Describe the decades you grew up and what changes did or did not affect you

elegant20

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Growing up in either the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, or even today...how would describe the changes both politics, fashion, music, etc. that did or did not affect the way you grew up in those times. Describe as best you can with the memory you can come up with at least.
 

nudeyorker

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I would really like to give it some thought as it was some time ago, but the biggest change for me were the Charles Manson murders; it was the first time I was ever afraid. I grew up in that area and we never ever locked our house and within a few days the locks were changed (no one could find keys) we had a dog and then we had a gate and then we had an alarm.
Let me give some thought to the politics, fashion and music and the media. It was a very interesting time to grow up.
 

nudeyorker

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These were the books that really defined the 60's for me...
The Silent Spring
The Games People Play
Valley of the Dolls
In Cold Blood
The Feminine Mystique
Unsafe at any Speed
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

These were the cultural-political events...
1961 - Peace Corps created by Pres. Kennedy
1963 - Martin Luther King delivers his I have a dream speech
1963 - Pres. John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas
1964 - The Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show
1969 - Sharon Tate et al and Leno and Rosemary La Bianca are murdered
1969 - Man walks on the moon
The war in Vietnam marks most of my memory of the 60's
Somewhere in all of this the Hells Angels scared most people in LA and fast food restaurants started popping up everywhere and credit cards started becoming very popular! I remember routine Air Raid Drills in school. Divorce rates seemed to just sky rocket in the late 60's for some reason.

The Movies that really stick out to me are ...
Midnight Cowboy
The Graduate

The music seemed to go from the wholesomeness of the 50's to a more raw and thought provoking genre (or so we thought)

As far as fashion goes it became un-boring. There were bright colors and bold patterns. And heaven forbid the polyester pant suit.
My personal favorite fashion memory was my black turtleneck sweater... It was very avant-garde and raised more than a few eyebrows; black was not chic then. but rather racy and bohemian.

Television went from B&W to color and the shows started dealing with the issues important to the era.
I'll give it some more thought but the biggest thing that sticks out to me is I started the 60's with a crewcut and ended it with shoulder length hair. There is so much more to this era I would love to hear others memories of it.

The 70's were another story that was a continuation of all of our experiences from the 60's!
 
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Bbucko

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I was born in January of 1960, so I had a front row seat to the 60s as a kid. I remember the heated debates over Vietnam, including Dan Rather's reports from the battlefield. That definitely affected the way I view war, especially as I was four years away from draft age before the conflict ended.

I also remember going to school assemblies to watch the moon landings and other space stuff. I even had an astronaut action figure, complete with a rocket cone :cool:

The music left an indelible impression on me, and still effects my musical appreciation today. FWIW, I always preferred the simple and raw sound of the British Invasion over the later, over-produced hype garbage.

Drug awareness was a big deal, but it didn't prevent my own experimentation with them as a teen. I distinctly remember my parents renting a beach house one summer in the late 60s where our next-door neighbors were classic, honest-to-gawd hippies. We made sand candles, and though my parents were very wary of my sister and I spending time with them, it was permitted.

The 70s were my teen years. To a degree impossible to describe today, we were given a level of freedom and autonomy that teens of even the 80s simply didn't enjoy. My high school even had a student smoking area outside of the cafeteria :rolleyes:

Drugs were commonplace and very few kids (at least in my school) did not indulge. The drinking age was 18, so beer and booze were also ubiquitous throughout high school. More than one of my friends completely fried their minds before graduating from high school, if they even did.

Until Disco came along, I wasn't a fan of most of the then-current music: it was over-produced and seemed rather precious and self-important (think 20 minute drum solos). Once Disco kicked in, I became a dedicated dancing fool, which I remained deeply into my 30s.

Though sex was pretty much expected, I bucked the tide and waited until I was 17. But once the ice was broken, I jumped into the very open sexual scene of Boston in the late 70s with both feet; I also began going to bars at about that same time, as I always looked older. I went to my first leather bar in 1977.

The completely liberated, anything-goes aspect of sexual expression left a lasting and profound impression on my own views on sexuality, and I genuinely resented the repressive nature of AIDS prevention efforts until I realized how necessary they truly were, but that was in the 80s, not the 70s.

Being gay in the 1970s was infinitely easier than probably any time before or since, despite society's general disapproval. It was also fundamental to my coming to see myself (with pride) as someone who lives in the margins of respectability, which is a lesson that was profoundly meaningful to me.
 

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Growing up in either the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, or even today...how would describe the changes both politics, fashion, music, etc. that did or did not affect the way you grew up in those times. Describe as best you can with the memory you can come up with at least.

From 1950 Idaho to 1963-74 Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh area), and years after in different places:

Politics: the political climate at the start was The Cold War and Stop Communism (Korea, Cuba, Soviet Union, Vietnam) and defend America always at any price (we weren't very independent thinkers). The killing of John F. Kennedy altered this quite a lot especially with the 1st wave of baby boomers becoming teens, then adults. That with television bringing things right to us, thinking changed, we saw things differently.

In between the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, I turned 18, registered for the draft and became dubious of anybody over 30 and definitely the politicians. With Watergate that idea didn't change.
Then it became over 40, then 50, now just anybody in government
or saying they have the best interests of and for the people they're in charge of.

Fashion went in many ways, clothing became tighter, and skirts higher, then longer. It cycles and returns and gets looser, then tighter. Even the ugly tie-dye returned.

Music became very generational, and easier to access and more open in terms of ideas and what can be said.

Entertainment has changed, it's easier to show real characters, instead of cariacatures and themes are more realistic (well can be).

Sex became freer, then it began turning rigid, it's time to free it up again, maybe a new Summer of love:smile:!

The ecology is in a spinner, heal 1 thing destroy another. Make a green car and home, built with more plastic which will take a million years until it degrades. Instead of a plastic bag, get paper and destroy a forest. Earth Day is now a fad for many and lasts just that day then back to destruction.

It is essentially a planet with inhabitants taking new ideas trying new things all the time until 1 day, it all ends. We learn, then we forget, then try try again, and are happy for a time then want something else. It's all life.
 

nudeyorker

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The 70's were such a mixed bag for me but somehow some of the greatest times of my life happened then. I was going to UCLA and then had what I thought was the worlds greatest job. I moved to Honolulu in the 70's and then to NYC.
The thing that I remember vividly is having a lot of sex and getting high and there seemed to be no consequences in fast living... No one had even heard of AIDS yet.
So in no particular order...
Entertainment
Mia Farrow is on the first cover of People Magazine
There had never been anything like A Chorus Line on Broadway... it was the hottest ticket in town for a long time!
Saturday Nigh Live debuts... it became cool to stay home on Saturday night and get high and order Dominos pizza.
Jaws
The Airport Movies
Annie Hall
All In The Family
ABC Monday Night Football
and ABC made for television movies (that were really good)
And can't forget the ABC after school specials.
Charlies Angles---Farrah Fawcett became a cultural icon after "The Poster" hit the market
M*A*S*H
Dico
Masterpiece Theatre on PBS
Cable TV is introduced and HBO shows movies without commercials
The Sony Walkman is invented
Playgirl magazine
Cosmo nude centerfolds
Fashion
I wore a lot of Adidas short shorts and tennis shoes during the 70's. I remember having really big hair especially in high humidity. I also owned bell bottom jeans and clogs and Famolare wave shoes and had Nik Nik shirts in every color made. I wore a POW/MIA bracelet (I still have it)
I think my brother was the first person alive to own a pair of Birkenstock's (he bought them at a health food store)
And then came Calvin Klein jeans...(who knew jeans could cost so much? All the cool kids I knew removed the Calvin label)

Books
I was in Law School in the 70's so I did not read much fiction or non-fiction. The only two things that spring to mind are The Other Side Of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon (it was unputdownable I read it on a flight from LA to Honolulu)
And the Joy Of Sex... I remember the drawings of the people all looked like Charles Manson and Squeaky Fromme.

The Events I remember best are
The Kent State shootings
Watergate
The end of the Vietnam War
Cigarette Ads are banned from television
The Israeli athletes killed at the Olympics
The first oil crisis where you had to wait on line for gas and suddenly you could not fill your tank, get a coke and a pack of cigarettes and get change from a ten dollar bill.
Abortion becomes legal
Maihail Baryshnikav defects from the Soviet Union
Patty Hearst is kidnapped
Spider Sabich is killed by Claudine Longet
Elvis Dies
Jimmy Hoffa disappears
The Alaska pipeline
The Bicentennial of the US (I moved to NYC on 4, July 1976)
and when NYC asked for a government bailout.
There is so much more to it but I'll wait to hear others memories.
My final two thoughts on the 70's... The Pet Rock and The Mood Ring....was everybody high?
 
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D_Harvey Schmeckel

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I've recently started having reunions with a group of kids who attended the same elementary school and finished 6th grade together in 1965. Talking with them has brought home both that the 1960 election was the dawning of our political awareness, and the JFK assassination a deep psychic wound for all of us as well as the nation.

By the end of the 1960s I was a pot-smoking gay hippie and starting to get into what would soon be called New Age thought. Not sure what the OP means by "grew up" but age 6-16 pretty much defines it for me so I'll spare you my 70s-80s-90s epiphanies.
 

MASSIVEPKGO_CHUCK

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Mid 70's was the start of my cognitive era and early to late 80's was the beginning of my realization of things. The 70's had an overwhelming sense of friendship, comfort and camaraderie unsurpassed by anything or one/body in a young kid's life when he has school problems in learning.
Later on in the end of the 70's to the 80's when my parents bought literally a fixer upper up the mt just outside of my old town, and in a new school district.
Fashion was basically the Urban Cowboy look primarily due in part of the movie of the same title.
TV had gone from an Archie Bunker love/hate relationship to a Dukes of Hazzard taste for the country.
Politics had seen a Georgian peanut farmer taken out of the oval office largely in part of handling an overseas hostage. and he was replaced by an ex fifties actor whose past political ambitions regarded governing the great state of California.This same President had the distinction of surviving being shot.
Celebs had come and gone in that order. Two most remembered was John Lennon, gunned down by delusional Mark David Chapman. Then following his award nominated perfomance, Henry Fonda passed away.
Music had seen the virtual end of radio, as is popularized in the song VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR. And quickly music videos were the happening thing. Techno, pop, and heavy metal slathered the airwaves.
 

witch

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Excellent topic
I’m not even going to try and post everything in one go around, just a few at a time that made an impression on me ……
.
My father coming home from the Koran War for the last time, for several months he was kind of distant, as I got older it dawned on me the reality, he killed men and they tried to kill him. This colored my views on any kind of armed conflict the US has been in.

TV was new, black and white and most programs were live so you saw all the mistakes and heard the "off" comments (now a nipple showing, muh.. no big deal) ………. color came out, it was a wow! Big cabinets with tiny screens, rabbit ears and when I look at my HD flat screen with a jillion channels, I feel the same kind of wow :)
 

BiItalianBro

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My awakening was the mid 80s to the early 90s. It was 'morning in America' and 'greed is (was) good'. My peers were compartmentalized into nice little boxes (it was like we wanted to be the 1950s) and wore their labels with pride: prep, jock, party girl, hippie, grunge, goth, etc. The world was viewed through a prisom of black and white. Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Tom Cruise Mapother (he went to my high school) and Rob Lowe ruled...The Smiths were the coolest thing since hunch punch and Morrissey was going to die any day lol (remember THAT rumor?).

Then the Wall fell...and the wheels came off the USSR and 'us vs. them' did not work anymore with the 'them' in the equation.....so we turned inward...looking for 'evil' in our midst. Flag burners, predatory gays, drug lords and welfare queens became 'threats' to 'our Way of Life'.....yet 5 years after Douglas Ginsburg was shot down from sitting on the Supreme Court for admitting marijuana use in his youth, we elected a President who 'tried it but did not inhale'. Then Dubya and his admitted use of stuff allot harder than pot. Where am I going with this???? I think it is compelling that the Apathetic Generation of the 1980s was eager to embrace the You Are With Us or the Terrorists paradigm. We have our 'THEM' again.
 

nudeyorker

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I'll have to give the 80's some thought; the only thing that springs immediately to mind is my blonde Annie Lennox gelled crew cut and jackets with big shoulder pads.
 

Deno

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Just watched the Man from Earth, his answers would be great in this thread. Watch it , great movie.
 

B_RedDude

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Nude, how about stockings with appliques (missing accent aigu)?:biggrin1:

I'll have to give the 80's some thought; the only thing that springs immediately to mind is my blonde Annie Lennox gelled crew cut and jackets with big shoulder pads.
 
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luka82

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The 80s were great, money, travels, great time! Oh and Tito died, mum says she cried.
The 90s WAR!
After 2000 postwar era,people say time of democracy, never been more hunger, people are starting to think about selling blood for food, but on the other hand no more war and less brutal deaths. War criminals still walk freely. Oligarchs rule my country....
 

nudeyorker

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The 80's was the worst decade of my life because it was so marked with death for me personally and with public figures. I won't talk about the personal losses.
I was somewhat disillusioned with being a lawyer, but I remember working very long hours and trying to find my way...
The decade started off with the death of John Lennon, to this day whenever I pass The Dakota I think about him and that day.

I met Bjorn Borg at Wimbeldon, he was very handsome and charming to my best friend and I... I don't think she ever got over meeting him.
The same friend and I had a blast at the Olympics in LA.

I was back in London a year later by coincidence during the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana... What a mob... the best memory I have of that trip is I got the worst haircut of my life at Vidal Sassoon.
Later that year Natalie Wood died and about a year later Princess Grace died it was ironic because I was standing in the exact same place when I heard the news about both of them (the elevators in the I.Magnin in Beverly Hills)

Somewhere around here so many people started dying of Aids and I started my lifelong hatred of Madonna...

I remember driving and bursting into tears when I heard on the radio that the space shuttle had exploded.
Then when things started to return to some semblance of normalcy this pulled the carpet out from under our family PanAm Flt 103
... then I was a passenger involved with two other fatal airline disasters a year apart...because of those incidents... I spent the remainder of the 80's trying recover from them and all of the other personal tragedies that preceded them.

I felt some sense of relief when the 80's ended and took the fall of The Berlin Wall as a positive omen for the future...

I'm sorry this post is such a downer but it was the worst 10 years of my life...
On a happier note I remember that a lot of people were watching Dallas on TV, (I never saw the show) I still have no idea who shot JR! I was watching another reality show called Dynasty... I had a friend who was on the show briefly.
I have very broad shoulders and the big shoulder pads in the clothes during the 80's made me look like a cartoon. Much like the 60's I started it with a crew cut but this time you added mousse and gel and spray so that it felt like plastic instead of hair and I ended the decade with a shoulder length ponytail.
The 80's marked the death of my innocence in so many ways.
 
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