Scratch ‘n’ sniff
When velcro sneakers were cool for people older than 4 and younger than 80
Tang
Zayres department stores (mostly an East Coast thing, I think)
Phil Rizutto ‘Money Store’ commercials
Buying comics from a spinning rack at 7-11.
For that matter, 7-11 being open from 7 AM to 11 PM.
Being sent to the 7-11 at age 8 with a note giving them permission to sell me cigarettes on my parents’ behalf.
LOL Did that actually work?
I was tasked similarly as a kid - my grandfather ran a barbar ship, I did odd jobs, sweeping up and such. Sometimes he’d send me across the street to the drug store to buy a carton of Vantage’s, his brand. Nobody even blinked.
It was more difficult for my buddy and I when we were kids.
Our local Holiday Inn had a bar, and I’d have to sneak in the back door, keeping low, and sidle along the wall to the cigarette machine, quickly insert my 65 cents, yank on whichever handle was closest (no time to make a brand choice, not that we cared), grab the pack (and I think the machine supplied matches as well), and make a quick exit.
I always felt like an outlaw doing that, and I’m sure I was spotted several times, but I’m also sure none of the bar patrons gave a shit. In fact, after I’d grabbed the pack one time, I looked over and saw the bartender and the guy he was serving smiling knowingly at me. Those were heady days. :-)
My first modem for my Commodore 64 was 300 baud, pulse dial. If I’m doing my math correctly, given my current internet connection is 300 Mbit/s, that makes it 1,000,000 times faster than I was communicating about 30 years ago.
Just think about that. In another 30 years, will we see another 1 million times increase in speed? What in the world will we need it for?! Think about the cat pics!
Later, when I graduated to 1200bps (so fast!), I got really used to these -
In my high school computer class we used punched cards to type out our programs. They were sent to a mainframe via an acoustic coupler modem.
The first modem I bought was a blazing 2400 baud model with blinky lights pin the front.
How else are we gonna get porn from Alpha Centauri? Space is really, really, really big.
/+++ATH0
Whippersnapper! I remember watching this on live TV and I was home quarantined with the German Measles at the time. Edit: And the TV was black and white, of course.
What’s amazing is the pace of the advancements. Living through it, it just seemed natural, but I was too young to have a sense of scale. It was only just over 8 years between Freedom 7 and Apollo XI. 8 years from the first American to barely enter space to walking on the moon. I guess what is most scary is the level of risk they were willing to accept in order to push the pace that hard.
Remember when public restrooms bragged about their Jet Age technology, their hot air hand dryers? And how nearly all of them had their instructions vandalized to say something like this?
But I haven’t seen those PUSH BUTT instructions in a while. And I kind of missed them, even if I never really understood the “stop auto at ally” advice.
The other day I was in a restaurant restroom. You know the “employees must wash hands after using restroom” signs? Someone had scratched out the h and part of the d in “hands”, so it looked like “employees must wash anus after using restroom”. Beautiful. Just like the days of yore.
Chess computers being all the rage.
Or if you weren’t a nerd, Mattel Electronic Football.
Lawn Darts, with the proper skull-crushing metal tips.
Drive-in restaurants hanging the food tray on your car window.
Drive-in movies, unironically.
Renting a LaserDisc player to watch movies at home.
Video projectors having separate saucer-sized lenses for red, green, and blue.
Your grandfather was a pirate?
I remember thinking how cool this was:
Sorry, meant to say he ran a Berber shop.
Saw this live:
Obviously not my originals. But check it: $10.50 to see THE POLICE.
I was 11. It was a birthday present from my big Cousin.
About a year after that (a guess) the Police played a junior college football stadium here and I didn’t go because I didn’t want to see anyone in a venue that large. :)
Speaking of ticket prices past:
I sat in the bleachers of Cleveland Stadium (later known as the Dawg Pound) for the 1968 Eastern Conference Playoff Game - Price $3.00 - and the NFL Championship Game - Price $6.00.
My student season ticket for Ohio State Football my freshman year (1970) was $10.00 and that included a Michigan game.
Actually I pretty much stuck to it. I never saw a concert in a football or baseball stadium. I think the largest venue I ever saw a show was the Long Beach Arena, a show I saw using someone else’s ticket after they couldn’t go.
I just have never understood the idea of going to a show so you could watch the band on a giant TV screen because that’s the only way you could see them.
I remember paying $1 to see a movie at the local theater in the late 1980’s.
ONE DOLLAR.