By SHARON KENNEDY WYNNE, Times Staff Writer
Published October 23, 2005
The old Northwest Recreation Center gymnasium soon will be coming down.
It's where I learned to play Capture the Flag and dodgeball, and back then they let kids jump on trampolines.
Our softball team of 10- to 12-year-olds was called the Sweathogs, so that dates me among Welcome Back, Kotter fans.
For some 50 years now, kids have spent their summers at camp there, learned karate after school or pounded the polished wood floor during heated pickup basketball games.
Pretty soon, the graceful curve of its onion-shaped oak rafters at 58th Street and 22nd Avenue N will meet with the hard crunch of a wrecking ball.
The new building, which will have its grand opening at a ribbon cutting Nov. 5, doesn't seem to hold the same warmth and charm.
Maybe because it's all hard angles and air-conditioned chilliness. Or maybe it's because it hasn't yet echoed with the squeals of children.
We are looking for our readers' memories of the gymnasium, built in 1957.
It has been the place for first summer jobs for teenage camp coaches, first romances for their young charges and the place new moms have worked off that baby weight.
Sensibilities and liability may have changed the games people play, but the play continues.
So we ask you: What do you remember most about that old gym?
