The "Teen Dance Club" was one of those good ideas "in theory" that blows up during execution. As a kid, we had a suburban business that provided exactly that.

The "Teen Dance Club" was one of those good ideas "in theory" that blows up during execution. As a kid, we had a suburban business that provided exactly that. Unfortunately, many of the parents of children who you'd want to have patronizing your Teen Dance Club are parents who won't allow their children to hang out at any place that has the appearance of being a "club". This leaves the rest of the kids. And those kids cost more money to serve than they provide in profits. This club did not serve alcohol, but from personal experience, alcohol/weed were not hard to come by. People would throw shots of hard liquor into the $5.00 cokes, there were regular "fights" usually originating from some barely-past-puberty-knob deciding some other kid was looking in the general direction of the female to which said knob was attracted. This is a problem at most businesses catering to teenagers, unfortunately. But it's more of a problem at certain kinds of businesses. We have three skating rinks within about 20 miles (all were closed and not sure all survived). One of them was around when I was a kid and there were occasional problems, then, but really nothing compared to what I saw at one of the two "Teen Clubs" I visited. I think part of it is that rinks (roller/ice) cater to families and teenagers. I have 4 kids. If we're out and some teenager is misbehaving, the words "knock it off" have been known to fly out of my mouth with immediate effect. It doesn't matter that there's a large number of unsupervised teenagers, the number of parents -- especially ones that aren't uncomfortable stepping into things -- offsets the grief the "bad teens" can create for everyone else. I hear ya, though. We used to hang out at malls, rinks, hell we had a whole abandoned stadium that we could roller blade on for $5 on the weekends[0]. Now the few malls that remain are outdoors, which is awesome when it's 16 outside... it's as if they're trying to get me to buy everything online. We have a laser-tag place that feeds you and let you play unlimited from 8:00-midnight for $20[1] and a few others, but they're all closed for the moment. It is awful for kids right now. [0] The Pontiac SilverDome actually rented out skates/inlines and let you roller blade around the interior walkway. Even when it was busy it was hard to tell because of the wide walkways designed to serve depressed Lion's fans. [1] Oddly it was owned by a local (Christian) cult run by a chiropractor; I took my kids there nearly every weekend of the winter for two years and everyone who patronized the place, teenagers, kids and adults, all enjoying themselves and never an issue. The only hint about the religion of the owners was that they played Christian Pop/Rock over the speakers -- makes me wonder if blasting Jesus music calms teenagers? :)