pay for play? first reactions to Studio Grow

My car is finally up and running. I took advantage of this because I don't know how long it will last! ... Soluna and I headed to Studio Grow in Berkeley yesterday!

In the past few weeks I decided I am going to start a business or at least get serious about the possibility... I'm thinking of doing some kind of mama/baby business (although Ben keeps insisting beer needs to be involved in some way). Soluna and I are doing our research and hitting up important spots of interest.

Studio Grow is kind of a baby/toddler play club. It's not a sports club, a play club. There are rooms for crawling babies, pretend-play, art, dance, sport-like equipment, a parent lounge, a dining room, etc. Each room offers something unique and stimulating for parents and babies. They also have daily activities like story-time, music and parachute play.

It's an interesting concept. Parents actually pay for themselves ($7/day) and for the baby ($7/day if older than 1 years old) to spend time here. PAY FOR PLAY! There are also monthly memberships. Three major reflection questions came to mind after our visit:

1. What happened to organic community formation? I mean, some of the draw for places like these is that you can go here and meet other moms and their babies. Are people not meeting folks at the grocery store or the playground anymore and inviting folks over to their home?

2. When and who decided it was fine to pay for this kind of stuff?? I am not familiar with this community of mamas who pay for this kind of stuff. I had never HEARD of places like this from family or friends. You have to be a pretty economically advantaged mama to justify the cost of this AND have the time to go here.

3. Where are my mamas of color at?? I don't think I saw one mama of color there, until I looked in the dancing room mirror. Maybe they were at work? Or maybe they have found other spaces.

With all that said. Studio Grow isn't a bad concept. I gotta be real... Soluna had fun here. She played with two other 9 month old babies, crawled all over the place, giggled at the staff and just enjoyed herself. She learned from watching. I don't know if I would consistently pay $7 or $14 for something like this, but I imagine that on some rainy gloomy days on the horizon, we may splurge a little and enjoy.