The old Geezers 70's and 80's Megathread
 

The Suzzane Somers thread got me thinking about a conversation I was having with one of my friends about how awesome it was to be alive in the 70s and 80s. You try telling younger generations about it but it’s impossible. For starters testosterone levels were WAY, WAY higher back then. There were very few girly men like we have so many of today. Much higher levels of T and no cell phones had a huge impact on your social/sex life. Everybody was fing everybody and it was awesome. Nobody was up in your business. Everyone knew what they were and what bathroom to use. Fat people were few and far between. Teenage years were amazing. Cruising every Friday night with people bringing out all their bad rides and the girls all sexied up. Kegers every friggen weekend. The music was so much better too. Still remember going to Van Halen’s first tour. It didn’t cost anything to see those bands back then. As a young adult the party for me just continued as I went into health clubs. Once again everybody was doing everybody. The parties after we closed the club, just wow. When I moved to the bay area from Florida it just continued. I remember when the Exotic Erotic ball was a company function and we took 10 limos to the city filled with teenage girls in their sexiest lingerie. Can you imagine that happening today? Sadly that way of life ended with Anita Hill and the invention of the smart phone amongst other things. I will be forever grateful to god for being able to grow up during that time. I feel so bad for the kids coming up today, there’s just no comparison.

So what do you say old geezers, give me a walk down memory lane.

"Everything was so much better back in my day" says every silly old man ever.

Take your meds and get back in bed grandpa.

Life was a whole lot simpler and better... No school shootings, no living your teenage life for likes, no 50% of kids being on anti-depressants and 20% confused about their gender... Life was a whole lot better with Evil Knievel and rotary dial phones...

By girlie men, I assume you are referring to people that watch soccer.

It certainly wasn’t a better era for Chiefs football.

So, what I've gathered so far is the previous generation was a bunch of whores who ruined the next generation because they were too busy being whores.

Ya, whats wrong with that ? :-)

I think the #1 advantage of growing up in the 70s and 80s was being the last generation to go through our entire childhoods with no internet. I think social media ****s a lot of kids up.

ETA: There were plenty of pansies in the 70s and 80s, but they didn't have an easily accessible platform they could use 24/7.

You needed your own thread to make sweeping statements about sections of people you don’t like?

I’ll remember that when your RIP thread shows up.

If we reversed the clock and banned social media, our young adults might have turned out perfectly normal like Adolf here.

And it was beautiful. We have got to do something about the testosterone rates falling and our estrogen rates rising as a country. This really is a big thing. You don't have to search hard to find it. Start with you're not the man your father was in Forbes. There is tons of scientific information out on there on it. Communication skills have gone to shit too.

Agreed! Other than being a Chiefs fan, everything else was better.

For me,

The 70’s were kind of a great time. Still a TON of great music was being written and produced. And the anti war music of the late 60’s was still alive and well.

The threat of the Russians was still real. As every school had their fallout shelters. But kids didn’t worry about it. Much.

10c bubble gum with baseball cards. And stickers for your notebook were big. Muscle cars were incredible. We moved pretty freely as kids/young teens. Lots of unorganized activities. But we had summer camps too. Being a catholic school kid, those camps helped me develop friendships with the public school district kids. Those friendships are ongoing.

I feel we tinkered with things more in those days. Changing oil was simple. Of course, if you opened the hood on any American made auto, you could practically climb into engine bay as there was room to spare. To this day, I’ll tear into any household appliance in order for it to last a little longer. Today’s society does seem to be more of a throwaway society. (Just a guess).

Not nearly the emphasis on safety. Jungle gyms were insane. The one at my local school was huge, the frame had to be 20/25 feet in the air. Climbed that thing all the time. I probably would have freaked the F out if my own children did that.

But, that’s just being a parent.

Good thread for reminiscing.

It absolutely sucked, but it makes this era so much sweeter...

It ****s up everything. People tend to do that.

It also skews the hell out of perceptions of this generation vs that one or whatever.

This - I graduated Grade School, HS and College all in the 80's ('81,'85 & '89)

I'd also say that I'd probably be a complete wastoid living in a trailer park had social media/internet been in existence. :)

Tell that to a 15 year old with green hair who's on Zoloft and doesn't know what gender they're going to feel like each day until they flip a coin like Harvey Dent.

What about his Happy Birthday thread?

I feel sorry for many of today's kids.

They'll never know what the higher levels of freedom felt like.

I love the things we have now to make our lives easier, but it's a double edged sword in that it's made us lazier, and more antisocial. I do long for the simpler life back then on occasion, but those days are long gone so onward we go.

I do agree that the the obesity rate was much lower in that decade. Once companies discovered HFCS, the population got bigger.

Interesting... I quickly read the article, but the thought seems to partly stem from fewer physically demanding jobs?

That part makes sense and I certainly wish schools were far better at teaching strength training techniques as you got into high school and not just powerlifting classes that were basically reserved for football players.

I half assed that stuff for years as the kid who could eat anything and never gain weight.

It wasn’t all great. War seemed to be an ever present thing for most of my childhood. Taking my brothers back to the train station after leave was tough on the fam. And the extended fam. Feel fortunate that draft conscription was killed just before my time.

Looking back, I have had about 15 years of my life where the USA was not directly involved in a war.

We just going to gloss over this?

70’s Warner Brothers cartoon on Saturday morning were must see TV. Violent and hilarious. And sometimes worse.

Saving the money for your own stereo. And putting it together to listen to listen to vinyl. Taking a hit of Thai stick and listening to Pink Floyd.

Hong Kong Fui, Speed Buggy, Land of the Lost and Fat Albert...

And sometimes they were better. Those were all very good.

We loved them all... Saturday mornings were the only time cartoons were on unless you caught Rock and Bullwinkle before church on Sunday morning.

I was under the impression that implying someone is a paedo is a bannable offense. Even if they say something that's quite obviously a bit noncey.

No school shootings? What alternate reality were you living in?

And I’m sorry to tell you but those people existed….they just couldn’t be open about it. You know….because most people would beat the shit out of them.

And I will also agree that we did have keg parties on country roads every Friday night. Call a few folks, who called a few others, who called a few others.

Collect $2 from each and it was 16g heaven. $18 plus deposit. And stop by the IGA to pick up cups. (Or bring your own).

Yea, we threw the word bundle of sticks around pretty loosely. And not just kidding your buddy. Anybody, anywhere at any time, who did anything remotely feminine, was labeled. Immediately and forever.

Unless it happened in the football/wrestling locker room. (Then it was just good fun.)

It was a company function bro. We did it every year. The girls all had a great time. I'm not sure why you want to have a problem with it. You have serious anger issues dude. It was a different time with very different attitudes compared to today. Anita hill changed everything, it was really weird. One day your partying in a limo the next you couldn't even talk to a female employee without somebody else present if you were in management. It changed the world and not in a good way.

School shootings in the 70's & 80's absolutely occurred. Most of them were more targeted vs the mass shootings we are now used to (unfortunately) seeing/hearing about.

Street touch football with kids from the entire block. Street Whiffle ball games that lasted until the final light of the sun. Block parties were awesome too. Fireworks that could blow your entire arm off.

The one closest to me never made the national news. Girl breaks up with guy. Guy comes to school, says “it’s me or nobody” blasted her in the parking lot.

Hell yeah. Live action shows like Leave it to Beaver and The Little Rascals seemed awesome too, because they weren't shown on tv every day like they are now.

EVERY fricken weekend baby. The beer is better now though. LMAO

When you weren't sleeping you were socializing. Sooo different.

LMAO...

Yes, no school shootings, despite many kids bringing their hunting guns in their cars to school...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...eath_toll#List

Sure those people existed, and many were bullied, but to deny there is an issue today with the growing percentages is intellectually dishonest.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...se-among-teens

I like a lot of the tech we have nowadays but yeah, things might have been better without the social media and stuff like that. I mean, Youtube is fantastic for learning a lot of things. If I want to learn a new song for my next gig, just find someone on Youtube to show you how to play it. It's almost too easy. :D

Pretty disingenuous to only show shootings with more than 4 deaths. A school shooting is a school shooting.

All of this.


The jungle gym I fell off of multiple times as a child wasn't that tall, but probably still over 10-12 feet high. Once fell through the center of it, so hit about 4 crossbars on the way down, hairline cracked a rib and put a doozy of a bump on the back of my head but was back climbing on the thing a few weeks later.

Today, if they still let kids climb on those things, they'd probably tear it down after an incident like that or make all the kids wear football pads/helmets before they could go within 20 feet of it.

Lol, and bikes. A few years ago, my sister-in-law was complaining to me about how much she spent on the kids' bikes and how they never used them. I told her "Well, they might've been more into their bikes if you hadn't made them put on a helmet, knee and elbow pads, mouthpieces, safety glasses, etc. every time they wanted to go for a ride."

I mean, I would've avoided my bike like the plague if my parents had made me put all that crap on before I could go for a ride.

You see when you've got such HIGH T it makes you lust over teenagers. You wouldn't understand it so go make a tick-tock about it!!

Is that not how mass shootings are categorized?

It is also pretty disingenuous how the powers that be call a mass shooting a mass shooting even if it happens to be gang on gang and at night or when school is not in session just to make the numbers seem way worse.


Ok, I'll stop now before this gets thrown to DC.

Get off my lawn :cuss:

He didn’t say no mass shootings. He said no school shootings.

I am biased, but I loved growing up in the 70's and 80's.
Such a simple time.
I'm going to list the top ten things about being a kid from that generation.

1. Parents didn't care what you did. As long as you weren't near the house, and the cops or neighbors didn't complain, it was all good. I don't think my folks ever came to one baseball game of mine and neither did the other parents. I am sure now they were home enjoying time away from us kids. Helicopter parents did not exist.
2. We played real games. We didn't have computer war simulators. Problem solved, lets play war outside. We climbed dangerous shit, made forts and often ****ed around and found out. Lessons learned everyday.
3. We fixed our own shit. If our bike got busted we went to Western Auto with our own paper route money, got the parts and fixed that shit. We did not fear tinkering with things.
4. Feelings??? WTF. The last thing I would ever do is talk to my parents about feelings. This is the correct way.
5. Everybody smoked! Including us! If we couldn't get the real cigs we substituted with candy cigs.
6. Our toys were dangerous as ****. Lawn Darts, Clackers and Shrinky Dinks. Our Toys were deadly.
7. They never cancelled school for weather. And that just meant the walk to school and the walk home would be an epic adventure. Snowballs, Hookie-bobbin..sweet Jesus it was fun.
8. Adults were allowed, and encouraged, to beat the shit out of you. Man you had to watch you P&Q's as there was an enforcer around every corner. I had more neighborhood Moms and Dads kick my ass then I care to remember.
9. Porn was printed and if you searched for it you could find it. Show that shit to your friends and the talk about touching boobs was simply exquisite.
10. Candy was real. It was big, it was tasty and it was cheap.

One other thing that was far better is the lack of a 24 hour news cycle. Way less news + no internet meant crazies were relatively uncommon. Now there are so many of them that being a nutjob is mainstream.

Riding our bikes everywhere. Playing games in the street or in back yards. Getting in a fight where it's one on one, and when it's over, it's over. School teachers teaching reading, writing, and arithmatic. Parents taking the side of the school when their kid is being a dipshit. Two genders and nobody dressed up like cats and dogs. Americana. Life was better then.

I probably would have been bored. As an introvert I've only ever been bored at a social function I don't want to be at or are virtually forced to go to.

24-hour news cycles turned so many people into raging, blithering idiots that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

Getting into brawls at little league games...

Those were the days.

Every generation has its good and bad elements.

Things that were better in the 1970s

Almost nobody was fat.
No social media.
Printed newspapers and magazines

Things that are better now

Picture threads on Chiefsplanet that would have blown my mind in the 1970s.
Word, Excel, and Powerpoint
Cool-looking cars

When I was a kid in the 50s/60s, it was extremely rare, but now it seems like the norm.
I saw a recent statistic saying it is currently around 40%, but I think that is low.

IMO, two things are huge contributors too it.

1)Fast food is now the norm for a lot of people which is extremely high calorie and fat content. For us it was a very rare "treat" and the norm was home cooking.

2) Sedentary life styles, computer games, TV and the internet instead of outdoor activities.

BigDaddy mentions testosterone levels a couple of times and not to long ago I quoted a lab results study with mice that was repeated several times that always turned out the same.
The end results were females turned dominant and they ended up stopping the reproduction cycle and died out.
I ponder that we are on that path.

At least you knew you were beating up another DUDE blind drunk at a kid's tball game! Nowadays you'd have to ask 'em their pronouns before you get sauced and assaulted them, or end up on a hate crime registry.

I work at a very old college and they're proud of their tradition, so there's a myriad of old black and white photos in most buildings and it is mind blowing to see how few obese people there are in those photos. I mean its like 1 in 50.

Disingenuous?... We are talking Mass indiscriminate school shootings, not target incidents of jilted lovers and individual disputes. However, if you look at the stats, those numbers are way up as well. We are talking Mass shootings of anyone in their way... It was great, we didn't have lock down active shooter drills in the 70's and 80's as it wasn't a problem, and it was never on anyone's mind. They didn't happen, despite fewer gun laws and kids bring guns to school in their cars.

Last year a longtime friend and I looked through our high school yearbook. There was a full-body shot of a fellow that we both remembered as being incredibly overweight, probably one of top-five fattest guys in our school of 1,000 kids. We were shocked to see the photo, because by today's standards he was probably average or maybe even less fat than average.

Must you always be a douche over everything? You and the Franchise, good lord. First of all I was a young back then myself. Secondly you couldn't even work unless you were at least 16. Most of the girls that went to this were 18-21. I imagine there might have been a few older and a 17 year old might have snuck in somewhere. I don't know I wasn't carding everyone. I don't think anyone really cared at that point. It was an 18 and up event because there was a lot of nudity. I don't remember anyone getting carded but damn I don't know, it was a long time ago.

Exactly! If a kid was fat, he/she stood out like flashing red light on a cop car. If they were not picked on by others, they were stared at constantly.

Haha, probably wasn't very common. Parents didn't go to little league games much, and those that did weren't trying to get their asses kicked by being idiots.

Yep, it used to be that a friend group might include one fat kid. Now a friend group might have one skinny kid.

I never remember the parent's even getting upset at little league games and they would rarely question the coach.

What is the average size of a man in the US?
5 feet 9 inches
How much does the average American man weigh? The average American man 20 years old and up weighs 197.9 pounds . The average waist circumference is 40.2 inches, and the average height is just over 5 feet 9 inches (about 69.1 inches) tall.Feb 27, 2019

40.2 inches at 20? Most of the kids these days are a bunch of Fat Zachs. You know what goes along with being fat, even lower testosterone levels. Lower T, Higher Estrogen. No wonder there is so much gender confusion.

Most everyone in my high school had a shotgun and rifle in their vehicles. I was no exception. We also had our buck knives on our belts. If we had a beef with someone, we settled it with our fists. The thought of stabbing or shooting someone never crossed our minds. We definitely live in different times when a first grader can get suspended for drawing a gun...

We need to bring back Halter Top day to Royals games. That is all.

I guess the things I like that no longer seem to be a thing:

As a young kid, you could just bike around anywhere with anyone from a really young age as long as you were 'home for dinner'.

And then even after dinner we could take off again if we didn't have sports practice or something.

My parents were relaxed about my coming and goings, but some of my friends parents were not. But in high school, at least once they got out of the house, they couldn't monitor them anymore.

No cell phones with everyone taking pics and videos of all the stupid crap you did when you were young and stupid. I'm so glad about this one.

The higher drinking age and the less drinking by the young has a lot of up sides that I don't want to minimize along with greater awareness of issues around sexual assaults, etc.

But I had a lot of fun going to college when the drinking age was still 18, alcohol consumption was high, and as far as I knew at the time...

There were plenty of college girls who were also into sex, drugs, and rock and roll...

...who didn't seem to have regrets about any of it.

I know we have discussed this before, but what size school and city do you live if you and (everybody) drove to school with .22’s in the window rack?

I went to a school of 450/500. In a city of 100k.

Very, very few folks had their hunting stuff in a car/truck. Car stereo theft alone in the 70’s was out of control. If somebody’s gun got stolen out of a truck (locked or unlocked) there was a Dad who was going to kick his son’s ass.

Everybody I knew practiced incredible caution with their firearm.

My school was tiny, 300 kids from K-12, small town few hundred people.

Hunting season, pretty much all vehicles had guns. If there was a sporting event during a hunting season, everyone had a gun in the vehicle. People showed up with camo on, face paint, pretty much all you could think of.

Our school had FFA and their was a trap shooting team, so we had guns for that, a school event that you needed to bring guns for.


We never had any issues, no threats, nobody bringing them into school. It was something that had been taught from a very young age, to respect the guns and to understand it wasn’t something to **** with



Edit: This was late 90’s early 00’s

I fell off one in 5th grade onto asphalt and cracked my skull. Shockingly, my parents didn't sue the school or try to have it closed down.

We had the very tall, and narrow metal slides that would be 800 degrees after 5 seconds in the sun. With nothing but rocks under them to land on when you finally fell off

looking back, our "uniforms" were badass. A printed T shirt from some local sponsor, jeans, and sneakers.

I lived in a town of 13,000 people. I saw a little bit of it, but it was a subset of guys who had pickups. So out of 650 high school kids of driving age, maybe 20 percent (130) had pickups and 80 percent of those (104) were guys. So there were maybe 104 kids who could possibly put a gun in their pickup, and of those 5 or 10 percent actually did. That sounds about right that there were 5 to 10 kids who had gun racks on their back glass with a gun on them. Probably the lower end of 5 would match my memory best.

The accessibility to jugs has definitely become a lot easier. You used to have to sneak a penthouse mag out of your old man’s closet, now it’s everywhere instantly, although that may not me a good thing. :)

Lol, yes!!! I was in 3rd or 4th grade when I fell through that thing. And my dad was pretty annoyed that I was dumb enough to fall through it. He never once blamed the school

From my recollection - it was more about the post office.........that's how/when "going postal" was born.

"I did this (common thing) and (by far the most common thing that still happens today) happened back then."


Social media really ****s up perceptions of how dramatically things have changed.

you could leave your bike on the ground, in a front yard, lying against the window at quick trip or 7 eleven, and not have to worry about someone swiping it.

Did you miss the part about everyone being fatter these days?