shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Yup. I was really into live music, so I'd often leave my friends to go see a band for a while and try to arrange when we'd meet back up. But I never did. Just met new people and hung out with them.
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People that grew up before the internet age, how was life different? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter bosoxs45
- Start date
Galileo
Footballguy
Koya
Footballguy
15. Age was 21 but it had just changed recently.
First time was in a bar in Georgetown, DC for a class trip or something. We tried to walk into this cheesy black-light heavy craphole dance club and were soundly reflected for now IDs.
It was then "suggested" to us that we get IDs... at this point having almost ANYthing that said ID with a birthdate typed someplace saying you were 21 and a pic, that was good enough. So we were like, cool. Where the hell would we get that though? Like ten of us.
Whats that? Next store? In like 30 min for all of us...
And so a bunch of 15-16 year olds all went literally next stored, got laminated "U.S. Government I.D." Cards, ALL walked to the same bouncer that denied us and boom... in we were.
Around the same time, we knew which bars in NY would take either that bad a liscence or none at all. Then we graduated to "chalking" NY state ID's where you put chalk over the date and literally used pencil to change it and unless they really looked (and they almost never did) you were good.
Around 15-16 we also started to frequent a couple bars - not often and usually offish hours - where we knew they didn't give a ####. One dive bar back in my town in particular.
Hot Diggity Dog
Footballguy
I was born in 1970. Easily the biggest change is just the pace. I remember when 7-Elevens opened and they were called 7-Elevens because they were open from 7 in the morning until 11 at night. And this was groundbreaking because everybody thought it would be too hard to find people to work that late at night. You could not go anywhere on a Sunday and expect it to be open, you could not go buy any food on any holiday. If You didn't have your pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving you couldn't run over last-minute Thanksgiving Day and get one. We had a piece of paper by the phone with a pencil on a string tape to the phone so you could write down messages. If you wanted to call someone you had to know their schedule or assume they were home around dinner time, which was a good bet because most people were home around dinner time. Or you could do the constant call during the day until you found out the usual time they were home. The newspapers held pretty much everything that you use Google for now. There were dating ads and classified ads selling anything and everything. The Sunday paper always seem like it weighed at least three or four pounds. In college we had one line for the telephone that would service One Wing of the dorm. So we had one phone for 20 to 30 people. We were depending on each other to make sure we got phone messages. If you wanted to contact someone the best bet was to walk across campus and knock on their dorm room, if they answered cool if not it was usually a pen with tape and a string and a piece of paper that you would write a note on. It was common for people who lived near the phone to turn the ringer off so no one could hear it during Saturday and Sunday mornings. I think my senior year of college, 1992, they finally got individual phone lines into each room.
Koya
Footballguy
Also...
we would have raging ####### weekends, black out regrettable hookups, overly drunken or high as #### stupidity...
and we'd wake up the next day without the fear that it's been catalogued for posterity in eternal digital form already circulating well beyond your group of friends.
THANK GOD we didn't have social media back then.
we would have raging ####### weekends, black out regrettable hookups, overly drunken or high as #### stupidity...
and we'd wake up the next day without the fear that it's been catalogued for posterity in eternal digital form already circulating well beyond your group of friends.
THANK GOD we didn't have social media back then.
Mrs. Rannous
Footballguy
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
You have the power to change this. How old are your kids? Our kids do this to some extent. Just have to be in the right neighborhood.
Koya
Footballguy
WHEN WE TRAVELLED, not only was it always up hill, both ways.... but instead of yelp and google or trip advisor, we'd buy like frommers, a "France on $15 bucks a day" book and go off their three year old four sentence "recommendations" that were probably a few years old.
Oh, someone stayed at this hostel two years ago and didn't die of botulism... sounds good to me!
Yankee23Fan
Fair Tax!
Served in a bar..... yeah 17. 17 wasn't my first drink though. My family would go to an Italian restaurant that was BYOB when I was a kid - old school Italian place where the great grandmother would sing to everyone while you ate the greatest food in the world. My mother would always let me have wine with that dinner. Easily 12 or 13 if not a little younger.
Played blackjack at the Taj? 14.
Still can't believe I pulled that off that night.
Hot Diggity Dog
Footballguy
I delivered pizzas for Domino's in the summer of 1988. Learned the entire city I delivered in and by extension the entire greater metro area of Denver. Based on the address I could pretty much find anyting. Now I can't even go across town without the googlizer.
Phil Elliott
Footballguy
Ticketmaster? You camped out at the box office. Then they thought that wasnt fair so they just drew numbers at a certain time about an hour before the box office opened.
Also, each mom had a, well analog signal, to let the kids know it was time for dinner. Triangle, whistle, yell names, etc
Does AAA still do Triptik planning?
Also, each mom had a, well analog signal, to let the kids know it was time for dinner. Triangle, whistle, yell names, etc
Does AAA still do Triptik planning?
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shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Koya
Footballguy
Also - NO CELL PHONES. Two examples.
In summer / on weekends, we would get on the bike at like 8 or 9 am, maybe after some cartoons, and then off. To the basketball courts, friends houses, the dirt bike track behind the Methodist church.
We would have enough money for a deli lunch and some candies (CIGERRETTE gum... what could go wrong with that? The one puff of sugar at the beginning, and the most cardboard worst tasting gum. SO COOL. Err, KOOL). Would play all day, hit up some ones house for kool aid or tang, and back out.
But ####, we were legit free range kids.
Unless and until we decided to go home, no one watched us. Parents had no idea where we were at any particular time. And if they NEEDED to find us, they may simply not have (now, enough driving around a few phone calls and screaming would usually do the trick, but that effort requires a damned good reason for parents too lazy to have their kids not chew fake cigerrette gum while using a lacrosse ball to play suicide. Yeah, that smarts).
But you KNEW come sunset you best be home. Which meant at like 15 min before, you'd call from a friends to see if you could eat over. And if they were cooking stove top, the stakes were that much higher.
In summer / on weekends, we would get on the bike at like 8 or 9 am, maybe after some cartoons, and then off. To the basketball courts, friends houses, the dirt bike track behind the Methodist church.
We would have enough money for a deli lunch and some candies (CIGERRETTE gum... what could go wrong with that? The one puff of sugar at the beginning, and the most cardboard worst tasting gum. SO COOL. Err, KOOL). Would play all day, hit up some ones house for kool aid or tang, and back out.
But ####, we were legit free range kids.
Unless and until we decided to go home, no one watched us. Parents had no idea where we were at any particular time. And if they NEEDED to find us, they may simply not have (now, enough driving around a few phone calls and screaming would usually do the trick, but that effort requires a damned good reason for parents too lazy to have their kids not chew fake cigerrette gum while using a lacrosse ball to play suicide. Yeah, that smarts).
But you KNEW come sunset you best be home. Which meant at like 15 min before, you'd call from a friends to see if you could eat over. And if they were cooking stove top, the stakes were that much higher.
Galileo
Footballguy
Piece of cake. I lived in a Cleveland suburb and actually lived on a street where the rapid transits (basically street cars) would run. My buddy and I used to hop on and ride downtown to go to Indians games...no adults, just us. Catch a game and ride back.
Phil Elliott
Footballguy
There was no DisneyWorld. You went to Florida to retire.
gianmarco
Footballguy
Oh, and inviting friends over to play....went very much like...
"Hey Mom, can Bryan come over to play?" or "Hey Mom, can Bryan stay for dinner?" (Bryan standing behind me)
95% of the time was a yes and he'd just come on in. And the other 5% of the time it'd be no and Bryan would just turn around and go back home.
"Hey Mom, can Bryan come over to play?" or "Hey Mom, can Bryan stay for dinner?" (Bryan standing behind me)
95% of the time was a yes and he'd just come on in. And the other 5% of the time it'd be no and Bryan would just turn around and go back home.
Zegras11
Footballguy
LOL... I'd get, "Greg hasn't played the piano yet today. He can come out after he does." Greg hated playing the piano.
Sabertooth
Footballguy
JoeSteeler
Footballguy
did anyone mention "The George Michael Sports Machine"?
Binky The Doormat
Footballguy
We got ours each week at the grocery store. We also got 2 different sets of history books from buying the required minimum amount each week at Marsh grocery store.
JoeSteeler
Footballguy
AS a kid In the summer we would leave the house early after breakfast and just have to be home for dinner...would head out again after and would have to be home "when the street lights came on"
Trick or treat would start at dark and last until after Midnight where I grew up. None of this 3-5pm crap
Trick or treat would start at dark and last until after Midnight where I grew up. None of this 3-5pm crap
Sabertooth
Footballguy
We were camping this last weekend and my buddies wife was telling how she'd buy for all her friends in high school. This girl had an absolutely ridiculous body at like 15 or 16. She'd just walk in with a tank top on and buy the place out of 40 oz beer and Boone's farm. Then sometimes she'd have to go back after school and get more
. And the old guy working would just smile and ring her up. Every week.
Mrs. Rannous
Footballguy
Crap. You could do that? Now, we have people from the sports section in our league. But we sure didn't know them then.
tri-man 47
Footballguy
Street football. All the neighborhood boys (no girls, doh) would gather and play a game of touch football on one of the side streets. Curbs were the out of bounds. We'd move to the sides when a car would come by.
Stamp collecting. Some of us would collect stamps ...buy a big book organized by country (with pics of the main stamps through the years), and then we'd buy sets from some company, trade them, and put them into the books with little sticky things. I had a big collection, and hung on to it. A few years back (after having it for about 50 years), I took it to a local store that still handled stamps, coins, etc. He offered me $3 for it all.
And remember the days of burning the fall leaves in the street? Dads would rake them into the street, and then they'd just burn them up. Loved that smell.
Stamp collecting. Some of us would collect stamps ...buy a big book organized by country (with pics of the main stamps through the years), and then we'd buy sets from some company, trade them, and put them into the books with little sticky things. I had a big collection, and hung on to it. A few years back (after having it for about 50 years), I took it to a local store that still handled stamps, coins, etc. He offered me $3 for it all.
And remember the days of burning the fall leaves in the street? Dads would rake them into the street, and then they'd just burn them up. Loved that smell.
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
This was my memory also, but when I asked my parents, they said it was like 6-9. I think we just remember it seeming way later.Trick or treat would start at dark and last until after Midnight where I grew up. None of this 3-5pm crap
Kanil
Footballguy
Major
Footballguy
Going ham on 976 numbers before we realized they charged per minute. The chat lines were a prelude to message boards and chatrooms. Very grateful we did this at my friend's house. Still remember the outrage when confronted by a $1000+ bill. Prank calling was also a lot of fun without caller id.
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pollardsvision
Footballguy
We'd find out what was going on in HS by showing up at the McDonald's. That's where you went to find out where the party is, or to organize one with the few carloads of kids that would surely be there.
It always seems odd to me that kids these days will never really know what it's like to just show up somewhere, not knowing in advance who would be there. Whether a bar, somebody's house, whatever.
They also won't know what it's to be talking to your girlfriend for a few hours on the home landline, then getting fussed at for not answering the call waiting (and they'll surely never understand just how revolutionary call waiting itself even was at the time). Or the joy of prank calls before caller ID.
It always seems odd to me that kids these days will never really know what it's like to just show up somewhere, not knowing in advance who would be there. Whether a bar, somebody's house, whatever.
They also won't know what it's to be talking to your girlfriend for a few hours on the home landline, then getting fussed at for not answering the call waiting (and they'll surely never understand just how revolutionary call waiting itself even was at the time). Or the joy of prank calls before caller ID.
Hanging out over night in tent city just off the mall grounds waiting for ticketmaster to open in the morning to buy concert tickets to The Big Show-Stones, The Who, Bruuuccce, The Police..., Everyone got a number when they arrived so you knew where to stand in line when the window opened. Communal atmosphere of everyone being in the same place for the same purpose, music going all night, certain contraband wafting through the air. Good times.
Got Who tickets, gave up my Bruce ticket to my sis since we could only get 6 instead of 8, missed on the rest.
Got Who tickets, gave up my Bruce ticket to my sis since we could only get 6 instead of 8, missed on the rest.
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Mrs. Rannous
Footballguy
I don't really like liquor, so I didn't care. But when I was in college, we had keggers in the student union. You were supposed to show your student ID and get your hand stamped. I just told them I didn't drink and went on in. I hated having my hand stamped. And I was seventeen.
Binky The Doormat
Footballguy
We had a 7-11 a couple of streets away in our subdivision. Not only did I love slurpees, but I was also fascinated with the collectible baseball player cups. I had multiples of all of them.
ETA: 25 cents full a decent sized slurpee. Grape was best - shut up grape haters.
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Mrs. Rannous
Footballguy
I'm surprised no one has mentioned ATM's. I remember the first time in about 1978 that we could go and get actual money at one in the morning. And now I don't have to write checks much, or go inside a bank. I can shop on line, instead of trekking all over town to find one thing. This is way better.
pollardsvision
Footballguy
18, freshman in college. The only time I ever stepped foot on Duke's campus was to get a fake ID made in some dude's dorm room. A laminated VA license. Nobody from VA had ever heard of a laminated VA license. Worked like a charm for a couple years though.
shuke
Black Ice Skeptic
Phil Elliott
Footballguy
AS a kid In the summer we would leave the house early after breakfast and just have to be home for dinner...would head out again after and would have to be home "when the street lights came on"
Trick or treat would start at dark and last until after Midnight where I grew up. None of this 3-5pm crap
And regular/jumbo sized candy bars!James Daulton
Footballguy
Do you fellow old bros feel lucky to have lived in times pre and post internet? I was born in '68 and learned to type on a typewriter in class. My friend got a Commodore 64 when we were in high school and I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. You'd have to share phone time with your family and could only go as far for privacy as the cord would allow. Parties, while not easy to set up, were for the most part controllable since you actually had to physically tell the people about them. Lots of word of mouth information. Girls seemed less slutty back then, but what do I know? I feel like I got a decent amount of action in high school so maybe they were sluttier?
Lots and lots of time spent outside the house. From sophomore years of high school until I graduated college, if I was home on a friday or saturday night I felt like a total loser. And ditto on the parents having little idea where we were. During senior year, my current wife and I both told our parents we were going away with friend's families for the weekend. Instead we drove like five hours away and camped all weekend. Just talking and sexing and boozing all weekend 300 miles away from home when our parents thought we were god knows where. Perfectly normal to say bye on Friday and not come back until Sunday as long as the parents had a general idea of where they thought you were and who they thought you were with.
Just awesome times.
Lots and lots of time spent outside the house. From sophomore years of high school until I graduated college, if I was home on a friday or saturday night I felt like a total loser. And ditto on the parents having little idea where we were. During senior year, my current wife and I both told our parents we were going away with friend's families for the weekend. Instead we drove like five hours away and camped all weekend. Just talking and sexing and boozing all weekend 300 miles away from home when our parents thought we were god knows where. Perfectly normal to say bye on Friday and not come back until Sunday as long as the parents had a general idea of where they thought you were and who they thought you were with.
Just awesome times.
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Koya
Footballguy
That's weird - what year was this?
by the time we got to college, you needed a better looking ID.
My friend had a Mac IIe or something. We printed fake IDs and chipped on 10 bucks each to get s laminator. Let's face it, ONLY THE GOVTZ had that kind of technology, right?
Seriously, a laminated, accurate (would pass the ID book test they had) ID was gold.
We got ours at 18, too. It was from the state of Virginia.
mr. furley
Footballguy
9 & 7. 9 year old is good to go. she runs in and out on the weekends. her sister likes to tag along but we don't always allow it as she needs to let her sister have space.
we just moved to this neighborhood last year and there are only a couple kids around :( within running/walking distance. our next door neighbor has two kids that, if i had to guess are in the 10 - 13 year old range but they are..... weird. if my kids come out, they go inside. it's like they're trying to hide.
next school year we're going to have the kids walk/bike to school. we're less than a mile away. hoping that leads to the sorts of face time that we had as kids whereby you walked to school all year round starting in kindergarten and just walked with whomever happened to be headed the same direction.
before this school year we lived about 10 miles from school, in a different part of town completely. my kids got dropped off at grandma's (who lives 3 blocks from school) so that wife and i could get to work on time. mom/grandma won't let the kids walk/won't walk with the kids to school.
Don't Noonan
Footballguy
I can remember playing Atari and Intellivision but the first Nintendo was huge. My buddies would spend entire weekends playing a Baseball Stars or Tecmo Bowl tournament.
Whiffle ball in the backyard was huge and so was playing basketball in the front yard. I remember after my high school basketball won state my senior year my next door neighbor sent me a card saying "all those years shooting baskets in the front yard paid off!".
I used to love visiting my Grandma's house because it was a 2 hour drive and we would sleep over most times. My brother and I would sleep on the couch in the living room. We quickly figured out her cable had a "scrambled" porn channel. It would flicker around but every 3-4 seconds you would get a glimpse. We were hooked.
I played rotisserie baseball and was the commissioner of our league. Every Tuesday the stats for American league players came out and Wednesday was National league. I had to buy these in order to enter in the stats on Lotus 123. What a pain in the ###. Also, watching sportscenter at night was a must to find out how your players did.
Whiffle ball in the backyard was huge and so was playing basketball in the front yard. I remember after my high school basketball won state my senior year my next door neighbor sent me a card saying "all those years shooting baskets in the front yard paid off!".
I used to love visiting my Grandma's house because it was a 2 hour drive and we would sleep over most times. My brother and I would sleep on the couch in the living room. We quickly figured out her cable had a "scrambled" porn channel. It would flicker around but every 3-4 seconds you would get a glimpse. We were hooked.
I played rotisserie baseball and was the commissioner of our league. Every Tuesday the stats for American league players came out and Wednesday was National league. I had to buy these in order to enter in the stats on Lotus 123. What a pain in the ###. Also, watching sportscenter at night was a must to find out how your players did.
Binky The Doormat
Footballguy
Had multiples. HAD.
I hung onto quite a few of them for several years - eventually they all went through the dishwasher enough times that they were ruined.
Koya
Footballguy
Five years younger than you, so born '73.
No microwave until I was 10 (they existed but we didn't get one yet).
Grew up on Cassettes, in high school began to go CD.
Typewriters, high school we started to see "word processors" and PCs (IBM Compatible!).
No cells and no internet outside of the computer lab through graduation in 1995.
graduated and within two years had home internet and a cell phone.
Ive always said I grew up analog, but have spent my entire adult life in a digital world.
Koya
Footballguy
For you baseball fans, Strat-o-Matic HQ was my hometown (technically town next store but all same district and hang out / bike around catchment area)
They recently redid their digs, which had been the same crappy 70's-80's one story office building.
They recently redid their digs, which had been the same crappy 70's-80's one story office building.
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