Back in MY day...

[rbcp]

A couple months ago I made this entry detailing the suckiness of things in the 1980's.  I want to hear your own stories of how things used to be, whether it's from 5 years ago or 50 years ago.

Here's something I was thinking about earlier this week which might not be known to a lot of you - back in the 80's, smoking wasn't such a criminal act.  People smoked anywhere they wanted to.  Even indoors.  In line at a grocery store, in offices, in cubicles and in restaurants.  When I was a kid, it was impossible to avoid second hand smoke.  And smoking being banned anywhere was rare.  Some restaurants would have smoking sections and non-smoking sections, but it was still almost always in the same room.

It was also simple for kids to buy cigarettes.  Forging a note from your parents/relatives/neighbors was all it took.  In some cases, just claiming that your neighbor sent you there to buy cigarettes was enough.  In grade school, my brother and I bought cigarettes from a store down the block all the time.  And at a gas station a few more blocks away.  Occasionally we would get denied, but it was rare.  And if everyone denied us, all we'd have to do is go to the laundromat since they had a cigarette vending machine.  It was a little more expensive there, but it was a completely automated way for kids of any age to purchase cigarettes.

In 1993, I guess they'd just passed some anti-smoking laws in Indianapolis.  A friend and I were walking through the mall and he was smoking a cigarette.  The security guard came over and told him he couldn't smoke in the mall anymore.  Both of us couldn't believe this.  Nevermind that this friend of mine was 17 so it was technically illegal for him to be smoking anyway.  But to have someone tell us we couldn't smoke in a public place such as a mall was unheard of at the time.

[trevelyn]

hrmm, I feel like talking a lot about the 80's..  i din see stuff like that in the 80's.  I spent most of it indoors, at home, inclasses, in museums, or at catholic school.  I kinda wish i were your age sometimes cos you got a more adult point of view on things.  I remember ronald reagan, i remember Gorge seniors innuaguration, watching the Challeger blow up, the berlin wall fall, voltron, he-man, garfield, toys'rus commercials, Hills commercials, being in my moms car listening to the music at the time (that really takes me back in an emo way) George Michael, Crowded house, 10cc, berlin, foreigner, johhny hates jazz.. etc. 

My favorite part of the 80's I'd say was watching Molly Ringwald on tv. My god, she was blazing hot to me.  heh, i was born in 1980, so i was like 8 or 9 when i saw her on breakfast club, (took a few years for movies to come onto network tv it seemed back then) and just, was in love.  i remember seeing people smoke in malls and theaters, but not as much anymore.  Ive grown accustomed to the new laws of people not being able to light up in public. 

I lived in the city mostly, and remember little things about the city.  We had a nice house with a grand overlook view from Mount Washington in Pittsburgh that was sweet.  I was Downtown rarely as i said i was hooked to the TV mostly or in school. But i can remember the smells of the exhaust from the buses we rode, and my father was a stock broker in the tallest building here.  So sometimes i would get the chance to go all the way up in the elevators and look down through his office window.  heh, i feel old now. 

I remember seeing Beetle Juice in the theater, Ghostbusters, gremlins, etc.  I actually liked the 80's.  heh.  MTV was changing people with videos like Twisted Sister "We're Not Gonna Take it." and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"  Anime was HUGE and consumed a huge portion of our cartoons, even on Nickelodeon, with Belle and Sebastian, Voltron, etc.  And there was the show "Pinwheel" and "You can't do that on TV." 

My catholic school awarded me a lot cos i was a good artist they said, and i got to go to art school for free at Carnegie Mellon University as a kid, and also spent a bunch of time in the Carnegie museum.  I was enrolled in weird childrens history classes about egypt and even went to Penn state for computer classes with my father.  Most of that changed though when he was disassociated from our family. bastard. 

anyways, i don't see things now like i did then.  When the 90's came in with Nirvana i was in limbo.  I still hate nirvana, i dont care if he shot himself or not that bad was awful.  heh, When Weezer finally gave birth to the Rentals is when i finally liked music again.  Everyone dressed to impress, no matter how bad they looked, somehow girls could pull off the cutest things.  The 80's opened a door of fashion in my mind that made me see clothes differently.  Like, when i see chicks from the 80's around when blondie accidentally started punk music, and girls are dressed like cindy lauper from the Girls just wanna have fun video, i still think they look hot.  But like, someone older or younger like my dad or my younger friends, would be like "wtf?" 

Iunno, my mom was in love with Magnum P.I. and Don Johnson from Miami Vice.  So i grew up watching those shows (she pwnt the tv at night)  and i learned about drugs and cool private investigation tips from those two shows..  hehe, My perception has completely changed since the 80's, obviouosly as i aged, but, i wont forget them at all. <3 80's.. 

[MIB]

From what I remember from the 80's, ,

• A bus ride was 35 cents
• A payphone call only cost a quarter
• Cable only had 36 channels

There was only one HBO and one Cinemax. I don't remember if Showtime was around then. Oh yeah Prizm was another pay channel.

The price of gas was under $1 and was that way until the first Iraq war.

The computers I used in 6th grade were the old Apples with a giant keyboard with the green screen monitor sitting on top of it and a 5.25" floppy drive next to it.

I also remember smoking being permitted everywhere. A mall I used to go to had ashtrays through out. And I purchased a pack or to for relatives with no questions asked. Same thing with lottery tickets. I remember penny candy at the local convenience store.

Speaking of MTV, remember when they used to play music videos?

MIB

[rogueclown]

i'll tell a story from the eighties, although most of my seminal stories come from the nineties.  it was my first real story of disappointment, my first realisation that the "stars" weren't necessarily any better than the rest of us.  i was six years old.

in kindergarten, i didn't know any of the songs of the day.  my father listened to Oldies 100.7 and his record collection from the sixties, and so that's what i listened to as well.  it was the only music i knew, and wasn't aware of anything that had come out later than 1973 or so. 

the Oldies station had Morning Music Trivia every morning.  my father would always know the answer, he'd let me call in, and we'd win all sorts of radio station paraphernalia.  our pantry was full of Oldies coffee mugs, and my drawer was full of Oldies t-shirts that i'd use as nightshirts.  they ended up having to institute a policy saying one person can only win once every thirty days, because my father and i were bringing home so much radio station swag.

the DJ's name was Walt Howard, and he had a mellifluous voice...just perfect for radio.  he'd announce the songs, and he'd do the trivia.  i'd listen to his voice on the radio and on the phone when i called in, and my six-year-old self thought it was fascinating  i just knew he had to be gorgeous, youthful, and vibrant--just like his radio voice sounded.  in my head, he looked like a game show host.  he was a local radio star. his voice had star quality, and everything about him had to, right?

the radio station started promoting an event at Showbiz Pizza [a place just like Chuck E. Cheese's, which was eventually bought out by them].  i loved Showbiz, and i loved the Oldies station.  i begged my parents to take me to Showbiz that day; the special guest would be Walt Howard, the host of my morning show.  finally my parents relented and decided to take the family to Showbiz for lunch that Saturday, so i could go to the radio station event.

i looked around for Walt Howard.  surely it wasn't that gruff, grumpy old man chain-smoking in front of the restaurant, the man who didn't look happy to be there, the man who was complaining to the radio staffers and didn't seem to want to deal with anyone.

but, my parents told me it was him.  i walked up to him, asked him with wide eyes, hoping for a negative response..."are you Walt Howard?"  he was.  my heart sank, but i tried to make the best of it.  i told him how much i loved his show, and that i was that kid who kept calling in and winning Morning Music Trivia far too much.  he wasn't rude, but he seemed a little annoyed.

i stayed away from him for the rest of the day, except for when he ran the Bozo Buckets tournament.  i put on a happy face, i thanked my parents profusely for letting me come out and meet my radio idol, and i didn't let anyone know how disappointed i was.  but, it was a drag.  i learned that just because someone was famous didn't make them friendly.  i learned that just because i liked someone's personality on the radio, the television, or the stage...it didn't mean we'd get along in real life.  it was a hard lesson to learn at the age of six, but at least i learned it before i ever let hero worship get me carried away.

[rbcp]

From what I remember from the 80's, ,

• A bus ride was 35 cents
• A payphone call only cost a quarter
• Cable only had 36 channels

• I remember candy bars being 26 cents - I always asked my parents for a quarter and a penny to go to the store.
• Cigarettes being $1.50 for major brands and even less for generics.
• Gas being as low as 69 cents per gallon.
• Pay phones only charging 25 cents.  Then 35 cents for a few years before they went to 50 cents.
• Home computers in the Radio Shack catalog costing $5,000.

[murd0c]

I remember being pissed when the Prevue Channel rolled over the channel I was waiting to check and I would have to wait another 7 or so minutes for it to come back.

[Zazen]

I remember when the preview channel would disappear for a few seconds and show badly rendered pictures of houses for sale. They hadn't figured out how to split the screen back then.

[rbcp]

All the cable channels that we didn't pay for had the pictures scrambled, but you could still listen to them.  This included the porn channel. 

[delysid]

Sometimes you could even make out the pictures because for a min the porn channels would clear up and the porn star would just be blue.

[rogueclown]

i remember when MTV and VH1 played music videos.

they were on their way down when i started watching, in the mid-nineties.  but, i still remember things like Insomniac Music Theatre, or even random blocks of music videos in the afternoon.  best of all, i remember 120 Minutes, with Matt Pinfield.  when i was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen...that's how i got most of my infusions of new music.  sometimes random songs by unknown bands would play on there, and then become the Next Big Thing: case in point, "Inside Out" by Eve 6.  sometimes the bands would stay unknown, and it would break my heart because the song was so good: case in point, "Monsterside" by Addict.

i miss 120 Minutes a lot.  when that went off MTV, i lost all hope in MTV forever.  it was officially dead to me.

[mr_doc]

I enjoyed sending neighborhood children to buy cigarettes for me. No note was ever provided or needed.

[Tachyon]

The majority of my early nineties memories that stand out are of how much cooler TV seemed to be. Maybe it was all the sugar or something, but looking back I wonder if some of the people who made the shows and commercials for YTV (that's the kids channel in Canada, at least when I was growing up) were on LSD.

I remember Wendy's, McDicks, and pretty much everybody else had awesome claymation commercials with shit flying everywhere and all kinds of bizarre things (the Weird Al Show theme song kinda sums up everything I loved about early morning 90s kids TV for me).

I still remember the first time I ever saw my mom using our old 386 to telnet to reserve books at the library a few blocks away in DOS and realizing exactly what a big thing I was witnessing in my own way.

I remember what a big fucking deal it was when we were first introduced to the WORLD FUCKING WIDE WEB in grade three. Nineties web pages were the shit. I remember learning how to write HTML by looking at other people's code, saving it and opening it on the local machine and changing bits of it to see what happened.

I remember carrying around a walkman and a backpack full of tapes. I'm not sure if I ever owned my own discman I think I may have skipped that one.

[rbcp]

I remember what a big fucking deal it was when we were first introduced to the WORLD FUCKING WIDE WEB in grade three. Nineties web pages were the shit. I remember learning how to write HTML by looking at other people's code, saving it and opening it on the local machine and changing bits of it to see what happened.

I remember el_jefe trying to convince me how cool the world wide web was in 1995.  He failed at convincing me that it was cooler than BBSing but I figured it out on my own a year later.  It took me forever to get Winsock working correctly so that I could view pages in Netscape.  You could look at your Winsock window while you were online and see the internet flying by in code.  Setting up a computer for internet was a pain in the ass.  We used Real Player to play our 160 x 120 videos and music.  AOL and IE sucked and it was cool to hate them both.


Here's a nice look at the 70's:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8JEoFzvxiyI&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/8JEoFzvxiyI&rel=1</a>

[jx]

When I started smoking, cigarettes were $2.35/pack. Now they're 4something (I buy cartons.) Anyone in Cook County, Illinois? Last I heard, they were $7something/pack. Even more in New York City, from what I've heard.

In no particular order:

- Betamax

- When you used an actual key to lock out cable channels (The movie channels were repeated at the higher end of the channel lineup anyway so I'm not sure what the point was. And they only played the same 10 movies over and over. Chariots of Fire, 9 to 5, Breaking Away, The Last Unicorn ( <3 <3 Last Unicorn), The Secret of NIMH)

- Back when there was a reason to excited about the toys in Happy Meals (Remember that LEGO promotion and those plastic boat things) and the other characters (Mayor McCheese, Grimace, Hamburglar, etc) were used in the McDonald's commercials

- I remember the anime Trev. I remember I didn't like the cartoons with the people with funny eyes. 

- Neon colored clothes, jelly bracelets, swatches, scratch and sniff stickers, Cabbage Patch dolls, banana clips, head bands and leg warmers

- Rainbows EVERYWHERE! Seriously, was everyone on acid in the 80's?

- We Are the World, Band-Aid and Hands Across America (After much begging, my parents relented and took their hippy daughter to participate in Hands Across America)

- Cringeworthy bad heavy metal (Guns and Roses and such not included), House music, this awful song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y43yMP_Sa0I)

- Back in the 90's, downloading mp3s on a 19.2 modem from fservs on IRC (Before Napster, etc)

- My dad's head exploding upon the sight of Boy George 

- How I didn't know many of the songs I innocently sang along to as a kid had sexual innuendo (She Bop, Blister in the Sun, for example. Ever see that cartoon about how the internet ruins your childhood by making porn of all your childhood heros? It was kinda like that.  )

- Playing Odell Lake, Oregon Trail etc on the Apple ][ at the library

- The Commodore 64 (SYS64738  ), the disks full of warez my cousin gave us at Christmas and teaching myself BASIC

- Punching half holes in 5.25" floppies to make them double sided

- All the faux chrome used in various graphics (Especially on television)

- Using a 286, Procomm Plus and a 2400 baud modem to call RipCo (ATDT 13125285020)

- Using the SCREEN command on RipCo to bypass the Download:Upload

- Using emergency interrupt to disconnect someone when I wanted to connect to RipCo

- Netscape imploding when attempting to parse Javascript

- The private channels phreak and kkk on AOL

- {s drop.wav

- Busy signals.

- Pranking with three-way calling when it first came out

[Tachyon]

Beavis and Butt-Head, especially the part when they watched MTV. Seinfeld having new episodes.