Things you miss from the 70’s

I miss people who understand the possessive and who know how to properly use an apostrophe.

Mood rings were so cool. Loved mine.

Gritty sitcoms dealing with Issurs; TV movies; shopping malls; riding bicycles everywhere; 15-cent Hershey bars; blizzards

Oh dear, now I know why so many hate Greg.

I miss Match Game. And Movies of the Week.

I miss Rula Lenska.

macramé

God’s eyes

Fern bars

muffin baskets as a novelty

Farah Fawcett hair

I miss the Magic Pan restaurants. Crepes for lunch, crepes for dinner, crepes for dessert.

The music. The movies. Most of the fashion.

[quote] Oh dear, now I know why so many hate Greg.

And you’re just now figuring that out?

Blaxploitation movies.

My grandmother.

Hanging out with friends just listening to albums

Black lights and posters, head shops with bongs

There are certainly thin men around, especially in the gay community

Beaded curtains, conversation pits, muscle cars, glass grapes, velvet paintings, discotheques, and quaaludes.

Join us again tomorrow for the continuing story of “Another World”.

I wouldn't mind having a 1971 Buick Riviera GS.

Yes Quaaludes, Seconal, white cross speed, LSD (windowpane especially) - Wow those were the days!

Music from rock to disco to soul. Great TV and great movies. I don't miss gass lines and out of control inflation and platform shoes.

My youth.

The longer hair on men and the hairy chests

Thinking I had all the time in the world.

The Magic Pan Restaurants.

Oh, sorry R12. I concur.

Bearded clams

Fondue.

Shopping at the Gap.

The restaurant at Bloomingdale's that was called 40 Carrots or something like that.

Surplus Stores.

Painter's Pants.

Rugby Shirts

Bass Weejuns

Famolare Shoes

Hairy pussy

Osh Kosh B'gosh

Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor.

Wild Pair Shoes.

Swenson's Ice Cream Parlors.

Love Affair douche

"Love means never having to say you're sorry."

Love's Fresh Lemon

Vinyl records

Long shaggy hair on men

Hiphuggers

Discotheques

Good drugs

Quality movies

Real soul music

Lean bodies

Easygoing people

Mind you, I was born in '74, so I didn't get to appreciate much at the time.

Men's bodies that were normal without exaggerated muscles, and that have become cartoonish.

Also, I miss clones.

(It's even getting hard to find porn that doesn't feature massively muscled and tattooed men.)

Lacoste.

Eastland Mall, Charlotte, NC (RIP).

Howard Johnson and Sambo's restaurants.

More mom and pop stores and restaurants instead of all chains in the suburbs.

More unique and one-off stores in cities.

Not having to worry about drugs containing fentanyl.

When pot made me horny and hungry instead of tired and sleepy.

Peaches record store.

People didn't own automatic weapons and no worries about global warming.

Clothes from run-of-the-mill retailers were much better quality than designer clothing of the present.

* Peak music from Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell

* While at times I feel I'd do anything for a Quaalude or a glass of Brunello di Montalcino, I'm glad drugs and alcohol are no longer a part of my life.

* Eating in Little Italy on Friday nights, especially at Il Cortile.

* Alligator shirts and 501s.

* Julius and the Ninth Circle. Or maybe the fact that I survived that time allows me to feel nostalgic.

* Picking guys up on the beach where Ocean Park Blvd. meets the Pacific Ocean.

* Concerts that didn't cost that much.

* No assholes on speakerphone in public.

* Great movies.

Female only finger fucking parties

FDS Woman

Disco.

I wish I had been able to experience L.A. and Southern CA Beach culture in the 70s before those experiences were ruined by the super-rich.

Healthcare costs were more reasonable.

Fewer unhoused individuals.

Carnation Instant Breakfast

Basketball uniforms.

A greater sense of community in neighborhoods, apartment houses, etc.

R63 Carnation Instant Breakfast still exists. The company simply rebranded the product to "Carnation Breakfast Essentials" featuring vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry flavors. This is the old-school powder in envelopes. (Their website says they also sell it in a canister and ready-to-drink liquid versions.) My sister still uses the strawberry powder and asks me to buy it for her at Walmart where it's about $2 less per box than the regular supermarket.

San Francisco in the 70s was wonderful.

My parents, my aunts and uncles, 2 of my cousins.

In the 70s our big Italian holidays meant 30+ people.

This Sunday’s Easter dinner they’ll be 8 of us.

Oh the things I’d do to #50, R64

Playgirl magazine, and hairy, HAIRY men who were proud of it.

Bulges, bulges everywhere!

Urinals with no dividers!

Being completely unreachable whenever I was not close to a home or office telephone.

R69

You take 50, and I'll take 43.

Loud, good music.

R74

31 is mine.

FOLLIES!!

R76 Oh, fine. I'm feeling generous.

r64, 31 is the one I want most. But 43 looks as if he'd share the cookies he's got stashed in his locker when the game is over.

The laid back vibe.

Psychedelic everything, especially in the early 70s.

Thinking that my good life would stay so and just get better.

Absence of cyber-tech and cellphones.

That belief that ideas and progress still mattered.

Skiing in jeans on second-hand skis at rough north east ski mountains for 6 dollars.

AMC Pacer.

I miss the Gremlin!

Scrappy Provincetown.

Empty art museums and their dowdy cafeterias.

Cavernous bathhouses (in the old meaning) at grand public beaches.

Army Navy football at West Point. Harvard Yale football at the Yale Bowl.

Bizarre shops owned by chilled out hippies.

Enormous luxury American cars you borrowed to go on a date.

Tiny simple affordable European convertibles - the Triumphs, MGs and Fiats.

Hamburger Drive ins.

Hot dog stands on Connecticut state roads.

Old school mothers and grandmothers in the neighborhood who cooked wonderful food, often in the working kitchen in the basement, not the show kitchen upstairs.

Going into various towns on a road trip and seeing the different restaurants and stores there.....because they were different, not the same combo of Walmart/Target/Subway/Starbucks seen almost everywhere today.

Skipping school and hitting the beach in my pale blue semi transparent nylon Speedos, picking up older guys (I was mid teens, they were early twenties), a little afternoon delight then back to the beach for a reapplication of my Hawaiian Tropic.

Airplane food. It was delicious!

Keep on Truckin'

But the Carnation Breakfast Bars are gone. My mom was strict about us eating sweets but she thought those were "healthy" so for me they were like a candy bar.

I miss dating. No, no hookups. Actual dates. With men who could hold conversations.

I miss my gloriously full head of hair. And my small waist. And my flat stomach.

I miss how easy it was to hang out with friends.

I miss Chicken Delight.

Glory holes, everywhere!

[quote] Oh dear, now I know why so many hate Greg.

Please don’t feed the attention whore troll. Just ignore it.

Oh please, R95.

You like my attention much more than I like yours.

R74 #31 is Bill Walton

I miss gay men who had manners and weren’t like every other rube in society — see R95.

Oops—I meant #32

Overalls

Striped rugby shirts

Getting high and listening to albums with my friends

Jeans...their fitted look...Levis and Wranglers (Lee jeans were a distant third)...by the end of the decade "designer jeans" ruined jeans. Faded, tight Levis on a guy made this little and teenage gayling tingle in all the right places.

No cellphones...no social media. Yeah, we experienced all the anxieties and problems teens today go through, but we also had better social skills, more fully rounded, close friendships.

Doing nothing and just hanging out...it's a lost art!

I miss when technology was special. Going over to my friends house, dark brown rustic environment, big oversized sofas, sunken conversation pit, looking for a record collection like it was one of a kind, firing up his fathers stereo stacked high with lots of lights and shiny knobs, felt like I was lucky to play with a piece of tech worth thousands of dollar, putting on high-fidelity headphones that were so comfortable and clear music sounded like heaven. Getting high during the processes was the cherry that made it all sing.

Less partisanship. Remember Republicans turning against Richard Nixon because of Watergate?

[quote]Striped rugby shirts

Hu, Rugby shirts are a staple like jeans, or a button down shirt, they never went out of style. Ralph Lauren even sells them starting at $150.

I miss my unwrinkled, clear-skinned face.

I remember "liberal Republicans" and "Conservative Democrats" were an actual thing in each part. Religion was not yet fully connected to one party. People respected each other's view point. No MAGA no Trump.

My parents had parties and we didn't hang out with the adults, we usually had to stay upstairs. My brothers and I didn't mind, we got to watch my parents tv and eat snacks so it was fun for us. Now my brothers have their kids involved with everything and some of the comments his kids make are disrespectful, sometimes I wish some things could be for just adults.

All the Sara Lee varieties

The Carol Burnett Show

I miss my pet rock.

To R64, I would service them all, the entire team, and the hot assistant coaches too. Northwestern, Penn, Drexel, La Salle, Temple. The gloryholes at Temple University were amazing (Beury Hall Basement, any mensroom in Beury Hall). I used to take basketball players to 3rd fl Beury Hall, Norris St. side mensroom. 2 very heavy noisy wooden doors. marble stalls went to the floor. The men's room at the SAC (Student Assistance Center), Mitten Hall. Sooo many more!!

And while Phillywhore was taking care of Temple, on the other side of the Keystone state, the men's rooms in the Cathedral of Learning at Pitt sustained many a horny cocksucker with more loads than any one person could actually take.....

Being a kid with a lot of freedom to roam around and play. We lived in a coastal town in San Diego, and the beach was 2 blocks away (across the train track). Our parents would drop us off sometimes on a Friday or Saturday night at the roller skating rink where we'd skate to disco tunes while they went to the Belly Up Tavern close by to listen to live music/jazz. We'd have a few hours of unadulterated (quite literally) freedom to socialize with other kids and have fun.

Oh, those halcyon days of youth, when I was so ignorant of what adulthood would really be like.

Some called it the Cathedral of Yearning, r112.

R114 I just remember a few afternoons in there where there were 20 of us, all those stalls without doors.....so much cock, so much cum, the scent was glorious......

Yearning and lots of fulfillment!

Was this on the second or third floor, r115?

I seem to remember the second, because that was the bigger one.....or was it the third? I think I mostly went to the second. I blew a Pitt professor one Saturday afternoon on a higher floor.

I forgot, r117, that we were talking about what happened in the 1970s. Though I was a student there, I knew nothing of the Cathedral men's rooms. I would meet guys on Bellefield at night, or else by hitchhiking home to Squirrel Hill during the day.

My experience was more in the 80s, oops, but it was hopping even then.

My twenties.

Remember these chairs with the built-in stereo? Bring these back.

R121 I would have killed for one of those chairs in my childhood room. Never got it.

disco music. Back when it was mostly unknown and unheard outside of the gay and black communities. Before it hit the mainstream and died an deserved death.

The whole Christopher Street scene in the West Village. Sitting on the McNulty's Tea Shop step and watching the guys go by. Cruising the pier and the trucks. The International Stud's back room w/Ladies Who Munch on the jukebox.

R121 R122 -- your chair dreams can still come true - there are other models with speakers available online.

[quote] All the Sara Lee varieties

Honest DL answer.

Nothing. I was a small child and the 70s were terrible. Polyester, feathered haircuts, roach clips in hair with ribbons. Gaucho pants. Vests. None of it looked good. Gas lines, inflation, smog, traffic, threat of nukes, we're all gonna die, Satanic panic, drugs being a new thing dealt in junior high and high schools, pissed off Vietnam vets. Surf culture in LA. I didn't understand any of it.

My body 😢

Jell-O 1-2-3

The CBS Saturday night lineup.

Smoking everywhere

R125 those are nice, but they don't have a built in stereo.

The bulges.

Burt Reynolds

Sex on the piers and the Trucks in NYC

R54, we had global warming back then. It was just referred to as “ecology”.

Yes R103, back when Republicans had a sense of shame and moral and ethical principles.

I miss my Panapet!

The Chevy vans, called the Shagging Wagon because people would customize them with beds, chairs, and liquor cabinets. My uncle had one.

I remember the young guys in our neighborhood would always try to get "shagging" vans or cars.

My teen years were more the 80s but I remember older siblings' friends doing it too in the 70s.

Hairy men driving conversion vans.

Barbra Streisand in peak golden voice.

I spent the 70s hitchhiking all over. It was amazing. I miss it… the excitement, the surprises, the people I met I never would have met elsewhere.

I miss real Disco music.

Aunt Jemima Quick-Make Frozen Pancake Pre-Made Mix Cartons

Ice-Cream Truck Wacky Pack Collection Series

“Run, Joe, Run”

R36 Famolares came back some time ago. (I have two pair!)

Run, Joe, Run is from the 20s— duh.

They mean Run Joey Run by David Geddes, peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1975. Described as “a teenage tragedy song,” is wasn’t quite Leader of the Pack. Or Papa Don’t Preach.

The mineral oil rain lamp! My aunt had one of these and I thought it was the height of elegance.

Piss elegant!

Earth Day started in 1970 after a massive oil spill in the Santa Barbara channel. 3 million gallons of oil turned the beaches pitch black, more than 10,000 seabirds, dolphins, seals, and sea lions. This activists started Americas first Earth Day to bring awareness to environmental concerns.

I miss my erections.

Bell bottom jeans

Disco

Really short shorts. Muscle cars and big American land yachts

But most of all, like OP, thin men!

[quote]There are certainly thin men around, especially in the gay community

R19 Where? I hardly ever see any, especially in my own age group

Most middle class suburban families still drove Big American Cars- this started to change in a big way in the 1980's.

I miss this huge beauties with their wide comfortable bench seats and great thigh support and velour seats.

My thick head of hair.

R155- In those days everyone had slim and natural bodies ( no tattoos, no piercings, no rings and no shaved 🪒 pubic hair).

Now everyone is either FAT or MUSCULAR or both.

I like slim guys with natural bodies too.

R127-If you are referring to the late 1970s yes things are quite tacky by then. When I think of the 1970s I think of 1973 when girls had a long straight Marcia Brady hair and were still wearing mini skirts. And John Denver was at the top of the charts. Most queens talk about the 70s all they talk about is the late 70s disco as is if that’s the 70s. To me the late 70s is already the 1980s with punk, new wave and disco and people being very slick🕺.

Spencer's gifts, and having sex with multiple guys in one night.

Gas lines.

You were old enough to have sex with multiple guys in one night, AND at that same age bought shit at Spencer Gifts?

How young were you?

I started WAY too late, apparently.

R160, Where else could one purchase this?

Rona Barrett's Gossip and Hollywood magazines

R62- You mean fewer homeless people.

Having at least ten exterior and interior color choices for a car....and being able to tell the difference between them from 50 yards away.

Boston ferns, salad bars, papasan chairs, a ladygarden the size of a slice of New York pizza!

and the winner is .....

R66

And you could mix and match the colors.

Not like now, when "If you want this exterior color picked from these four, you can choose from these two interior colors."

Nice people, fewer guns, and especially the great music.

Beverly Butthole

Crabs

The rest stops along Rt. 80.

The vibe really on both sides of the Atlantic. Before corporations took over the world. Krishnas in the airports handing out flowers. Free camping and fires on the beach with friends and family. The west coast of the US had space to live and space to play without fucking rules and regs and fees for every dam thing. The people weren’t run hard and squeezed for every bit of their energy chasing the dollar. Those ridiculous giant cars in the USA. England had beer gardens and long boozy days with the aunts playing the piano and sing alongs. The U.K. Had great local pubs and fish and chips were like 2 dollars we stayed up late and had a fourth meal. The trains were excellent back then they worked were cheap and reliable. We humans have soiled the nest and the youth will never know what they lost.

Variety shows and specials.

Women with hairy armpits and hairy pussies and assholes

The smell of Nair on hair

Fewer humans.

Tacky Rehoboth.

The possibility of going to the Mine Shaft, as long as I wasn't wearing a pastel alligator shirt and hadn't spritzed with Eau Sauvage.

Bad drugs, horrible music, too much dark wood.

[quote] In those days everyone had slim and natural bodies ( no tattoos, no piercings, no rings and no shaved 🪒 pubic hair).

R155 I dont mind the shaved pubic hair, can deal with the tattooes, rings and even the piercings at a pinch, but I cant deal with the fat, and most of the mean in my age group and younger are huge

My huge fro

I had an afro and wore huge platform shoes and had capes that I wore daily.

Fudgesicles and Good Humor ice cream bars tasting so good. They taste like chemical crap now.

25¢ beer night (Thursdays) at the nearby college boite.

real rock music

[quote]Having at least ten exterior and interior color choices for a car....and being able to tell the difference between them from 50 yards away.

R166 yes, this so much!

Want to really sell me an electric car? Give me the option to have the interior in tufted deep buttoned loose pillow bordello red velour with chrome and fake wood highlights and dash and I'm all in

Kids matinee at the cinema was 50 cents.

The shirts.

Baggy bellbottom Jeans

Abortion Hut at the mall

Only my youth. I thought the 1970s was the most boring decade.

Fotomat

My only responsibilities were paying attention in school (or pretending to), 20 minutes of homework, bringing in the trash cans every Thursday afternoon, and picking up the dog crap in the back yard.

It was a pretty sweet deal...

Tattoos were considered low class.

Also, for some people, the occasional tattoo was hot and sexy and. maybe a little dangerous.

Now they're like wallpaper. And common.

Little parental supervision. Adventures everywhere..

Double knit pants - you knew exactly what was going on below the waist. Thick thighs? Awesome ass? Massive junk? God, yes.

More realistic TV - less middle class drama/comedy written and produced by middle class people for middle class people.

Kids drinking - it was HILARIOUS when we stole booze at adult parties and passed out.

I miss the empty Times Square with its old original movie theaters and I could walk anywhere and feel safe. The theater. The original Prince/Sondheim musicals, No, No, Nanette with Ruby Keeler and Patsy Kelly, Lenny with Cliff Gorman and the Housten Grand Opera Company's production of Porgy and Bess which was brought to NY which nothing could ever beat. It was a lavish production which played on Broadway not in a distancing opera house which is to be dreaded. Balanchine in charge of the NYCB with the most glorious dancers. Baryshnikov and Kirkland at ABT. London Theater

Disneyworld with no hassles and affordable prices. The Ice Capades at the Garden with Ken Shelley and Jo Jo Starbuck. Coach airplane travel.

Beautiful cut men who had no tattoos just beautiful skin with normal fit bodies. Locker rooms where guys walked around naked with no embarrassment even in middle school and high school and it was not considered childhood trauma or abuse. The only thing they were wearing was a towel over the shoulder and nobody had a problem with communal showers which were to be expected in most of men's locker rooms. And you could be naked in a sauna and steam room and it was no problem.

A relaxed attitude among most people which today has completely disappeared. Not seeing constant hatred all around and no mass crazies like Trump and the rethug party. The crazies were people who yelled incoherently on the NY streets and they could be easily ignored.

But I noticed climate change in the mid 70s. I felt something was off and it was unsettling.

Betty Ford as FLOTUS

R196- They’re still LOW CLASS

My family.

Sculpted wall-to-wall carpet.

Gay men had a separate culture apart from the alphabet jumble of today’s sexual culture.

Broadway wasn’t shit.

Talk shows had on interesting guests who would sit and talk intelligently.

Variety shows

The media wasn’t as combative.

Kitty Carlisle dressing up fabulously to appear on a game show.

[quote] Talk shows had on interesting guests who would sit and talk intelligently.

This right here^. And they weren't afraid to say controversial things.

Somebody here, in a long-ago thread, explained why.

It's related to how A List stars, beginning in the 80s, through their movie contracts, gained leverage over all aspects of their personal appearances including the booking process to appear on talk shows.

I think Michael Ovitz is credited or blamed for stars turning the tables and demanding that if you're a talk show host, expect that the star isn't going to say any more that what it takes to promote their movie and if they do stray, it will be a safe topic.

I saw that with my own eyes when Jennifer Aniston appeared on Letterman. She was gorgeous to look at, with an unbelievable body she encased in a little black dress, but man, words were coming out of her mouth at the same time she was saying nothing.

Give me Zsa Zsa or Eva any day of the week.

R204- I always liked wall to wall carpeting.

I also miss wallpaper- in middle class homes in the 1970's even the bathrooms often had wallpaper.

Conversation pits

A well-read populace

No McMansions

No freakish looking plastic surgery addicts

R206, And, talk show interview segments lasted longer than mere minutes and the host didn’t constantly have one eye on the clock for the next commercial break.

Three things happened to talk shows starting in the 1980s:

The host getting personally involved with the guests (see Oprah Winfrey). No matter what the guest says, the host should be neutral. The conversation is about the guest, not the host. So Oprah crying with her guests ruined the point of view of the guest.

In an effort to gain ratings, talk shows were juiced up. You no longer had guests speaking intelligently, you had the dregs of society arguing about paternity, getting into fistfights and throwing chairs (see Geraldo Rivera).

People were given talk shows that had no ability to host one. Part of being a talk show host is having excellent conversational skills. I know a lot of people liked Rosie O’Donnell’s show, but being a chatterbox isn’t being a good host. With the reissue of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on dvd, Rosie had on Dick van Dyke, a very interesting man. Half the interview was spent with her talking about her kid and imitating how excited the kid was. Rosie never learned that when you have a legend on, you shut up and let them do the talking. Dick van Dyke doesn’t want to talk about your kid that he’s never met.

Outdoor mall tea rooms, some with glory holes.

Nostalgically, when it was just ABC, CBS and NBC.

The quality of the programming was better.

Just the three major television networks in the early ‘70s where I lived. No cable. It was great.

Many talk show guests were not promoting anything other than themselves.

I remember buying a Damron’s Guide when I turned 18. This narrow little book in pre-internet times was the only way you could get the names of gay bars in cities and towns all across the country. It also listed the local cruising areas that—at that time—only the locals knew about. Having the guide felt like holding a treasure map! I know: MARY!

People wanting to find their soul mate

I was 16 when the decade ended:

Sneaking looks at After Dark and Blueboy at the Tower Books magazine racks

Gay bars where the bouncer looked the other way and you could dance all night

Venice Beach before it was overrun and gentrified

Independent bookstores, obscure record shops, and repertory movie houses in full flower

The Castro in its heyday

A fickle decade…

I was a sex god until 1978. Then, at 10 years old, I aged out and got chubby; nobody wanted me.

Streakers

Abortion in all 50 states.

The Mall. There seems to be a sinister plot to prevent people from commingling these days. Movie theaters are virtually empty; I don't know how long they will last.

Our much higher standard of living ( In the United States)- which peaked in 1973.

Yes! R180. Even though I was wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, I was pointedly told by the burly doorman to leave, because I was also wearing Paco Rabanne. I’ll never forget doing the walk of shame out of there.

Paco Rabanne? You actually bought that shit?

What did you buy, R224, in the '70s? (Fragrance.)

R213 forgive me for going off topic but I’ve been meaning to ask something on here for a while. In the US, if you don’t take pay for cable how many free channels do you have, and are they worth watching?

R226, I think you get zilch, nothing. Unless you have satellite or subscribe to something like Netflix, etc.

I miss going with my parents into town on a Saturday shopping. The streets were packed and people actually dressed up to go shopping. There were so many shops and department stores, and very few chain stores. Now most places struggle to even have a higher street due to online shopping.

R226 It depends on where you live. In a large metropolitan area like Los Angeles, you can actually pull in dozens of stations over the air with just an antenna. My sister is in Santa Monica. She has no pay cable or satellite - just a good antenna. She gets the old time networks and local channels - that totals about seven - plus all of their digital sub-channels. I think they each have about two or three. There's also the public television stations. I think there are still three in L.A.-Orange County area that she gets. Then, there's probably about another 15 of the newer digital channels that she enjoys. .. Of course, there's also a ton of crap that she'll never watch (home shopping, jewelry sales, foreign language channels, religious nutballs, etc.)

R225 nothing. Nothing at all. Just my own pheromones.

What an ignorant comment R224.

R226? I live in the Ocala National Forest and I still get about 50 channels from Orlando, an hour and a half south of me, with a Mohu antenna. However, there's probably only 20 or so I actually watch.

Talking on the telephone for hours until your parents yelled at your for getting off. I don't think I have more than a 10 minute conversation with anyone anymore.

[quote]In the US, if you don’t take pay for cable how many free channels do you have, and are they worth watching?

It depends where you live. I live in New York City and while there are a lot of free channels, it's also difficult to get them because there's so much "traffic" over the airwaves plus the tall buildings interfere with the signal. I had a regular antenna for awhile and the picture would freeze a lot.

R231 never did get into a sex club, slathered in cologne as he was.

When I lived in a mid block garden apartment in midtown Manhattan I got NY1, Food Network, QVC and three Spanish channels for free from the antenna and through the cable even though I wasn’t paying for service.

Parenting where the parents ran the show.

Someone upthread alluded to adult parties which were off limits to kids. or segregated by age daytime parties.

I remember being nosy kid, once. I wanted to listen in on the mysterious, intriguing adult conversation going on inside my Aunt's house when it was fucking mid-80s outside and us kid cousins all were outside jumping the water sprinkler.

I snuck in and my mother stood up, took my little arm in hand, marched me to the door saying "You're not to presume you may join adult conversation. Stay outside and play."

Now, day and night time parties are overrun with children.

Scheduling your TV viewing week with TV Guide, and the anticipation of watching every show and TV movie with family and friends. And, talking about what we watched last night, at school or work, the following morning.

The absence of reality TV, and all the attention-seeking fame whores who would come with it two decades later.

The candy counters and cafes at JC Penney, Sears, Montgomery Ward.

R238, my junior high best friend (who's now a dean at Columbia) and I would walk to the local grocery store every Tuesday to buy the new TV Guide. We'd search which old movies were scheduled for broadcasting and would cheer for anything with Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Olivia de Havilland, Ingrid Bergman, or Vivien Leigh.

People dressing to suit their body-type. No 45 year old 300 pounders walking around in sports bras and yoga pants.

My neighbor's mom, who was a housewife, always had TV Guide. I thought that was cool. My mom would never splurge on that. We just used the Sunday paper insert and called it the "TV guide."

One summer, my neighbor's mom got me hooked on The Young and the Restless.

My neighbor (who was an only child) was kind of spoiled. They had all kinds of good snacks at their house. They had an extra fridge in the carport. Neighbor's mom was the first person I knew who drank diet sodas on a regular basis.

r226: I receive 34 FREE digital channels where I live. Of those I maybe watch 7 or eight of them.

The way OTA (over-the-air) works these days is that the main channels in a locality now have four or five "sub-channels" broadcasting from their antenna. Even PBS has sub-channels.

I learned all this after I cut the cord from my cable providers in disgust. This was 8 years ago. Never looked back. Use a Roku for occasional streaming of PBS Passport.

[quote]I was pointedly told by the burly doorman to leave, because I was also wearing Paco Rabanne.

You would have been pointedly told by me that there was no way we were going to have sex if you were wearing Paco Rabanne. That was the single worst smelling cologne of the 1970s. Those wonderful magazine ads were such a lie. Only Brut and patchouli smelled worse.

^^ see it’s not just my opinion

Pan Am First Class

When two good tv shows were on opposite channels, agonizing which one to watch.

I had a really wonderful childhood in the early 70s in a beautiful house up on a hill in Carpinteria, California. I'm extremely nostalgic for those days of children's books and roller skating and going everywhere on our bikes. Old TV shows like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie and The Brady Bunch - The Outer Limits was on at noon on Sundays and Sunday nights were Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and The Wonderful World of Disney. Plus Saturday morning cartoons. We had a pool table and played a lot. I have to just sigh now, because I'd never be able to afford to live there again. If only my parents had kept that house!

Attaching playing cards to our bike wheels with clothespins so that our bikes made a noise when we rode.

I remember doing that with the playing cards. My neighbor's mom (the same lady who got me hooked on Young & Restless) said something about it. She said it was noisy. I guess it was obnoxious-sounding, but it was fun.

Splurge, R241?

TV Guide cost 25 cents in 1975.

CB Radios and Trucker culture

And songs where little gayboys could practice their backup singing. I swear, the 1970s songs were the best for little gayboys.

Meeting people. The Internet is necessary and fun, but it can be very isolating.

My parents gave me a dollar a week allowance in the early 70s. I would never waste 25 cents of it for a TV Guide. If I wanted something, I had to save for it, which I learned to do. When I went to college, I was amazed at how much money flowed through the fingers of wealthier kids on a weekly basis.

[quote] Splurge, [R241]? TV Guide cost 25 cents in 1975.

My mom grew up very poor and maybe it was a splurge, to her. Or a waste of money. Also, since we subscribed to the newspaper, maybe she thought the "TV guide" insert was enough.

Up With People

I agree, R254. We elderfolk had parents and grandparents who lived through the Depression and World War Two. You "made do" with what you had. Why buy a TV Guide when there's one in the newspaper? Why buy meat at the store, (when meat was available,) when you can kill the big turtle that is attacking your chicks and make turtle soup! Why worry about your own home when the Germans are bombing overhead; you and your friends just hope they bomb the school so you never have to go there again.

My mother did not see an orange for six years during the war in Britain. My father once wore a raincoat my grandmother made from a shower curtain rather than buy a new one. We were taught to appreciate what we had, not to wish we had things that we didn't.

Recording 'All My Children' and 'One Life to Live' and watching both after I got home from work and was eating dinner.

Drinks at the bars were cheap and creative. Sloe gin fizz, White Russian, Singapore Sling although mostly I stayed with what was called a wine spritzer. Inexpensive wine mixed with club soda or something. I miss the clothes, those suits the men wore, the hair styles. sideburns, Farah hairstyle imitators. Bells. Those cute little tank tops. Gold chains for the night out were cheap, 20 bucks, 14k gold. I still have mine :)

I used to go out in Manhattan, it was pretty dangerous but of exotic for me. I’m from Long Island, Suffolk. Especially on a snowy night. Snow all blowing around, walking down. The street in boots and with a buzz on. Laughing with my friends. Going in and out of different clubs or in the rain. Friend of mine started a female bar called the Rooster but it did not make it. We went but once I don’t think it stayed open long. Have to give her kudos for trying. During the work week went out to the corner local bar in Queens where I lived. A bar up the street from me on Woodhaven Boulevard. I was in there when that blackout happened. Bartender locked the doors because outside the street was suddenly a sound like a riot, windows being broken, shouts, cars screeching. Our neighborhood was white but now it was invaded by blacks who pulled up in cars and smashed out the windows of the storefronts, stealing all they could and it was pretty scary! That bar had no windows all brick building and when the bartender heard the noise outside, he locked the door put candles on the bar and gave us free drinks and we waited it out. It did get kind of warm in there, it was summer. No music though :( no electricity!

That was the summer of the 44 Caliber Killer, aka Son of Sam.. He was shooting girls down in blocks all around where I lived (Middle Village). I hitched home from queens blvd after work one night down Woodhaven Blvd, two guys picked me up and it turned out they were undercover detectives looking for the 44 Caliber Killer. They read me the riot act and showed me the police drawing out at the time. I was terrified of them. I guess they were protecting me but I wondered at first if they really were who they said they were.

I did go to a disco in Brooklyn during that time and a guy in the disco screamed and pointed at me, saying HE was the 44 Caliber Killer (what he was known as then) and he was going to ‘get’ me. I ran out of the disco and went to another club. I don’t think he was but the papers were running stories on it so often and it was just a way for this jerk to get attention. I wondered how he didn’t get arrested and check out after I left. Half of the dance floor stopped and looked at this guy.

One last thing, I went to many different clubs in that time for years. One was called Billy the Kid. Anyone remember this one?

Believe it or not, maybe because I was young, did all this with people who were friends all of these memories are kind of nostalgic for me now.

[quote] Gold chains for the night out were cheap, 20 bucks, 14k gold. I still have mine :)

What? Gold chains were never that cheap.

R259 Yep. They were. Venders sold them on the street but also all the stores in the malls did. They went up from fourteen dollars to 20 and I was not happy to pay 20. But well, had to be ‘decked out’. These were very thin chain links btw but that was the style then, thin and delicate.

You got three to make them sit at different levels on your neck and chest.

[quote] You got three to make them sit at different levels on your neck and chest.

Guido.

Carmela Soprano had gold chains of different lengths.

Ha.I’m white with red hair. The chains were not v shaped when hung but round or more oval. The soprano thing prob is from that era.

Like this but with links and very slinky. Thin.

A wine spritzer was 1.50 btw.

That is the soprano thing is more a later era.

The cool furniture.

All this talk of television and cable reminds me that something I miss from the '70s era in Los Angeles is the "Z Channel."

The local cable company on the Westside, then called Theta Cable, had this film channel they referred to as the "Z Channel." From wiki:

[quote] Z Channel was launched in 1974 by Theta Cable[2] (a division of TelePrompTer Corporation and Hughes Aircraft Co.) which was acquired by Group W (Westinghouse) in 1981. Operations were located in Santa Monica, California. Jerry Harvey was hired as program director in 1980. As program director, Harvey was given permission to program the network the way he saw fit. As such, the network featured a wide variety of films not typically shown on other pay television services at the time.

[quote] These included many B movies, silent films, foreign films, and original unedited versions of films. On Christmas Eve 1982, Harvey made the decision to show the original (previously unreleased in two years) version of Heaven's Gate, a movie that had been considered a disaster by all accounts. His decision was a success as the movie became the most watched feature ever shown on Z Channel. Other networks soon followed and aired Heaven's Gate.

And funny, cuz I actually remember watching Heaven's Gate on Z.

Psychedelic wallpapers. I am amazed I didn’t become a mass müderer.

Water beds

R238 and, speaking of TV Guide, remember their fall new show editions? It was so much fun to look through and see what shows you might want to check out. And then you’d get frustrated because it would turn out that an interesting new show was on opposite a favorite returning show. Or when the returning show edition came out, you’d discover a favorite program had moved to a new time slot … opposite another favorite program, of course. You had to choose, and that was that, as R246 says. No VCRs in homes until the very end of the decade, and even then they were rare.

A lot of network TV was awful, but it was all we had, and it was a culturally unifying force. Almost everybody watched TV. We all saw basically the same shows at the same time. We've lost that connection, and as mundane and mediocre as it sometimes was, it was important.

R221, many thanks for the video link. I watched it to the end--so cool. Hickory Farms, girls in their Dr. Scholl's sandals, and the old ladies with their sprayed bouffants. Hardly a fattie in sight!

R269, Going to school or work the next day and discussing something that had been broadcast the previous evening was fun.

Smoking weed back them made you kind of a rebel or outsider or kind of edgy. Now every house frau, soccer mom, and Repug smokes weed or does eatables making it as a mundane as Yankee Candles or a glass of Zinfandel.

There were no surveillance cameras in any of the stores so it was much easier to steal stuff and get away with it.

Guys wearing striped tube socks to the mid-calf. Blue jeans that show a man's cock. like 501's

Battle Of The Network Stars!

[quote]There were no surveillance cameras in any of the stores so it was much easier to steal stuff and get away with it.

Obviously you never saw the Good Times episode where Wilona became a dressing room watcher. The surveillance cameras were human.

I miss "Davey and Goliath" - have to hunt that down again. Used to watch it really early in the morning on Saturdays.

New Linda Ronstadt albums nearly every year (1973-1978).

Public Access TV!

[quote] There were no surveillance cameras in any of the stores so it was much easier to steal stuff and get away with it.

That's sad if that's what is missed from the '70s.

Mainly because it's still going on openly 50 years later, WITH the fucking cameras in place.

Pierre Cardin cologne. It smelled great. The bottle looked like an erect cock. The atomizer sprayed out of the top. As a young teenager, I picked up a couple of those tiny sample tubes at Macy's every time I went into the store. I put it on and looked through a GQ magazine, imagining one of the models wearing it and paying particular attention to me, as I did him...

Tang.

Tang smelled better than any 70s cologne.

[quote]Pierre Cardin cologne

I got Pierre Cardin cologne for Christmas one year. I thought I was sooooo sexy wearing French cologne.

Following the saga of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army. It was quite fascinating.

Many colognes react and smell differently according to ones body chemistry, R243, so I’ll assume your chemistry is just not compatible with Paco.

Oh, I never put it on, r287. Smelling it on other gays was torture enough.

“On other gays” R288? You’re weird.

Dick Fisk.

Women worrying about 'panty-lines'

r290 We sucked each other's cocks in the summer of 1978, in WeHo, in my car.

L'eggs! Loved playing with the eggs when my mom bought them.

My first boyfriend. I was totally and completely in love. Fuck, I should've recognized that then.

What would you have done differently, r294?

I would have realized how much he tried to protect me. I wouldn't have been so closed off with him. I should have realized how much was happening to him and brothers too. We all had some kind of major disfunction happening and I should have realized it then. I really did love him, though.

Thank you for asking R295.

-not Meghan Markle. 😆

I miss Frizzies, oily T zones, feminine napkins, and Nair for short shorts.

I miss getting up when my panty hose didn’t.

I miss smoking cigarettes and being so young I wasn’t worried about cancer.

Miss driving in my car, smoking, drinking a cold soda, blasting my Pioneer stereo.

I miss simple success stories like Erma Bombeck going from simple housewife to noted humorist.

The grass is always greener over the septic tank.

r301 I loved Erma Bombeck!

[quote]I loved Erma Bombeck!

One of the things that I remember was she said she would take a casserole dish out of the oven using two forks and her husband never understood why she didn’t use hot pads.

I miss all the beaded curtains you could buy for the doorway. You could mix and match they had lots of colors. The clackyclack as you walked through them. It was fun and hip as a kid.

Toys were not for the airy-fairy types. Our toys made us hardcore!

I had Klackers when I was a little boy. One broke away from the string and shattered our kitchen window. But the Klacker itself was undamaged.

I miss the summer evenings which seemed to last forever. Playing pinball with my friends, then getting ice cream cones, then playing endless rounds of kick the can in the alleyways.

Longer attention spans and the fact that Donald Trump wasn't known yet.

Kids’ television was trippy and weird, even some of the skits on Sesame Street. Electric Company, the Muppet Show, and a bizarre show called Alphabet Soup. Free To Be…You And Me.

R306/R306, Klackers must have driven patents insane.

^parents

Them too.

Texture in night spots like “fern bars” where the acoustics weren’t all so loud.

Jukeboxes.

Salad bars with sneeze guards

I kinda miss having only 7ish channels on television to choose from. And the channel sign offs at midnight creeped me out.

I miss the weird, sometimes totally pointless and occasionally dangerous toys. Slime. Pet Rock. Stretch Armstrong. Lawn Darts that you threw into the air that could piece the skull of any child in their downward trajectory, and did. Candy cigarettes that blew out "smoke" of powdered sugar. Sea Monkeys that were advertised in the pages of comic books - your own little undersea kingdom! I think they were some kind of tiny shrimp. X-Ray Glasses! Johnny Switchblade Adventure Punk. Teddy Chainsaw Bear. "Bag of Glass."

Sea monkeys were actually brine shrimp.

You can still buy Slime or Slime with Worms.

Riding my bike without a helmet LIKE GOD FUCKING INTENDED.

Even though I don't like kids, I do miss the sounds of kids playing in the street. Now it's just construction and gardeners all day.

[quote] white cross speed

Crossroads

Cum gum

Pussywether

Royall Lyme.