{"id":30116,"date":"2016-01-03T06:26:52","date_gmt":"2016-01-03T11:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=30116"},"modified":"2016-01-03T19:39:43","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T00:39:43","slug":"remembering-the-1970s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=30116","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the 1970’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone else is busy looking forward to what 2016 will bring, so for my first post of the year I thought I’d go retro-hipster on you and look back to the 1970s. I see a lot of these crappy posts on Facebook like, “Only 60’s\/70’s\/80’s\/90’s kids will remember…” But they’re filled with the same points again and againOften the re-poster is lazy and just changes the decade without altering the list, which results in crap lists that make no sense in a world where childhood lasts less than 20 years.<\/span> and it’s often obvious stuff you could pick up from watching (say) “That 70’s Show”. But That 70’s Show is to the 1970’s what the Pirates of the Caribbean<\/em> ride is to dying of scurvy on the high seas in 1675. <\/p>\n

So I thought I’d try to dig deep and come up with a bunch of details from the time period that don’t make the usual lists, and maybe a few that don’t make it into movies based in the time period. <\/p>\n

The 70's was butts.<\/div>
The 70's was butts.<\/div><\/p>\n

There were always cigarette butts EVERYWHERE, like leaves in autumn. The wind blew them around and usually they wound up between sidewalk cracks, or in the gutter where the street meets the curb. There were also lots of matches mixed in with these.<\/p>\n

People tried to fix the cigarette litter by adding ever-more ashtrays to the environment. This was based on the faulty assumption that people threw their cigarettes on the ground because they couldn’t find an ashtray. The truth is that people threw their cigarettes on the ground because they didn’t give a shit, and because they enjoyed the sensation of flicking a used butt away. It was perfectly common to see some guy lean against the wall beside an ashtray and flick his cigarette into the street when he was done smoking.<\/p>\n

Before you get mad at those folks, remember that a lot of them died of cancer.<\/p>\n

Having a big smelly pile of ash and butts was kind of unsightly, so upscale places would try to fill ashtrays with something nice that would absorb the smell. Some were filled with small pebbles. Others had very fine white sand. This mostly hid the butts and ash, but (and I’m speaking from personal experience here) they were basically irresistible for kids to play in. This also blurred the line between ashtrays and not-ashtrays. Eventually every vaguely container-like object between shin and waist height became an ashtray. So in your typical waiting room you’d always find a few butts around the base of the potted plants.<\/p>\n

The ubiquitous cigarette smoking infused the world with a particular smell. And I’ve never seen a movie or television show that really captured the particular look of sunlight entering a smoke-filled bar or restaurant. The smoke tended to gather near the ceiling and catch the light, letting you watch the air currents of the room in real time.<\/p>\n

In addition to the cigarette litter there was a constant scattering of bottlecaps and pull-tabs around every convenience store, bar, and vending machine.<\/p>\n

Television was filled with awful, awkward, uncomfortable advertising defined by low production values and dreadful jingles. Stuff like this:<\/p>\n