What's left at Waterside? Popcorn, Mylar and 6-foot fish.

Six-year-old girls probably dream about places like the Waterside Festival Marketplace.

Maybe each night when they lay their heads on their pillows and talk of Disney world and giant sundaes and gum balls and oversized fish that play instruments, their parents whisper sweetly: "Silly girl, why go to Orlando when you can stay here? We can do all those things at Waterside."

Ahh, Waterside. Built along the Norfolk waterfront in 1983, Waterside has been a wildly popular gathering spot, a home to family restaurants and shops, then later to kiosks and nightclubs and bars. It's still home to more than a dozen businesses, but now past its heyday, it's become an albatross for its city owners.

Maybe all along you could see past the bars and restaurants and newsstands and sporting goods stores and recognize Waterside for what it really was.

But more likely, you - like me - have been blind. So for no other reason than to get out of the office, you wander down to Waterside for lunch one day and what you find surprises you.

Everyone knows restaurants have closed. Bars have been shut out. Shops have moved. The city has studied and studied again and studied again what to do with the place. But now it seems even a little emptier, and maybe a little more like Barbie was the interior decorator. Think of it as Malibu Marketplace.

When you look at its core, what's left today is a place where only a 6-year-old girl would be happy.

Or maybe it's the kind of place where adults with a dollar-store budget imagine a 6-year-old girl would be happy.

Let's start with the fish. They stand watch over the main concourse, 6 feet tall and glittery.

They are wearing derby hats and playing home-found instruments - like the handsaw. Somewhat trippy, they are crowd-pleasers, created in 1998, but the artwork has never seemed so prevalent. When I stopped by Waterside earlier this week, white-haired tourists and teenagers alike were posing with them.

It's hard to believe there were once fights here, especially violent fights that escalated to shootings - in large part because it's hard to imagine adults once hung out here.

Two giant statues block the escalator entrances. One is a menacing 7-foot ice cream sundae with a cherry on top. The other is of some kind of harp that has been given a face.

Near those statues is a store that features an old-fashioned popcorn machine out front and sells dozens of mylar balloons that are oh-so-very-shiny and pink ballerina outfits and construction worker costumes. The shop has a perfect, self-explanatory name: "Popcorn and Balloon Palace."

Take note also of Blue Bunny ice cream, the pizza shop, a giant hamburger floating from the ceiling (accompanied by a rack of ribs), two photo booths and the Johannes Kepler well that demonstrates physics as a coin rolls to its fate.

Little of this is new, just more visible now that so much else is gone.

Without the scores of people and the attention of chain bars and restaurants, you also notice an attraction that has gained prominence: the gum balls.

Waterside has become a gum-ball Dubble Bubble mecca. The former hub of Norfolk nightlife is home to 80 gum-ball machines, 69 of which sell gum or candy. The remaining 11 hawk temporary tattoos and stickers and other nonsense.

Pick your favorite color. Pink, dark blue, red, light red, light blue, orange, lime green, dark green. It doesn't matter. Apple Cinnamon. Black Cherry. Very Cherry. They've got 'em all.

The machines are run for charity. Bubble gum is a favorite for vending machine dealers because it is incredibly cheap and can sell for a high markup.

For more than an hour, I sat and watched the machines. On two occasions visitors stopped, studied their choices, walked around the machines twice, then deposited a quarter.

Of course, I bought one as well. Two, actually. Watermelon and cherry.

I chewed and chewed and chewed, my mouth wide open to leverage all the power it could to break the gum ball's will.

It struck me that Waterside today has become like another product: a giant Tootsie Pop of sorts. Indecipherable on the outside, chewy Dubble Bubble at the center.

Waterside was built to help spur downtown development. But perhaps the most prominent feature of the first floors is a pyramid of machines that sell one of the most inexpensive items imaginable: the gum ball.

Earlier this week, I kept working the candy over in my mouth, trying to break it, trying to extract the last remnants of flavor. Eventually, I spit it out, ready to move to the next thing.

Soon this bizarre phase in Waterside's history likely will fade away, like a gum ball that's lost a child's attention.

Mike Gruss, (757) 446-2277, mike.gruss@pilotonline.com, PilotOnline.com/gruss