What was life like in the 1980's?

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Yes, smoking was much more socially acceptable.

I saw something both strange and sad online recently - just after Leonard Cohen died. People were discussing his music, and someone referred to "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye". Which was released in the '60s or '70s, but...

the chatters were discussing this as if it were a breakup song. Nope. Not at all. It was a *parting* song:

"Many loved before us, I know we are not new
In city and in forest, they loved like me and you
But now it's come to distances and both of us must try
Your eyes are soft with sorrow...
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye."

The couple in the song were going to be apart for awhile. No cell phones. No internet. None of that. Nothing but letters - that's snail mail - and landlines - that's long distance phone calls. Which used to cost a LOT more than local ones. They were going to have to make do with letters and phone calls for awhile, until they could see each other again.

Many, many, many people managed long distance relationships that way (especially those who met and married around the time of the Great Depression, then had to separate for work; or those in the military). For generations.

And the folks in the discussion had never experienced this and couldn't begin to conceive of it.

Wow... wowitty wow wow wow. That's when it really hit me how much has changed, and how few of us have a foot in both "ages" of technology now.

This isn't a criticism of anyone. It's just an astonished observation.

And here is Leonard Cohen - this is the original recording. He was quite young. Also, he's not... umm... the strongest singer on the planet... but as a songwriter the man was unparalleled.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-bJPmasXKs Link, as usual, for those who don't see the embed above.

Fun since I was a teenager. Video games at home included Atari with space invaders, pac man, etc. MTV had just come out in the early 80’s and it was actually pretty good and included music videos and not just bad tv shows. Big hair was in and women in the Navy were allowed to serve on ships starting sometime in the 80’s.

distressingly, the sideburns that were so popular in the 70s, all went away. facial hair in general became old-fashioned and didn't make a return until the grunge 90s.

We have never even gotten CLOSE to the way hair was in the 1970s. Most guys still kept their hair short in the 1990s. This was around the time that goatees started getting popular.

skinny ties, collars and lapels, just like the early 60s.

Remember mullet hair dos and guess it could be called “hair style.”

Yes this style was awesome to me. The 70’s seem to be about mustaches, long sideburns, big hair, wide ties, bell bottoms, and Cheryl Tiegs like hair or Farrah Fawcet hair.

yeh, wasn't it GREAT?

Oh dear, a true story: I went to grad school in Boston; got out and fell totally nutso in love with a guy where I worked my first job - in another state altogether. (Can you imagine? This was actually POSSIBLE then - nobody got fired or was sued.)

So one year I took him back up to Boston with me, on vacation.

He had '80s hair and a lovely full beard and mustache. So we go to the Boston Museum of Science, and they have a set of dioramas about human culture and evolution, and I started howling with laughter, because there he was, or rather there was his absolutely identical twin, in the Cro-Magnon diorama. And I do mean identical. Maybe not as well dressed, but otherwise...

Took pictures. This being the '80s, we got them developed when we came home, and HE fell over laughing. Then we showed them to his folks, who fell over laughing too. Great days.

Cro-Magnons were men that many women would drool over.

They tended to be tall and lean and muscular.

Sounds like you had a real "catch" back then, Esme.

He was my second Great Love - my first was in college. I am absolutely certain both gentlemen were Aspie. My intellect and sense of humor didn't frighten either of them - it was, in fact, a turn on. That is rare, rare, rare.

We parted amicably a few years later, and I still consider myself lucky to have known him. To have known both of them, really.

My grandparents always go to Florida for the winter, our family used to exchange letters when I was little, and I remember we exchanged cassette tapes a time or two. Man, if I thought telephone calls were awkward, that was much more so.

Picture this...

If you had HBO, which was new back then, you would NEVER have any commercials or anything else except one movie after another!! !
That was how they got people to start paying to watch T.V.
They would show a moive, usually something that had been at the theater not that long ago , from start to finish! No interruptions. At the end of the movie there would be a five minute "intermission" usually before the next uninterrupted movie started. It was wonderful, just like going to the theater but smaller.

Yep. I remember those days. The "channels" had letters, then--rather than numbers. We also had to get up to change the channel on the cable box.

In the 1970s, there was a show on HBO called "Midnight Blue." It was soft porn.

At that time to see a movie on a non cable channel you would have to wait several years and all the “good parts” would be cut out or reworded. Some of the more “dirty” movies were so heavily edited it made them difficult to watch.