parking lot of eastgate near the superslide and gibsons.

the food was delivered by a robot on a conveyor belt.

honestly i think they packed it in by the late 60s or 1970 so it would have been among your very oldest memories if you ever went there.

still unable to find a pic of toto's hamburgers. the only place my dad would let us eat after church once a month..and only because the burgers were 10 cents.

cheap sunovabitch

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Twin City Mall was the shite back in its day. If you were going shopping in Monroe, the mall was likely one of your destinations

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When the Pier 1 opened up there where Safeway was, you'd have thought we'd really moved up in the world!!!

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That wasnt Sparkie. That was Mr. Cleveland. The Principal

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Yeah, Sparky is my cousin and I never heard of him wrestling a bear. However in a somewhat related note, before he turned pro as a boxer his dad, who was his trainer, would take him to a prison in Arkansas to box the inmates. I think he was still in high school.