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Old 11-24-2013, 09:21 PM
 
Location: Living on the Coast in Oxnard CA
16,289 posts, read 32,219,435 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Votre_Chef View Post
I don't know if anyone said this or not, but brown paper bags in grocery stores.

I didn't see plastic backs until the late 80s and that's when they began to ask you "paper or plastic?" Now, they don't even ask anymore.

Grocery store was always brown paper backs back in the day, and they were strong.
Some cities have went back to just paper bags. We were in Malibu last weekend and you can't find plastic bags anymore. We were at a grocery store and a pharmacy and both placed our items in paper bags. Other cities have outlawed bags all together. You have to buy the reusable ones or bring your own.

 
Old 05-25-2014, 02:37 PM
 
1 posts, read 1,688 times
Reputation: 12
I've always wondered this stuff also. I was born in 82 in saginaw, mi so it was a gm city. My dad got at job at gm at the age of 19 and retired at 51 ( not by choice). But everyone he grew up with said friends. They are all like extended family. Now that gm closed up shop here the city is pretty sad. When 711 and Burger King close, you know it's bad. Idk I remember play clothes and play shoes. I would get whipped if I played in my good clothes lol. Now days kids don't go outside. And now days I don't think people care for each other anymore. I don't know my neighbors. Growing up we never even locked our doors or took the keys out our cars. But we knew the neighbors were watching over our stuff not just to take it when we leave. For me 1990 changed. Gangs and drugs tool over and with that guns are close. Probably 60% of my friends have been shot or killed. And most were just at the wrong place. But to me I wish I could've grown up in the 60s and 70s.. One more thing. I have traveled the US and it seems the Midwest got hit the hardest. It's like people don't have any values anymore. Some say it's because the generation grew up without fathers because the prisons really blew up.
 
Old 05-28-2014, 06:53 PM
 
2,563 posts, read 3,661,577 times
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I was born in 1951, and, for the most part, I have nothing but good memories of the 70s and 80s. I'd go back in a nano second. I guess the biggest change during those years was the advent of the PC. It revolutionized the world in more ways than one.

But for a two-year stint in the army, I managed to stay in school during the entire decade of the 70s. I guess I missed all of the recessions, and the inflation of the late 70s didn't affect me all that much except that they kept raising my tuition every year and that caused a few problems. Still, I had a blast. NYC was great in the mid-70s, and Southern California was also a blast after that. Unlike today, both places were very much affordable.

The 80s were a different story for a number if reasons. Ronald Reagan and his policies belong in another thread, I guess. Otherwise, technology was the big story of the 1980s. I think I had a personal computer as early as 1982 or 1983, but back then the Internet as we now know it didn't really exist. There were dial-up bulletin boards, and CompuServe And Genie. The commercial services charged by the hour, and if you weren't careful, you could get a huge bill at the end of the month. As I recall, I was spending a couple hundred dollars a month, just for online computer time. I think it all paid off in the end, though. I remember trading stocks online as early as 1985? something like that. I made some good money.
 
Old 05-29-2014, 02:56 PM
 
Location: Northern California
2,485 posts, read 3,225,886 times
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The one big difference between 1978 and 1982 was the election of Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy. Remember "Just say no?" The Fun Police were in power.
The great war on the Middle Class and Jobs began in 1981.
 
Old 05-29-2014, 03:58 PM
 
Location: Arizona, The American Southwest
54,477 posts, read 33,779,805 times
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I grew up in the 1970s, and it seems like up until maybe the late 1990s, life was a lot simpler. In the 1970s and the 1980s, Identify Theft was unheard of, no internet, not many people had "Personal Computers", and they were simple.. Mainframe computers were used in the 1970s to process data with punch cards and magnetic tape, 1 GB disk drives were unheard of back then, they had "Disk Packs", large disks that looked like 15" CDs stacked on top of each other in round plastic containers. They were used up until the late 1970s when hermetically-sealed disk drives came about and everyone thought a 512 mega-byte disk drive about the size of your oven was something incredible!

Then came the Personal Computer, with Microsoft DOS in the early 1980s, and you needed a large floppy disk to boot it up, and you stored your files on another large floppy, I believe they were about 6 inches if I remember correctly. I didn't start working in IT until 1986 and smaller computers were starting to replace main-frames. We didn't have to worry about computer viruses, keeping your OS updated with all the security updates, we didn't have to pay companies, like Norton's, for "Annual Subscriptions" to keep computers safe.
 
Old 05-29-2014, 10:52 PM
 
5,816 posts, read 15,858,870 times
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Default Popular culture: television

I'm 58, so I was in my teens and twenties during the '70's.

How can you talk about television in the '70's without a look at All in the Family? Well, you can't. One notable trend in television during the early '70's was the candor with which some shows dealt with subjects which television had previously only hinted at, or had avoided altogether. This breaking of new ground was represented most notably by All in the Family. No other show at the time, if ever, was as totally up front about delving into social issues and politics.

The show was unapologetically politically incorrect, with its candid consideration of social issues which had never found their way into television in the '50's and '60's: sex, which had been dealt with in much more veiled fashion in earlier decades of television; and race, which previously had barely been touched at all. All in the Family very suddenly got into topics which previously had been taboo on television, and dealt with these topics more openly than would most likely be considered acceptable in today's era of political correctness. I mean, there was even at least one scene on the show where a character said "N." And that character was not even Archie.

Speaking of Archie, this show quickly added a term to the popular lexicon, as the term "Archie Bunker" became synonymous with "bigot."

While no other show ripped through the old limits of polite, cozy entertainment television like All in The Family, the early '70's saw a trend in shows about social concerns. You had a show called Room 222, rarely seen in reruns today, but which I recall as a quality show set in a high school, which dealt frequently with the social concerns of teenagers. The socially conscious trend led to doctor shows like Marcus Welby and Medical Center, which showed doctors who often became heavily involved with their patients' personal problems, and cop shows like The Mod Squad and The Rookies which featured socially aware young officers who got involved with the personal problems of people in danger of getting into trouble with the law.

Then there was the new acceptance of shows with many, sometimes mostly, black characters, like Sanford and Son, along with The Jeffersons and Good Times, two shows which not only featured black characters but which also got pretty heavily into social issues faced by black people.

Speaking of social trends depicted on television, it's interesting that I've read occasionally in decades since the '70's that The Mary Tyler Moore show was viewed as groundbreaking because it featured a single woman as its main character. What's interesting is that I don't recall being aware at the time that this was a big deal. Check out reruns of shows from the '50's and '60's and you'll see young, single career women appearing here and there, but what was different about MTM was that such a character was the show's star. I don't recall that anyone made a big deal about this at the time, though, not in the least. MTM was just a new sitcom, one which turned out to be really good. Maybe I missed some talk of a new trend, but I suspect that the later discussion of what a stir MTM supposedly caused is more a case of retrospective assumption that people used to My Three Sons and the last years of The Ed Sullivan show would have found MTM shocking.

Starting around the mid '70's, another trend came along, one that reflected the decade's more open consideration of sex than the veiled ways the subject had been handled on television up until the '70's. This was the phenomenon of the so-called "jiggle" shows, of which the two that stand out most in my memory are Charlie's Angels and Three's Company. Looking back at the silliness in the way the frequently scantily clad Angels hinted at the possibility of sex which never actually ended up happening, and the sophomoric tone of the mildly risque humor on Three's Company, I get kind of a laugh at how innocent all this daring new openness about sex on television sometimes really was.

When it comes to the way '70's television reflected social attitudes of the times, I find it interesting to consider the number of cop shows found on the air in the early and middle part of the decade. You'd think that in the pot-smoking, flared pants, longish hair '70's hangover from the '60's cop shows would have held little interest, but the air was filled with them.

What I find interesting, though, is that many of those shows reflected the fact that the '70's were kind of a diluted extension of the '60's while the decade also saw the beginning of the rightward swing that hit full-force in the '80's. As you got into the '70's there was a funny mix of rebellion and a sort of calming down and return to a certain mild conservatism in response to the tumult of the '60's. In retrospect it seems as if there should have been a huge culture clash going on, but it all somehow flowed pretty smoothly and seemed pretty normal at the time.

And it occurs to me that quite a few of the '70's cop shows reflect this middle ground of a nascent shift from the radicalism of the '60's to the neo-conservatism of the '80's. The very existence of as many crime shows as there were at the time reflects a certain conventional preference in television entertainment. At the same time, it's notable that there were a number of '70's cop shows which hinted at some remnants of the '60's.

Earlier, I've already mentioned The Rookies and The Mod Squad, which featured socially aware young cops who got very involved in the personal concerns of people they dealt with. Then there were the shows with characters who were kind of oddball in the police role: Ironside in a wheelchair; the elderly Barnaby Jones; and Cannon, the obese epicurean.

Still other cop shows featured anti-heroes of sorts: Kojak, the tough loner with a rough-edged compassion; Baretta, who had grown up in a tough urban neighborhood, and exuded in spades what would now be called street cred; McCloud, whose down-home, simple cowboy genius for common sense led him to solve cases by following a laid-back logic, even when this meant going against procedure and driving his by-the-book boss nuts; Columbo, smart and sly and wry, who hid these qualities behind the appearance of an ordinary-Joe, rumpled little man, which caught the bad guys off guard as they expected to easily outsmart this seemingly silly little fellow, until they realized too late that Columbo had them, and all the wealth and power which the show's villains typically possessed would not save them.

While the '70's had shows, like a number of the decade's cop shows, which reflected the decade's mix of attitudes, and others such as All in the Family which broke new ground on the subject matter in television, two shows from the '70's through early '80's period stand out for pioneering the style and format of shows on the small screen:

I've read a description of M*A*S*H as the original "Dramady." You can look back to M*A*S*H any time you think of a show in subsequent years that has combined sitcom humor and serious drama.

Similarly, a '90's-2000's show like E.R., or a more recent feature like Chicago Fire, with their large casts of main characters and several ongoing, sometimes intertwining, story lines continuing across several episodes, trace their roots back to what is sometimes regarded as the first "ensemble" television show, Hill Street Blues. The styles and formats of Hill Street and M*A*S*H may be commonplace today, but they were new and different and daring at the time.

Whether you're considering the candid presentation of sensitive subject matter, television's reflection of social trends, or even innovations in the way television shows are presented, a lot that is taken for granted on the tube today was pioneered in the '70's and early '80's.

Last edited by ogre; 05-29-2014 at 11:05 PM..
 
Old 05-31-2014, 11:41 AM
 
Location: Iowa
3,317 posts, read 4,104,036 times
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Ogre, nice post on 70's TV. I might add a few things about the period of TV history 1975-1985. Altho I liked the late 70's show "Family" because it had Kristy Mcnicole in it (Little Darling), it set off a chain reaction of soapy type shows. Trapper John MD was kind of soapy but I could tolerate it. But then a whole rash of serial soap shows hit the airwaves, spoiling 80's TV, IMO. Starting with SOAP, then building with Dallas, Knots Landing, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, I hated it.

Another thing that turned my stomach a little was those variety shows like Sonny and Cher and Barbara Mandrell. The Gong show was the only variety show I kinda liked back then......the unknown comic guy with brown paper bag on his head was funny, lol. The 80's really went downhill TV wise until you get later in the decade with Star Trek TNG, Roseanne, and beginning of The Simpons. The situation got so much better in the 90's until Survivor came along in 2000, but at least we still had Monk, the Soprano's, and all the great animated shows that followed The Simpsons.

Rockford Files, Magnum PI, Simon and Simon, and most of the cop shows were great, but not TJ Hooker, lol. CHIPS was OK and a nice time capsule show to get a feel for those times, and Hart to Hart (warning....overexposure can be dangerous).

A really great thing they did 70's was bring back game shows with a passion. They rounded up a bunch of B and C actors and used a panel format, and came up with Match Game and Hollywood Squares. They figured out how to bring more people into the fun, Price is Right involved the whole audience as potential players, then Newlywed Game comes along to kick off the idea of whole families going up against each other with Family Feud. So many good game shows around back then I won't list them all, but that was an awesome time for game shows.
 
Old 05-31-2014, 10:38 PM
 
5,816 posts, read 15,858,870 times
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Man, do I agree with Mofford about those primetime soaps, and T.J. Hooker. Those shows were worth the effort to avoid them. That's even with Heather Lockear being in the casts of Hooker and one of the soaps. They weren't worth the waste of time to watch them even with some nice eye candy.

In my earlier post I discussed some of the television shows themselves, and trends in the programs of that era. The daily experience of watching television was also affected by the equipment and infrastructure available at the time. There were still a lot of black-and-white sets around. Some color sets had color that was little off, and that required adjustment with control knobs at the bottom of the set next to the horizontal and vertical hold controls, since the color would sometimes lose its adjustment and slide off into shades of blue, red, or green. To top it off, in the early '70's there were rumors that color sets gave off radiation, so you shouldn't sit too close to them. I have no idea whether there was any truth to the radiation story, but that rumor did make the rounds.

Many families still had only one television during the '70's. Plenty of middle-class families had more than one set, but enough households had only one so that many families had to work out compromises about who got to watch which shows. Having a single set also meant that families would gather together in one room to watch television, instead of always disappearing to their personal spaces all evening.

There was also a lot less of a selection of shows to watch, since cable wasn't around at all in the early '70's, and wasn't commonplace all over the U.S. until maybe the mid '80's. You might guess that the largest cities had cable first, and that it took years for it to reach middle America, but that's not entirely true. I first had cable in 1979. At the time I was living in central Ohio, not far from Columbus. I had heard very little mention of cable anywhere in the U.S. before that time, and I'm going to guess that central OH may have been one of the first areas where it became commonplace. That area often gets new innovations first, or at least it used to, for test-marketing purposes, since the area is, or at least used to be, often about the most average American local region by the numbers. My parents, in the Boston area, didn't get cable until the mid '80's, and it was in the early '80's that I first knew a few people in the Boston area who had cable.

Since most people did not have cable for most of the '70's, that of course really reduced the selection of programs to choose from. You had ABC, NBC, and CBS. PBS was about all there was for educational television, unlike today, when you can choose from the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, the Science Channel, and on and on. Also when I was growing up in the Boston area we had I think maybe four UHF channels. The UHF channels showed some cartoons in the afternoon after kids got home from school, and otherwise mostly movies and reruns. Think of all the cable channels that show old television, and the gazillion cable movie channels. Those four UHF stations were all we had to cover that territory.

Oh yeah, and television didn't run all night, but signed off from around 2:00AM until 5:30 or 6:00 or somewhere in there. Programming for the night would close with the playing of the National Anthem, and then a test pattern would appear on the screen until the morning schedule of shows began.

This much, much more limited selection was kind of a tradeoff when compared with the great variety of shows you can watch now. Yes, we missed out on the great volume of information and entertainment available on the tube today, but you don't miss what you don't have, and what hasn't even been developed yet. The positive tradeoffs were that you didn't get the kind of sensory overload that some people may get now from the difficulty of deciding which one of a seemingly infinite choice of programs to watch, and that there may have been a certain social bonding that resulted from the fact that many people watched a lot of the same shows, and especially good episodes of a show would often be discussed with friends the next day.

Another way that this limited selection promoted some social unity was that local news shows would have more national coverage than they do now, particularly with the weather and sports reports. There was no Weather Channel or ESPN. You could find the national meteorological overview and the sports scores in the newspaper, but the only place to get this information on the tube was on the local news. The weather report would show the national map, rather than the regional maps often seen today, and the sports report would start by covering the local team's latest game, and then they would tell the scores for all the pro games for whatever sport was in season, and for a lot of college games as well.

Seems there was less total programming, but sometimes one station or one show would cover broader ground than you see on the many specialty channels on cable today.

Last edited by ogre; 05-31-2014 at 11:10 PM..
 
Old 06-01-2014, 12:50 PM
 
Location: Arizona
2,548 posts, read 2,195,935 times
Reputation: 3888
I recall watching "S.W.A.T." in the mid-1970's. The SWAT guys would unapologetically wipe out the bad guys in a hail of gunfire, and we all thought it was pretty cool. We'd all sneak around the neighborhood with our toy M-16's playing 'Hondo and the boys'.

Probably wouldn't be too politically correct nowadays, but it was great fun in 1975
 
Old 10-18-2014, 04:21 PM
 
Location: New Jersey
15,318 posts, read 17,159,841 times
Reputation: 6959
Quote:
Originally Posted by ogre View Post

When it comes to the way '70's television reflected social attitudes of the times, I find it interesting to consider the number of cop shows found on the air in the early and middle part of the decade. You'd think that in the pot-smoking, flared pants, longish hair '70's hangover from the '60's cop shows would have held little interest, but the air was filled with them.

What I find interesting, though, is that many of those shows reflected the fact that the '70's were kind of a diluted extension of the '60's while the decade also saw the beginning of the rightward swing that hit full-force in the '80's. As you got into the '70's there was a funny mix of rebellion and a sort of calming down and return to a certain mild conservatism in response to the tumult of the '60's. In retrospect it seems as if there should have been a huge culture clash going on, but it all somehow flowed pretty smoothly and seemed pretty normal at the time.

And it occurs to me that quite a few of the '70's cop shows reflect this middle ground of a nascent shift from the radicalism of the '60's to the neo-conservatism of the '80's. The very existence of as many crime shows as there were at the time reflects a certain conventional preference in television entertainment. At the same time, it's notable that there were a number of '70's cop shows which hinted at some remnants of the '60's.
This is a very interesting observation about the 70s. This conservatism seemed to continue into the 90s and 00s. Not quite sure where we stand today, but perhaps the pendulum has swung back? Not necessarily to the rebellion and instability of the 60s, but more into the middle.

Great posts all. Very fascinating reads.
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