As a 1980s kid, I had similar experiences. Some bright spark in my northern England smalltown had the idea of bringing together all the families and professiona

As a 1980s kid, I had similar experiences. Some bright spark in my northern England smalltown had the idea of bringing together all the families and professionals and their 8-bit machines and having them all set up on a bunch of trestle tables in some old church hall or scout hut. It was wild. I remember seeing a Macintosh for the first time and freaking out with excitement. There were also genuine red flags though in a less well supervised setting. Some dodgy bloke with a little shop in the back of a rundown mall created a "community" of computer enthusiasts which turned out to be a front for some extremely unsavoury "grooming" type activities.