"Malt Shop/Diner culture": misconceptions, and how/when did it really stop being mainstream?

[majoun]

Originally Posted by kevxu

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Referring to the college I attended being a kind of bubble, presumably. I don't know. On my campus we got quite a number of students from Long Island and NJ, the NYC metro suburbs - most of them Jewish. They certainly were considerably less uptight about the 50's teen culture even though they conformed to the prevailing dress codes, joined fraternities, etc.

There was an article I read when James Brown died talking about how he performed in a city in the early 1960s which had segregated hotels, and thus he and his band were unable to get lodging for the night. The Jewish fraternity at the local university offered to let Brown and his band stay with them so they could have a place to sleep. The Godfather Of Soul wound up giving a performance for the Jewish fraternity in appreciation of this. The person interviewed in the article was one of the fraternity brothers and it displayed a picture of Brown posing for a picture with the fraternity brothers. And - correct me if I'm wrong - this would have been at a time when white audiences were just discovering Brown.

Well, its a memorable event to hang the end of a period on, though my own sense is that the Fifties died a rather slow death that stretched out a couple more years in many ways.

I would agree with this (many aspects of the '50s survived long after Kennedy's assassination), but it is often said that the tragedy in Dallas was the beginning of the '60s even if music, cultural habits, fashions, movies, etc. didn't immediately change. And it is a memorable event to hang the end of an era on, as you state. Just as what happened in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914 was a memorable event to mark the beginning of the 20th century on.

It may simply be a totally personal impression and that I was still shedding or changing my own Fifities outlook/habits, etc.

I was a few months old, you were fully grown, I'd give your view more weight.

On the other hand, (off topic) I would be inclined to say what I think of as the New America in which we now live was truly ushered in with the Reagan inauguration and we were off and running with it very quickly. So, I do think that historical events can be sudden catalysts.

Which brings up a topic for a different thread - did the 20th century end on November 9, 1989, or on September 11, 2001? The fall of the Berlin Wall did mark the resolution of the major conflicts of the 20th century, while 9/11 undoubtably marked the beginning of the 21st century. In that light the 1990s would have been an interregnum of sorts.