What was life like in the 1970's?

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This is the same as my "What was life like in the 1980's?" thread, except this time, it is obviously about the 1970's.

What was going on during this time period?

-LegoMaster2149 (Written on February 26, 2018)

In the 1970s, I was in elementary, middle school and the beginning of high school.

At the beginning of the decade, I had one cat. At the end, my second cat, and my favorite, Samantha, was born. (April 1, 1979). She lived to be 20.

I was 9 starting January 2, 1970, and almost 19 at the end of 1979.

When I graduated high school (in 1979), two major hits were "Ain't no Stoppin' us now," and "We are Family."

It was very different from 1970 to 1979. Not as much difference between 1980 and 1989.

Within a US/New York City context:

There were lots of Hare Krishnas dancing in the streets, trying to recruit people into their cult. Activity got much less intense later in the decade.

We had to rent phones, rather than be able to buy them. In 1970, most phones were rotary (dial); touch-tone incurred a steep monthly charge. By 1979, the touch-tone phone became the majority phone. Phones had to be installed by the phone company. Outside, within phone booths, local calls cost a dime for 5 minutes throughout the decade. Long distance calls (outside your own area code) became lower in price as the decades proceeded.

Video games were very uncommon until about 1978. Most kids played pinball. They were usually a quarter for two "plays." There were very few home video games (none before 1972); you had to go to an arcade to play video games after 1978; before then, you just played pinball or skeet ball there.

Gas cost 30 cents a gallon in 1970; about a dollar a gallon in 1979. Most newspapers cost about 10 cents in 1970; about 30-50 cents in 1979. Cigarettes cost 35-40 cents a pack in the 1970s; now they cost that much per cigarette.

The New York Subway, mostly, had fans to cool you off on trains, rather than air-conditioning. Graffiti was everywhere. People smoked marijuana in the back cars. Kids went into conductors' cars to announce the stops.

Even in 1976, you can get a pizza and coke for 50 cents.

Much less multitasking.

Younger people used a lot of drugs especially Marijuana(Reefer)

Inner city schools were dangerous but otherwise we had much much more freedom and students took advantage.

School Bathrooms were for cigarette and reefer smoking, smoke wafted out of there down the halls
This song from 1974 was a hit when I was in high school


Seniors were allowed to leave the school to do whatever for lunch.
Academics were much more lax, I practically had no homework for senior year

Alice Cooper had a hit with the lyrics "School's Out Forever, School's blown to pieces" and a in the movie Rock and Roll High School a school was blown up and nobody batted an eyelash. That was thought of as innocent teen fantasy, nobody could conceive of a mass murder in a school until 1979 when a school shooting was the inspiration for the hit song "I Don't Like Monday's"

Teens used the words "mellow" and "intense" to describe things a lot.

"get on your case" meant consistently bother you to change something.

Teens wanted to be different from their parents in every way.

On the last day of high school each year school students ran wild. Emptying their lockers and throwing stuff in the halls, setting off firecrackers and smoke bombs

In my school this went on all day and was more "intense" then depicted in the film

Yep. No ID's in schools yet. Not when I went to a public junior high, at least. I went to a private high school which didn't have ID's.

In public school, kids used to set off Sulphur-smelling stink bombs in the stairways of the public schools. Lunches sucked---much more than they do today. I refused to eat the stuff. And I really wasn't all that choosy.

I think some kids were allowed to go home for lunch in junior high. I'm not sure about myself. I didn't want to go home until I had to go home LOL

Many more people had color TV's in the 1970s than they did in the 1960s. It was usually the TV in the living room, though. Many of them were 25-inch "consoles" which sometimes also had a record player. It was rare for the second TV (the one in a kid's room) to be color, though. It was usually about a 12-inch black and white TV which had poor reception. One usually had to get up to change the channel---though some people had remotes.

It was a pretty big deal to have a "stereo." My brother saved up from his teenage job to get one. It was a combined radio/record player.

There were 8-track tapes----but no CD's. We had cassette tapes---but they were usually only used with tape recorders. Not many people had 8-track tape players. I didn't know what one looked like then. There weren't as many portable record players in the 1970s as there were in the 1960s. These portable record players tended to be fragile, and to break easily.

People used to sit on the stoop of their apartment building--or the stairs of their house, and played their transistor radios in the early 70s. Sometimes, they were tiny--sometimes, they were somewhat large. In the late 1970's, boomboxes appeared (even though they were invented in the late 1960s). I didn't see a boombox until around 1977. At the very end of the 1970s, the Walkman was invented. Each cost about $200.

Also: It should be noted that "groovy" didn't last long after 1975. If you said "groovy" in 1980, you were considered hopelessly outdated.

Every man and woman had long hair if they were under 40 by 1975. Many older people also grew their hair. Hair started to get shorter by the Disco Era. By 1980, it really wasn't fashionable to have stringy long hair; that was replaced by "big hair" in the 1980s.

Main thing i remember is black and white television. I had a black and white TV for my Vic20 in the 1980s but only for a short while, in the 70s it was more common.

Home computers were extremely rare. Only ones that was around was card based ones with chips that could display a number and expensive ones like the ABC 80 (Swedish), Commodore PET and the Apple. Most people did not have home computers and it wasn't until the 1980s that the home computer revolution took off. It was mainly rich hobbyists and universities who had them.

I cant remember much except for those things and the horrible hippie wallpaper i mentioned in the 1980s thread, most of the 70s i was a toddler/child. I have memories from it, but there isn't much distinction from that age that differ from the 1980s.

It was pretty outdated by 1971 or 1972 by me. At that time adults would call anybody with long hair and casual clothes "hippies". Kids did not call themselves that by then. Years later I have heard a lot of people describing themselves as being "hippies" during the 70's.

The heaviest drug users were called "heads".

It was the opposite of the 60's as far as political activism went. Our professors in the late 70's called us "apathetic .

"Southern Rock" was very very popular during those college years even though I went to school with students mostly from Long Island and NYC. People wore the Southern Rock uniform Denim, Bandanna and put confederate flag decals on their cars. That was a music fan statement not a political one.

British Progressive Rock acts were immensely popular popular especially in the first half of the decade, but still popular at the end of it.

Disco was a genre girls, gays and blacks tended to like. Most guys I knew hated disco but some went to discos because they had the reputation of attracting the hottest women.

...Well, I was alive then ...

In New York City, disco was very popular. All these discos opened up all of a sudden. And kids looked like those characters from Saturday Night Fever. It was especially popular amongst the Italian kids in Brooklyn. But many "mainstream" people liked to go to discos to pick up girls. Slightly older people went to "singles bars." The "singles bar" scene is dramatized in a movie called "Mr. Goodbar." Most of the music on the juke box in "singles bars" was disco.

In the late 1970s, many men wore "leisure suits" with flowered shirts. Some men even wore peach or pink leisure suits without any problem. Lots of men also wore tinted glasses. Bell-bottom jeans were sort of "out" by the late 1970s---but dress slacks still had the "bell-bottom" style. A considerable amount of clothes was made of polyester then.

Dorothy Hamill was the darling of the 1976 Olympics. Right after the Olympics, many, MANY girls started getting the "Dorothy Hamill" haircut. There hasn't been a phenomenon like that since. Not even when Madonna was popular in the mid 80s. It was a short hairstyle, sometimes with bangs (but mostly parted in the middle).

Many people also liked rock, and thought "disco sucked." This is when those T-shirts with the band names started. In the mid 1970s, "arena rock" was really popular. There was much security in those "arenas." It wasn't like Woodstock at all.

1977 was the year of the Son of Sam. People in New York City (especially in Brooklyn and Queens) were petrified then. Many even stopped going to discos. This is because the Son of Sam would stalk people coming out of discos.

...People in the 70s were a little obsessed with " When will the 70s be over? They're not the 60s. I can't wait for the 80s! "!

The 80's became worse....

I wasn't too thrilled with the 80's when I lived in the 80's.

I liked the 90's better when I lived in the 90's

In the 70's.
We received TV (1974)
Peter and Magie Stine where our local store keepers,
Sadly my Mother died,
I moved to Brisbane,
I became aware I was gay,
Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin on Christmas Day 1974,
My now Husband was born in 1971

I bet you received color TV relatively quickly.

In New York City, you knew your storekeepers in the 1960s---in the 1970s, not so much.

Did you ever ride the subway trains during this time?

Constantly. On an everyday basis. I had a 1.5 hour commute each way to school every day on the subway.

What were your school days like?