Eldergays, what was it like being a teenager in the 1970s?

Porn consisted of putting endless quarters into slots in booths in dirty book stores.

Vietnam was threatening. Nixon was vile. Pot was nicer than it is today. There was too much burnt orange, harvest gold, and avocado green. Water beds were not as much fun to fuck on as it seemed they would be. Platform shoes hurt, but Nik Nik shirts were cool as fuck. VCR's were rare to non-existent, so we all went to theaters and experienced movies together and saw them projected as they were meant to be seen. In the summer of 1979, the price of gas broke $1 per gallon and I thought was a sign that all hell had broken loose.

Why do you think pot was better in the 70s, r2? Was it organic?

Bitchin'

It was absolutely wonderful, OP. We hitchiked EVERYWHERE!

the hair was fabulous

There was real music and you could walk and talk to people.

R3 it was the drug of choice then. It readily available and hence, a buyers market.

wasn't a fatty in the bunch.

Last decade of real food and freedom.

R9 is correct

I wrote that the pot was 'nicer,' not 'better.'

Since the '70's, pot has been cultivated to increase the THC content. It is much stronger now. But in the '70's, pot played nicer. There was happy pot and horny pot and mellow pot. You got a buzz, but it never knocked you on your ass.

And it was very different from legal pot that has been turned into a commodity.

It was fucking faaaaaaaaar out!

gym teacher's with hair arms were hot and basically in charge of the male students. At least in the smaller schools. If a teacher had a problem with a male student they would turn him in to the gym teacher before the principal. They took no shit and you'd be running laps until you puked.

.........

.....

Smoking lounges in High School. Outdoor for underclassmen and indoor for seniors. If a senior smoked they could eat their lunch in the smoking lounge if they wanted.

It was wonderful. Lots of healthy drugs, lots of great sex with manageable complications (if any). Cheap travel. Relatively safe places across the country. Vietnam ended, Nixon was kicked out. For a moment there was hope under Carter.

Our gym teachers took showers with us, or handed out towels. So weird in retrospect. Long hair was a lot of work, clothes were a lot tighter. Cars were shittier too. Always breaking down.

Another rose colored glasses thread.

I wasn't around then but it was the ugliest decade in the history of mankind. Ugly clothes, ugly hair, ugly decor, ugly cars. The music was good but the rest of it was hideous. WTF were you all thinking?

Can't help you, OP. This eldergay was a teenager in the sixties.

I was a teen in the late 70s, so I remember feeling that our country was finally heading into the right direction regarding equal rights for Blacks, women, and gays. In many ways, we still had the free-spiritedness of the 1960s - sex before marriage, sex just for the fun of it, relaxed attitudes about recreational drugs, non-judgment for seeking services for drug & alcohol addiction, and basically feeling that our society would soon become comfortably tolerant and accepting of the groups of people who were legally discriminated against just some ten years prior. We had NO idea of how things would take an evil and conservative turn with the presidential win of Reagan in 1980.

We also had great music radio stations, like WABC 77 in New York.

No one had ever heard of peanut allergies or "gluten-free."

In the early 70s, gas was 34 cents/gallon and all they had was leaded gas.

R14, that's a man, baby!

Then, gas zoomed to 50 cents a gallon after the arab oil thing.

That man at r14 was always such an asshat to us sissies! I would crush on and at the same time hate that teacher. Fucker!

Who had this kitchen?

[bold] WHAT R25 SAID!!!!!!!!!!!!

The 70s were a terrible decade for hair and fashion. Music was pretty good and got a lot better when punk broke into the mainstream. Very little porn around except for cheesy mags. Most guys got off on Playboy and Penthouse (as the pubic hair wars got hotter). No cell phones, no VCRs, no Internet. Social networking consisted of driving around in your car and going to school football and basketball games. Also going to movies and the mall. Some kids drank, took drugs, and had sex, but a lot of kids didn't. Guys who were graduating had to register for the draft because Vietnam was still raging in the early 70s and winding down in the late 70s. It was a very different time.

R29, you needed to get know him away from school, man. He wouldn't actually let you blow him but he was more sensitive than he seemed and had some mellow weed.

The draft for Vietnam ended in 1973

My 1970 Chevelle with The Beach Boys' "Endless Summer" (8-Track tape) to accompany me while 'Cruising Colby.'

Would the Datalounge have loved or hated Dorothy Hamill?

Just watch "Dazed and Confused" which captures it pretty perfectly. There's also a documentary called "Inside Deep Throat" that captures well the freedom in sexuality that was happening then -- before the goddam Plague hit. Thank God I was the age where I had a few years of freedom to experiment; any younger and I'd have been in L.A. having a wild time right when AIDS was rearing its ugly head. (I still dodged a few bullets even so, unlike some of my friends).

You could sneak peeks from this at Tower Books...

True R31/R25, but I was friends with a girl who was allergic to many odd things, like chalk dust. Whoever was in charge of cleaning the erasures made sure she was out of the room. She was a sweetie. Wonder whatever happened to her.

R9/R11, maybe there weren't a lot of "fatties", but there were some. I wasn't a 'fatty' but I guess I was chunkier than others. I blame genetics for my thunder thighs that I've dealt with since I was 12.

A lot of people having sex, but it was cool if you didn't. Probably more alcohol than drugs where I was, and kids would sneak out back for a smoke. I knew a girl who used to smuggle vodka in her lip gloss container.

It was a simpler time...

R39, The vodka drinker? She's 30 years sober in AA and a little on the rigid nutty side now.

....

I have no idea though I was a teenager.

I was obsessed with the Prince/Sondheim musicals.

Instead of bringing The Sound of Silence to read as poetry in English class I was bringing The Ladies Who Lunch.

It was a little better if you were in your 20s. It was kind of like heaven.

lol, R40!

R40 is Datalounge Hall of Fame.

I was the kid to older teen siblings, but it was hellish. I liked the mid-80s to the mid-00s and now I’m back in hell again culturally. 90s were the best.

However the beach kids were the one bright spot of the otherwise horrifying 70s. They were like sun bleached (scuzzy) wild animals.

R41, I kinda hope you're right. She seemed like a nice girl, but came from a horrible dysfunctional family.

[quote]Nik Nik shirts were cool as fuck.

Ewww.

People didn't freak out at the thought that men had a penis.

Tight jeans, tennis and basketball shorts that didn't come down to your knees.

As a teenager of the 1970s, looking back, everything was more liberal, more of a “live and let live” mentality. People judged less, they had more empathy for each other and government was considered a good system that worked for the common good. A family could live a nice, middle class lifestyle on one income. Unions were strong and were respected. It wasn’t utopia by any means, but living in America was not oppressive as it is today. Times were simpler.

Then Ronald Reagan came and everything slid into to the gutter we’re now living in under Trump. The only positive thing I can say is that gay rights progressed to a degree I’d have considered impossible and even unimaginable in the 1970s and 1980s.

R47, you're right. We didn't put on sunscreen to repel the sun, we put on suntan oils to attract the sun. SPF 2 was the best, and Hawaiian Tropic was the only one that was making it that low at the time. Heck, we laid outside on blankets for an hour on each side wearing only baby oil to get that deep tan.

And bleaching our hair with lemon juice or Sun In.

Frankly, I'm surprised I haven't gotten skin cancer yet since I was a blue-eyed blond who got sunburns most seasons. My sister has had a few surgeries to remove skin cancer. I've been lucky so far.

We had joy. We had fun. We had seasons in the sun.

Mandatory showers in junior high and high school.

Even though I hated gym class, I loved being naked with all my hunky classmates.

I can't remember what I had for lunch but I can still picture what they looked like in the showers

There were some fun TV shows.

As evidenced by the photos of the era, re-touching and airbrushing were not taken to the extremes they are now. And photoshop did not exist. The natural look was in.

And if you had feathered bangs, you just tossed your head back before you went out.

[quote]Most guys got off on Playboy and Penthouse (as the pubic hair wars got hotter).

What we jerked off to was often much cruder than even that. It reminds me of a funny thing that happened to me once, around 1976, when I was 12.

I didn’t know I was gay because I didn’t know what “gay” was. And I didn’t know what an erection was or why you got one, because I was raised in a catholic family and such matters were *never* discussed.

But I knew I would get hard down there at various times, and at times I would notice the intense sensation of it rubbing against my pants or pressing against the pew when I was kneeling at mass, lol! But I hadn’t put 2 and 2 together on all the mysteries involved.

Then one day, it happened. I was reading a book about Bigfoot (a huge craze in the 70s) and there was a photo of a rugged cowboy-type man holding a plaster cast of a Bigfoot footprint up, comparing it with the sole of his own bare foot. As I looked at his naked sole I felt myself immediately go rock solid and throb. It was the first direct cause and effect I had ever experienced so I felt my erection with my hand and I noticed the wave of pleasure when I rubbed it, so i kept looking at the photo and rubbing and eventually achieved the expected result.

That was the beginning of my masturbatory image collection — a photo in a book about Bigfoot!

The collection grew as I got older. I had a folder I kept under my bed inside a game box. As you can tell I have a thing for feet and that’s most of what my collection was initially made of. I was shocked by all this. I thought this intense pleasure came only from looking at men’s feet, which was so odd.

About a year later I was staying over at a friend’s house and dropped something between his bed and the wall. I reached down to get it and found an old 8x11 envelope, the type that opens at the top. Curious to see what it was, I picked it up peered inside, and it was full of pictures from magazines and newspapers of WOMEN’S feet! I quickly put it back — he never noticed I’d seen it. I wondered why he was looking at women’s feet instead of men’s when he did ... that ... and what it might mean about me ....

Yes, R50, bring back those tennis shorts!

I didn't even see porn until at least the end of the 80s.

I hated gym class so much it wasn't even worth the obligatory communal showers with all the other teens.

Yes I hated it that much.

Gayling tunes back then...

We had heroes.

You knew who you were.

We talked a lot - in person. There were no cell phones. We went to the movies a lot - they were cheap. Pop music was great. There was a lot less puritanical thinking about sex and drugs. Endless games of dungeons and dragons. We all read the same pulp novels like The Godfather and The Exorcist, watched the same TV shows on the only three networks plus PBS, mall culture started to come in. (It was more 80s)

There were no urinal dividers.

The. Old world was dying and it was a time of liberation and freedom. There was no nanny state. The 70’s were the precursor of the social norms we have today. And it was a time of excess and was a hell of a lot of fun

The magic of human connection. No cell phones. People talked to each other and we loved it. Not this forced have to Text every minute.

All the crapper stall walls were made of only drillable plywood.

This thread has triggered an avalanche of memories...

Cars came in really loud colors. Metallic green, deep purple, orbit orange. You could tell cars apart at a distance. (I mean, when I rent a car now and I park it in a parking lot, I can’t easily find it afterwards.) Remember those great chunky Chevy Novas and Malibus?

Girls in my junior high wore these long crocheted open vests over their tops and jeans. Imagine Dorothy Zbornak as a 13-year-old quasi-hippie.

I hitchhiked all over the country. It was amazing. Tons of sex. In cars, in seedy motels and, less often, in nice hotels and occasionally in the bed tucked behind the driver’s seat of a truck. Started hitching when I was young (14, 15) and definitely not out.

In the70s 18-year-olds got the vote in the US. I remember how excited I was to be able to vote for Jimmy Carter.

We drank a lot of crap wine in the 70s. Lancers? Mateus? I started college in upstate New York and drank a lot of Genessee Cream Ale (“Genny”). Kind of tasted like soap suds. Oh, and lots of Italian restaurants had empty straw-covered Chianti bottles on tables to hold candles. I thought that was cool and did it in my dorm room at college.

We had rap groups. No, I don’t mean hip hop. “Rap groups” were - what? - a precursor to Meetup? I think they were also called encounter sessions. Where you’d sit in a circle with others and “rap” about your feelings or politics or whatever. I remember my college had gay rap groups. This was in 1974. I was young - 16, 17 - and not yet out. I wanted to go but I was too scared. By the end of the 70s, I’d be leading rap groups after transferring to a school in San Francisco. (Yes, it took me forever to get my bachelor’s if you’re doing the math.)

Of course, there were informal rap groups. I remember sitting around late at night, often high, talking with friends about books we’d read. Especially Siddhartha. I remember being really affected by Hermann Hesse at the time. I’d carried my dog-eared copy of Siddhartha around with me wherever I went.

R69, what school in upstate NY? I went to Alfred U., love that Genny!

The 70s were fucking A.

Economics as a whole treated people more kindly. It was understood that you couldn't keep raising prices for essential items, and people avoided debt. Now excessive, crushing debt is the norm for a whole generation and big business seems determined to screw as much money from people as possible.

LSU charged $50 tuition for an entire semester.

I think R69’s slutty 70’s hitchhiking phase deserves a thread of its own.

Yeah, R69 was very courageous to be out hitchhiking at such a young age. Even in the "simpler time" of the 1970s.

I was a child in the seventies but what I find fascinating is how you could still get an apartment and a car with a basic, common job.

The one thing about the seventies I'd like to forget is the fact that my mother bought a brand new AMC Pacer in 1976. She traded it the next year for a 1977 Buick Electra 225, though.

What R43 said. Yes. Absolutely.

Wasn’t there a wine called “2 Buck Chuck” back then? Was $2 a bottle and very popular among the young. Found at most parties.

Those peoplw who criticize the 70s men fo their fashions and hair cuts are actually sensing that it was a time for men to look different from each other. We live in a jeans and t-shirt world now. Back then, it was odd to look the same. Even the clones had their variations.

For me, the seventies will always be remembered as the time I discovered what a glory hole was and how much fun they are.

I was 14 when I started hanging out in porn stores and I knew what I wanted.

[quote] Old world was dying and it was a time of liberation and freedom.

That was the '60s, when I was a teenager. All of the social restrictions and taboos were being challenged and rejected and everything was fresh, exciting and daring, a real brave new world. That liberation and freedom started going down hill at Altamont. The end of the Vietnam War and Watergate sounded its death knell.

[quote] Even though I hated gym class, I loved being naked with all my hunky classmates. I can't remember what I had for lunch but I can still picture what they looked like in the showers.

Swimming class was like that for me. My locker was right between the lockers of two of the hottest guys in the whole school. Their dongs are forever imprinted in my memory. Thankfully, I got to take swimming nearly all year as my gym class.

[quote]Yeah, [R69] was very courageous to be out hitchhiking at such a young age. Even in the "simpler time" of the 1970s.

That's the thing, though. It wasn't "courageous" at all. It was normal. I was a little older, in college, and it was nothing to see guys hitchhiking up and down the main drags of cities (Boston and Pittsburgh, for me), or even on the interstates. It was a way of getting laid or just going back and forth from school to your apartment.

It wasn't easy growing up gay in the 70s; there obviously wasn't the acceptance that there is today, so that wasn't so great.

What WAS great, though, were tight men's pants that accentuated guys' packages and asses. The 70s also saw the creation of Playgirl magazine, which no doubt many a gay boy tried to steal from the magazine counter at the local drugstore.

[quote] That's the thing, though. It wasn't "courageous" at all. It was normal

Maybe for you. My parents would dutifully circle articles in the paper about some kid who was found dead by the side of the road after being picked up by some guy while hitchhiking. I was too scared to try it, although once I turned 16 I'd pick up a cute guy once in awhile. Never got lucky though.

I grew up just outside San Francisco and it was not unusual for me to leave high school, go into the city, hang out on Polk Street for a few hours and get home in time for dinner. Even my overprotective mother didn't keep tabs on me 24/7

Since we weren't under surveillance, even though being gay wasn't accepted by the mainstream, there was till plenty of room to have a private life away from the standard.

R2, r54 and r69 got it so right!

When I look back on those times now, I’d add that there were NO gay or lesbian role models. NONE. I knew I felt differently but I had no idea how to even approach that life. Although I was called a fag, I had no idea what or how to do it. Really awful to be growing up gay then in the suburbs.

Also, near the end of the decade, we had qualudes.

Hot T-room actia!

[quote]Also, near the end of the decade, we had quaaludes.

I had them in the early years of the '70s.

Music, movies, TV, fads/fashion of the 70s

15 year old gayling partying on Fire Island all day, coming home high and family gathered around TV watching Nixon resign. Also on FI, attending Diana Ross's 40 Bday party at the Ice Palace as she arrived by helicopter on it's roof…my first arrest on FI for carrying open container (beer)….good memories. Starting college in 1977 at an school for the arts (SUNY Purchase) and hitching to NYC every Friday night, going to G.G. Barnums where I made out with Truman Capote (so high)…Stever Rubell would hire the entire dept. at school to come down for 3 days to decorate Studio 54 for Halloween. Got paid in coke and no one slept, then the Halloween party. Saw more things at that mess than I can type. I loved the 70's.

Role Models via Rubyfruit Jungle for girls, Best Little Boy in the World for guys, Tales of the City for everyone.

All guys had legs and weren't embarrassed to show them, it wasn't an issue.

Short shorts were cool especially playing tennis. All young guys wanted to show off thighs as well as calves.

But cars did break down a lot especially of course in traffic jams. That was lousy.

And you had $1 dollar movie theaters where you could see double bills of films on third run. A good way of catching up on films still seeing them in a theater.

There might be lots of blue (jeans) at the photo at R16, but what you see now is BLACK clothes all the time. It really looks bad and shabby. Black coats, black leggings, black pants, black everything. Black used to be for formal occasions or funerals. Now everyone in the mall and on the street is wearing black shabby clothes. It looks awful.

I was a teen in NJ in the late 70s and early 80s. Every guy wore tighty whities. Only our grandfathers wore boxers. Most of our dads were WWII or Korea vets. Most had anger issues and PTSD. My uncle (mother’s brother) was a psycho former marine. I had really short hair including a buzz cut in the summer due to him. I also had a few black eyes because of his anger. If you came to school beat up, no one said anything.

My jerkoff material consisted of Skater magazines. My parents knew I was gay, but didn’t give me grief. In fact, they told me when I was around 13. Their advice was to pretend to be straight.

Gym classes were enforced jock straps, gang showers, and naked swimming. No urinal dividers. No stall doors. No stalls in the gym. The mentality was still to toughen guys up for the draft.

Cars were shit. My Jeep ran well, but the heat rarely worked.

Freedom was great. We were kicked out of the house by 9 AM and told to return for dinner. Malls became popular when I was in high school. It was a challenge to convince my parents to drop me off at the Middlesex Mall or Woodbridge Mall.

Two Buck Chuck did not come along until about 2002. But in the '70's, there was Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill. And Boone's Farm Tickle Pink. And few more varieties. I seem to remember a blue one, but maybe it was just the drugs.

Watch Wonder Years. That show got really close to reality.

Guys wore tight pants that outlined their junk and short shorts. Nudity wasn't as taboo as it seems to be now. Guys changed in locker rooms without doing the towel dance and thought nothing of it.

As a teenager of the 80s, I can recognize a lot (though of course not all) of this. Especially the fact that teenagers had to leave the house to connect: movies, house parties, cruising up and down the tiny strip my hometown had. I had the most overprotective parents you can imagine, but they still assumed that when I left the house with friends I wouldn't be back until curfew and they wouldn't really know where I was.

It's so weird to think that today's teenagers will never know what it was like to live without the digital shackles of a cellphone.

When you got new Levi's they had to be washed before they could be worn. But before washing, you got a clean steel wool pad and scoured the denim around the zipper. If done cleverly and with some meat to back it up, it gave the effect of a really big cock, straining to get out.

But these days, they want their privacy, so they towel dance. Madness.

[quote]We drank a lot of crap wine in the 70s. Lancers? Mateus? I started college in upstate New York and drank a lot of Genessee Cream Ale (“Genny”). Kind of tasted like soap suds. Oh, and lots of Italian restaurants had empty straw-covered Chianti bottles on tables to hold candles. I thought that was cool and did it in my dorm room at college.

Boone's Farm (which is still available) and Annie Green Springs (not sure if it still is).

A nickle bag of pot cost $5. A dime bag cost $10. An ounce cost $20. At least where I was living.

As has been said, smoking pot was a much more mellow experience. It got you high but the THC content wasn't so strong that you got stoned off your ass from two tokes.

I didn't try pot until, I think, the 80s. All it ever gave me was a headache. I'm kinda bummed about that.

Didn't know if I should hang around the stoners or the geeks in high school. Both had their advantages, so made friends with both groups. Had a great time finishing high school and going to college in the early 70's. Stoners were cool about everything and could talk about absolutely nothing and we still had a good time. The geeks switched on my competitiveness which resulted in excellent grades, and they were also the ones to whom I was attracted to. My first bf (a geek, but cute) was in my junior year and we were together for the first two years of college as well. And we separated because I'd rather hang around my stoner friends rather than be with him. All of the politics were a blur, fashion was a disaster and difficult to find anything to wear, technology was primitive, TV unwatchable, and movies were somewhat interesting but no classics that I could see. Music changing and getting away from the revolutionary 60's was appreciated. Getting back to OP's question, the 70's were fun for a teenager, at least the ones I hung around. We enjoyed each other's company, drank some, with boyfriend only - some good sex, and tried to reassure the parents that I was getting good grades - since I was paying for school (my choice), no more sharing grades with mom and dad. And my car (1972 Plymouth Satellite).

[quote]I think [R69]’s slutty 70’s hitchhiking phase deserves a thread of its own.

I think it deserves an adult video of its own.

[quote] movies were somewhat interesting but no classics that I could see.

I beg to differ

[quote]Guys wore tight pants that outlined their junk

No one called their dick and balls "junk" those days. That's millennial/internet. Or maybe rap.

[quote]movies were somewhat interesting but no classics that I could see.

The '70s are considered by many to be the high point in moviemaking.

[quote]But these days, they want their privacy, so they towel dance. Madness.

To be fair, we EGs didn't have cameras in everyone's hand to contend with.

Feathered hair, tight Britannia jeans, tight shirts, Speedos at the swimming pool, and men not afraid to show their cocks in a locker room. Hunky, hairy coaches showering with the boys after gym class. High octane bate fuel for an emerging gayling!

[quote]But cars did break down a lot especially of course in traffic jams. That was lousy.

But they weren't made of plastic so a small bump didn't result in having your whole front or back end replaced.

T room fun started for us at age 13!

Erna we're talking about the 1970s. Not the 1870s.

R54 RE: showers in Gym class in the 70's, even today I could probably identify 1/4 of my classmates by a penis shot alone!

Kicked out of the house for being gay, aged 17. Worked two full time jobs, both well-paid, both easy to find, one unionized, and bought my first house aged 20 for 51 grand in 1978. Now worth about 2.3 million.

[quote] But these days, they want their privacy, so they towel dance. Madness.

I went to summer camp at the tender age of 12 (1969) and being naked was like a badge of honor. It was almost like 'Fuck it, we're men, we don't need clothes'. The weather was hot, of course, and no A/C so we'd sleep naked, walk to the showers naked, and just hang out naked. My two counselors slept in the same cabin, and being older (probably 19) were more developed, which thrilled my little closeted self, and they would lie on top of their beds naked too. Nobody thought it strange.

No sexual activity, as far as I know, but I remember clearly one guy jumping off the top bunk in the morning and he had a raging hard-on. One of the other campers made the comment 'Look at the size of that boner!' and the guy proudly wagged it around and then went out to take a piss, but if there was any mutual j/o I never saw it.

Many people had older brothers in Vietnam and we worried about things like getting a low draft number and being sent off to fight. Talk of college deferments and moving to Canada. Serious stuff for a bunch of kids who were starting junior high in the fall.

After dinner we'd sit around and sing folk songs, thinking we were so cool. Occasionally somebody's older sibling would send a tin of cookies with a joint hidden in it and we'd get high after one or two hits.

We were gonna change the world, but the world sure changed us.

Towel dancing started in the 90s, long before phone cameras. Black basketball players and their negro body shame brought it on for everyone

HOT R116. Did you take a Polaroid of that boner?

Every kid I knew, including me was a latch key kid. Parents didn't exist until dinner. I once asked my parents if they were coming to my little league game, they were like, wer'e not missing Loveboat for your game.

Um, this question has already been answered.

Ad nauseam.

EVERYWHERE

r120 = not Buddy

The early 70's were still the 60's.

The 60s ended in '72.

R124 With platform shoes on men.

That wine. Blue Nun. Field parties, keggers, bonfires. Friday's we always went to this lake and everyone went. Legal drinking age was 18, so a lot seniors were able to purchase alcohol legally. It was total non supervision just make curfew. Cars were important. My brother and his friends drove these souped-up cars That were loud and fast. I could tell when my brother left school by the sound of the engine when he peeled out of the school parking lot. There was just so much freedom.

Shop class. Do they have that anymore?

Home Ec and typing class. Also Drivers Ed.

In high school in shop class our project was to build a car from scraps. We had to go around and find the parts and everything. By the time it was over I loved working on cars and could fix one from bumper to bumper. Wasn't a single girl in the class.

My perspective is very different because I lived in London and used to come to America a lot.

It was a time when EVERYTHING cool and fashionable came from America. EVERYTHING. The clothes. the music. The films.

New York was the real creative centre of the world. It was the "cool city" of the world, in spite of it's many problems.

You must have lived in real flyover land not be aware of "gay' because gays were suddenly very visible in the big cities.

R24's radio link is incredibly evocative. Very ballady, romantic music on the radio.

The 70s in a way were the 60s grown up. A lot of the very popular films were very adult in theme. It was a time when all sorts of subjects that had been taboo were being spoken about. Albums took over from singles.

A lot of the freedoms that were achieved in the 60s spread to the masses.

& back to the England/USA aspect or Europe/USA - they were totally different worlds. No things are much more the same. Cars, clothes, TV are the same.

I think the 70s were a great time to be young in the USA. AIDS and the Reagan era put a stop to that. Over-hyped untalented people like Madonna didn't exist. The 80s were much tackier and colder. Materialistic.

& someone posted a ridiculous photo of ugly clothes earlier - you would have laughed at people who dressed like that if you were even the slightest bit cool.

The gaudy side of the 70s that they're famous for by the people who didn't live then looked ridiculous to many of us then. Fashionable teenagers wore sweat shits and jeans and sneakers or cowboy boots.

& ABBA were considered incredibly uncool (especially in England). Much like the nasty clothes. NO ONE would have believed they'd have a sort of cult following decades on. Suburban fraus listened to ABBA.

[quote] sweat shits

**oops, sorry

It was FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The hair and clothing seem to be horrifying. And weren't the 70s pretty sexist and racist?

If you were a Flyover teen you felt isolated, hopeless, confused and worried all the time.

You mean you did. Not everyone felt that way. Far from it.

Less rules, more money (or at least you could get more for your money), less weather extremes, movies were good, music was good, tv was good. I was gay and scared but willing to try it then the 80's arrived and the party was over.

When we got gas we would pull up to the tank. Everyone would dig in their pockets for change. If we got about 3 bucks we were good.

Mostly I remember the music: the first half of the 70s was romantic/soft rock. Carole King, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Carpenters, Bread, etc. The second half was all Disco..Donna Summer, Bee Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band. And Elton John was EVERYWHERE.

The '70's was a great time to be alive. We got though Viet Nam, Watergate, gas shortage, et. al. Yes, it was a time where we took open showers with each other and our hot gym teachers would take showers with us. It was quite homoerotic. We had hair and we talked to each other. Disco waas fun. It was highly sexually charged. Pot was good and cheap. It goes on and on....

Gym teachers that took showers with their students were obvious pervs.

The advent of the summer blockbuster: Jaws and Star Wars and everyone trying to copy their success every year thereafter. The Godfather movies, Mel Brooks at his best with Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, iconic films like Rocky, Taxi Driver, Dirty Harry, and Saturday Night Fever, movies that were the beginning of new series like Alien and Superman; dramas like Network and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Woody Allen back when he was actually funny and before we knew him as a pervert.

If you lived in a decent-sized city, you had gay bars, cruising parks, and x-rated bookstores and movie theaters to find others like yourself. If you lived in the boonies, you were likely alone, with no role models and nobody to whom you could relate or be open with. It was not always a paradise.

I remember groups of hippies sitting in circles at the local park and they were actually kind of scary and mean to us little kids. one time they grabbed me and my friend and passed us around like we were beach balls. What I remember most about that was it hurt because they kept dropping us but they sure got a kick out of it. Laughing their acid soaked brains off.

My experience was very different from yours, R143. "Hippies" brought us into their huge circle dances to live music in Golden Gate Park, shared great food, played Frisbee, painted our faces, and became lifelong friends. It was like one long Earth Day festival all summer long.

No one had air conditioning.

r145 I grew up in the south. We had air conditioning in the 1960s -- several window units throughout the house. When we moved to a bigger house in the early 70s, it had central air.

Guys all wore exactly the same underwear - white cotton briefs. And no one was embarrassed to be seen in speedos.

In the gay world VPLs were not subtle.

come with me, gurl!

The clones did not look friendly. They wanted just one thing. Cocks.

& the leather clones were spooky.

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Cutting class to go up to South Mountain Reservation and have lots of anonymous sex in the woods with all types of guys. Ah, memories.....

The secret language.

all of this disappeared when AIDS arrived in 1982/3.

R25 r31 that is because there was no glyphosate or GMOs yet

Those things are what cause it, R155?

NYC was an absolute shithole and people were moving out to the suburbs. As a result NYC was a Mecca for artists. Nobody went into Soho it looked like a war zone - but artists would live in lofts there for peanuts. Nyc was actually an incubator for artists -- affordable and ripe with artistic freedom.

R97 you do know The Wonder Years was 1968-1973 right? Not exactly a depiction of the 1970s squarely.

R156 this is for another link but "gluten intolerance" is most likely due to the amount of glyphosate that the WHEAT GERM PLANT absorbs and retains (glyphosate is banned in most countries but used freely here in the US). Peanuts also retain much of the glyphosate and GMO peanut oil is injected into children via vaccines long before they even eat a peanut . It causes an autoimmune response in them that is undetected (inflammation telling the body the peanuts are in invader). Then they eat an actual peanut and have a horrid response.

R156 autism rate in 1970 was 1 in 10,000 now it is 1 in 68 and climbing. It's not the vaccines (vaccines work) it's the GMOs and Glyphosate IN current vaccines combined with the food supply of the USA.

A Nik Nik , to remind us that the past is best left there.

Ooooh maan brooo....the colors.

[quote]you do know The Wonder Years was 1968-1973 right? Not exactly a depiction of the 1970s squarely.

However, r158, since Kevin and Paul's 13th birthday could not have taken place earlier than 1969 (based on the fact the "Bookends" was released just days before their birthdays in 1968), their teen years would have been 1969-1975.

The guy in the black pants at R150 is—if he's alive, without any shadow of a doubt—a datalounger.

The Wonder Years got a whole lot of the late 60s and early 70s right.

R148, the guy in the button down - datalounger.

Thanks r159 and r160. I didn't know that.

bikes, bikes, bikes. everyone rode everywhere. Do kids even ride bikes today?

[160] Natural news is not a credible news site.

When Ross from friends stalked the Wonder Years older sister, it was seen as romantic -- even when the show was made on the mid-80s.

The Wonder Years was a good show for the first two or three seasons when it focused on a little boy learning about life. But then it transitioned into a romantic comedy about teens.

As others have said it was a looser and more hopeful time. Reagan was the beginning of the reversal and then AIDS. Now quite frankly we seem to dominated by the authoritarian left and right. The right under Trump and this Congress is more immediately dangerous obviously. But I would still like social freedom (social libertarianism?) and a strong welfare state. That was sorta the post-hippie ideology of the 70s.

Would someone please start a Wonder Years thread so we can get back to the 70s?

r20 blocked! r22 casual wear was relatively new. the 50's and 60's were uptight clothes. cardigans cords. the rebels turned jeans (which were for POOR working class workclothes) into fashion. they experimented with them voila designer jeans took off. clothes were evolving. space age fabrics were new. it was all experimentation. a lot of it came from rock/pop bands sewing tartans and patches making and setting trends. it was a weird wonderful time. i was 4 yrs old walking to the corner store buying gigarettes for my mom and getting a card of matches too. yes they gave a4 yr old matches.

r49 if one was worn by armie hammer and became "all the rage" in 2018. you'd max out your credit card and buy 5. can tell by your attitde you're a sheople.

R176, you have obviously never worn a Nik Nik. Nor do you know much about me, imagining Armie Hammer influences my behavior.

I was in high school at the beginning of the decade. We would cram an impossible carload of kids (male and female) in a car and drive around. I messed around with only a couple of guys--a neighbor and one of the group. Things changed in 1974 when I went to college and found all the active tearooms around our small spot in Texas. There was a major one on the campus student union (2nd floor) and the city park at the edge of town (frequented by locals, highway travellers in the know, and the local naval base.) It was a great time for sex and music...and I still love a good 70s stache...

Oh..I forgot. Drugs. We had a few, and like earlier commentators I must say I preferred the pot back then. It really enhanced the moment, and it didn't stupify the senses like the current strains...

Mad fun. Record stores, good drugs readily available, clothes that were comfortable, well made, and cheap. Wouldn't go back for a million years, but it was a good time.

I miss the snow.

r107 "Grant Barrett, a lexicographer in San Diego and editor of the “The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English" said the earliest reference for junk as a body part appears to be 1986, when a writer named Ethan Mordden used the term in a story called “Buddies,” in which one character threatened to drag another “outside and kick your junk in.”

Although the context isn’t perfectly clear, Mordden’s fiction often involved gay culture, which lends the term some credibility, Barrett said. “Much slang does first appear as part of the language of a small in-group, such as homosexuals, and then, through accidents of history or quirks of social dynamics, manages to survive, spread and even thrive,” he said."

Come to Jersey today and you'll have some R181. And lots of cold too. Just like in '71.

Though admittedly it is rarer. And I haven't seen a real fall since the mid 70s.

I remember the storm. When Ella Grasso had to close our state for six days.

[quote]Come to Jersey today and you'll have some [R181]. And lots of cold too. Just like in '71.

Jersey or do you mean NEW Jersey

I miss the rains down in Africa, r181.

There was dog shit all over the place. It wasn't that odd to have a random stray dog wander through a regular middle class neighborhood.

It's Jersey like in Jersey City.

This is what it was like.

[quote]Jersey or do you mean NEW Jersey

Of course, what else?

r190, prolly some prat Brit yearning for people to remember the Isle of Jersey.

I used to hold my tape recorder next to the radio to make mixed tapes.

I didn't know a single teen that drank coffee.

Adidas shoes, with three colored stripes, making a Resurrrection now. Overalls, striped rugby shirts, painter’s pants (loose white jeans), cruising in your car friends drinking beers, smoking pot with your friends at the park, seeing Animal House or Star Wars at the theater high as a kite and barely remembering the movie, 8 track tapes in the car blasting Fleetwood Mac or Pink Floyd or whatever... I really miss those days

R194 - I totally forgot the painter pants. I also wore lots of Levi’s corduroys and flannel shirts. I was grunge before it was popular. My main shoes in the winter were Herman Survivor workboots. I never had overalls. Not sure they were that popular where I lived in NJ.

[quote][R156] autism rate in 1970 was 1 in 10,000 now it is 1 in 68 and climbing. It's not the vaccines (vaccines work) it's the GMOs and Glyphosate IN current vaccines combined with the food supply of the USA.

The 70s were nirvana because Dr. Mercola and "Natural News" pseudoscience gibberish had not been invented. People believed peer-reviewed science and there were fewer vitamin hucksters able to fool the predictable hoards of morons.

It was boring.

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Being 16 years old on July 18th, 1975 and standing directly behind the photographer. This was what it was like seeing The Rolling Stones up close and personal.

Help. Help. How do I post an image here?

r199, go to tinypic and upload. then post the URL in the Web site link↓

R193, there was plenty of coffee drunk by us teens at UCLA when I attended in the late 70s, especially when term papers were due and we had to pull all-nighters or stay awake in early morning classes. Coffee houses were springing up all over campus, in Westwood and in WeHo before it was WeHo. There was a great coffee shop on Wilshire, The Beverly Hills Coffee Shop, with lots of neon out front and a fish-bowl atmosphere, but it's apparently as gone as our youth.

[quote]I used to hold my tape recorder next to the radio to make mixed tapes.

Radio/tape recorders were pretty mainstream.

[quote] I didn't know a single teen that drank coffee.

Really? Where were you, Utah?

Even my suburban high school had coffee vending machines. Ten cents a cup.

I got my driver's licence in 1973 and would take the car to go to the library to study. Then I discovered a little coffee house, complete with hanging macrame planters and a guy strumming a guitar in the corner so I started going there instead.

One night I got home about 10 and my father asked where I'd been, since the library closed at 9. I told him about the coffee house and he asked how much they charged for a cup. I told him it was 25 cents for house blend, or 35 cents if you wanted a custom cup. He thundered 'THIRTY FIVE CENTS FOR A CUP OF COFFEE??', followed by his usual condemnation when he felt I was spending money foolishly 'P.T. Barnum was right' (i.e. there is a sucker born every minute).

He died in 1990, just before Starbucks became ubiquitous I wonder what he'd think of people paying $4 for a cup of coffee now.

It was vast, yet limited.

testes

Being 16 years old on July 18th, 1975 and standing directly behind the photographer. This was what it was like seeing The Rolling Stones up close and personal.

[Please forgive the repetition. I believe I have figured out how to post an image with a post. My Adderall hasn't kicked in.]

R200, cheers.

Still not seeing "testes," R206.

1976 was an amazing year when we celebrated the Bicentennial.

[quote]1976 was an amazing year when we celebrated the Bicentennial.

So many men. Plenty of time.

r139 you are missing Parliament Funkadelics and George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Ohio Players, Chaka Khan, Kool and the Gang, Sly and the Family Stone, Isley Brothers, Graham Central Station.

There was a lot of music in the 70's of all genres on popular radio. Rock, Pop, Funk, Disco, R&B all on the same airwaves.

He's not missing anything, R211. He was telling us what [bold]he[/bold] remembers.

Quaaludes.

Boy do I miss them.

R105, an STD clinic of its own.

It was expensive. Shit cost a lot back then.

Wallabees!

Of course the T shirt said So Many Men So Little Time.

Little did we know how horrifically ironic that was.

I also remember having a t shirt that wouldn’t fly today in school. It was a Mexican guy in a sombrero with a huge joint. My car also had a bumper sticker that read “Gas, grass or ass. No one rides for free.” I wonder how my parents put up with a little gay stoner.

Speaking of Clark's, r216, these are what I wore while everyone else was wearing platform shoes.

Chick here. For me it was Dr Scholls and an occasional platform shoe. Once you had a fall off of those it was back to flats and sandals. Lots of polyester blouses and it was a mini skirt or a maxi skirt, nothing in between. I finally went the earth mother road and wore lots of peasant blouses and ponchos. There were stores that had imported clothes in cotton from India or Mexico and that became my go to shopping center. Or it was hip hugging BELL BOTTOMS with a super wide belt.

We got drunk and stoned in the woods. It was quart beers passed around or Boones Farm Strawberry wine. And Tango. A premix of vodka and Tang. Held many a friends hair back as she was bent over puking.

The pill was around but only the girls with the most progressive parents were on it. You got the clap or crabs. Lots of abortions. Girls were hitch hiking then. Once girls started showing up dead after hitching it started to be frowned on.

Herpes started making it's presence known and that was the scourge of all scourges. Wow, I remember how scared people were of herpes. it was INCURABLE. Little did we know what was awaiting us all.

Cars were distinctive and colorful. We had a flesh colored Nova we called Fleshy the Wondermobile. You had to two foot it at a stop light or it would stall. No one had a grey car. Never saw a grey car.

Your parents never knew where you were.

R216 - I loved my Wallabees!

Earth Shoes...the trend I hope that never comes back

Is the poster upthread saying Celiac disease is caused by GMOs?

That's how I read it, R223. Or the pesticide(s) used to create GMOs.

The 70s were a rough time. Gangs everywhere. Violence in the streets. You couldn't leave your house.

I know R225. In Greenwich CT. I remember having to hide in the pool house while the thugs were ransacking the main house. I was just praying they wouldn't find us.

R226 - I often fell asleep to the sounds of helicopters overhead.

Going out clubbing and wearing a Quiana shirt.

Qiana lead to Quaaludes...

And neither rotted your teefs or made yoy thirsty.

Why doesn't someone who says "teefs" say "shirtses"?

Listening to the top 100 count down songs of the year on a little transistor radio on New Year's Eve. Wearing desert or Gobi boots. Had to have the red tab Levis. Levis used to make corduroy bell bottoms and jackets.

Fabulous. The clothes were funky but fashionable. No fucking tattoos (only trash had tattoos then). The ladies' clothes were great: wrap dresses, strappy high-heels. I convinced my cousin back in 1978 to buy a sequined 'disco' jacket with marabou fur trim from the old Strawbridge's department store in Philly., She resisted at first ($100 in 1979 money) and loved it after she bought it. Forty years later she still has it and someone offered her five hundred dollars for it on eBay. She's decided to keep it.

Love this thread. It's all true. I'm more elder - graduated hschool in 1970 and started UCLA 1971. -major protests to Vietnam in high school - we had something called a "moratorium " where all teachers were on strike and we had no school! - my mom was so mad / said we wouldn't be able to graduate on time which of course was not true, -not having an internet made events seem more real, - every night we saw the caskets with flags on the evening news - reality of war at an early age

None but none of the gay porn actors had tattoos.

Even they had standards.

Here watch this. A good mini-documentary. So fucking nostalgic it almost brings a tear to your eye. I bet this lady never thought she'd get 4 million hits.

My mom has a photo of her and her friends from her Wet Hot America Summer style sleepaway camp, circa 1975 or so.

There's a guy in the photo with that long-ish parted in the middle hair and he's wearing white overalls with no shirt. You can see his chest is cut, which was unusual for back then.

I used to jerk off thinking about him.

I loved, loved, loved the hairstyles young guys wore in the 70s. Fucking sexiest thing.

If 13 year old girls are your thing.

Every single guy in my gym lockerroom wore than same white cotton briefs.

R238 - yup. And when we were freshmen in high school our mothers wrote our last names in the elastic in the back so we would know the briefs were ours in gym class. Sort of like camp.

My '70s subtrou. After that, I wore boxers.

[quote]when we were freshmen in high school our mothers wrote our last names in the elastic in the back so we would know the briefs were ours in gym class.

I can't imagine my mother being that intrusive, and "intrusive" was her M.O.

R241 - everyone had their names on the briefs, I’m wondering if the school insisted. I went to private school. It definitely was required for summer camp.

[quote]I went to private school.

Boarding school?

Guys couldn't perfectly feather their hair without this. Almost everyone had one in their back pocket

R243 - Nope. Catholic school in NJ. My grandparents on both sides went to boarding school (Wardlaw and Hartridge when they were separate schools).

We must have been neighbors, r246, though Wardlaw and Hartridge were just day schools in my day, AFAICR.

Anyway, I went to Catholic school, too. No names required on briefs, though some guys would write their names in magic marker on their gym clothes. Did you go to St. Joe's? Holy Trinity?

When it's all done online and laptops or tablets taking over I wonder if kids get excited at back to school notebook and pencil buying day. Even back to school clothes shopping. We used to get so excited.

I so hated my miserable Jersey public school the day I noticed pencils, pens and notebooks in the stores I had the most awful feelings of dread. Like God why are you doing this to me?

I'd rather be old which I am and not there.

R247 - my grandparents and parents had children really late in life. My grandparents were born around 1900. My parents in the 1930s. In the period before WWI, i think both schools accepted borders in addition to day students. My father’s mother and brother came here from Canada to attend school. I thought my mother’s parents were borders. Maybe they were day students.

I went to school in Middlesex County. I dated a few guys who went to St Joes. That place seemed to be scary. At my high school, guys had to worry about keeping the priests dicks out of our asses. The brothers at St Joes had a reputation for being angry. My high school had priests who fucked their way through the boys. I learned to never be alone with the priests. The brothers and nuns were good people.

Weed was cheap. 5 bucks for a nickel bag. It sucked being a gayling, however. Mustaches on men were the thing, so THAT rocked. Denim jeans were better quality. Levi's were made in the USA out of heavier denim. Herpes was the big scare. No gay rights SUCKED. Straights could get away with open harassment. The music seemed better.

College was cheap! It was about 20 bucks a credit at our local community college in the very early '80's. Real estate was cheap. True, we made less, but the dollar went farther, much farther. The house my parents paid $15,000 for is now worth nearly $300,000. A person could drop out and do their own thing because they could afford to do that. Jobs were still in the USA, although that was changing. The afterglow of the '60's pervaded culture. Pre-internet people talked to one another, they could interact with one another. Instead of internet auction sales, one could rent a table at a flea market for maybe 8 to 10 bucks and make enough to really make a difference in their lives.

plus, the men were hotter! More natural, no tattoos, no body shaving.

You could work in a book or record store and still rent a place very close to the city on your own.

You could walk in midtown and be assaulted by prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, and muggers which was a million times better than being assaulted by tourists.