# Place and Decade for your 20s? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 13, 2014, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973 "2014-07-13T03:45:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/1 "2014-07-13T03:45:32Z")
I spent the vast majority of my 20s stuck in West Texas in the 1970s and early '80s. Taking a cue from Woody Allen’s _Midnight in Paris_, which place/decade combination appeals to you? Specifically, where and when would you have liked to have spent your 20s? Myself, I think the New York City of the 1950s would have been an interesting place for that age. The music and entertainment scene was vibrant. The gritty feel from various film noirs of the time is appealing. The city was at the forefront of new technology such as TV, which must have made previous decades feel eons away. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/2 "2014-07-13T03:56:35Z")
I spent the early part of my 20’s in New Orleans (great but I had to get out due to the decadence). I spent the the mid and latter part in New Hampshire, Vermont, Boston proper and then the suburbs (mixed experiences). It was a good experience overall, especially the Vermont part because it was always a dream of mine to live there and it fulfilled all expectations. I wouldn’t want anything to do with NYC then or ever. That would be hell on earth for me because I don’t like cities that much, especially northeastern ones. If I had to pick an alternate life, I think I would pick a smaller city in the Southern U.S. like Charlottesville, Virginia or maybe a smaller city in Colorado that is not Denver. If I could pick the time period and location through time travelling, I would pick Las Vegas in the late 1950’s. I went there recently and did not like The Strip that much but loved the history and stories from downtown. Showgirls, corruption, the Mob? What is not to like? ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/3 "2014-07-13T04:09:03Z")
San Francisco in the 1990s. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/4 "2014-07-13T05:45:23Z")
Chicago in the 70’s. Illinois dropped the drinking age to 18 when I turned 18 and raised the drinking age to 21 when I turned 21. Got to go to a lot of great clubs I would not have otherwise been able to go to. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/5 "2014-07-13T05:46:50Z")
Berlin from 1904 to 1914. ---
**Author:** ![Arrendajo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Arrendajo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrendajo)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/6 "2014-07-13T05:47:05Z")
Los Angeles in the 60s. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/7 "2014-07-13T07:54:22Z")
Split between NYC and Columbus, Ohio (OSU), in the 60s. New York was amazing in the 60s, and so was a large college campus like Ohio State. Both were truly the best of times. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/8 "2014-07-13T11:47:05Z")
My reality: Coincides exactly with the 1990s. Nearly two years in Chicago; five months each in Galway, Ireland and State College, PA; three years in the Bay Area of California; and the rest – almost five years – mainly in Merida, Mexico, but with long stretches elsewhere in Mexico (Calakmul, and Oaxaca) and shorter stretches in the New York area. My preference: Wouldn’t change a thing. I have regrets about certain career decisions and the like in my 20s, but not about where I spent my time. I guess it would have been nice to have email during the first few years (to improve dating prospects and such), so for that reason I’d prefer to have shifted my 20s up to, say, 1995-2005, but that’s the only change I’d make. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/9 "2014-07-13T13:41:40Z")
Army and college, 2002-2012, split between two years in Iraq, three in Kansas, five in Illinois near St Louis. I would have liked to spend my 20s as a hippy or something in the 60s. Or maybe disillusionment era 1920s, with Hemingway and all those guys. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/10 "2014-07-13T13:52:27Z")
1967-1977; military; CA\>Vietnam\>Adak, AK\>CA\>Japan\>St. Thomas\>Guatemala\>Guam ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/11 "2014-07-13T14:53:09Z")
1989-90 for me. This was the period where The Smiths and The Cure and Velvet Underground and The Doors and Pixies and Buzzcocks and the Jesus and Mary Chain met electronic dance music, at least amongst my friends. I was never much of a DJ - no I actually was a great DJ in my head at 6am, but let us put that aside - but rarely was so much fun had. Bonfires, tunes, beer cooling in the bit by the river, E actually being made of MDMA… Counterpoint: waking up on a Monday morning to a phone call asking where the hired generators were. “Don took them back in his van”. “Don says you took them back in yours” “Oh for fucks sake!”. Ah well, they were still there where we left them. ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/12 "2014-07-13T14:56:36Z")
I spent my 20s in Kansas in the late 80s/early 90s. Given a choice, gotta go with Woody for Paris in the 1920s! ---
**Author:** ![Zeldar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/b77776/32.png) [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/13 "2014-07-13T15:05:50Z")
Nashville. 1960’s. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/14 "2014-07-13T15:53:23Z")
I spent my 20s raising children in Canada, rather than killing them in Vietnam. I’m OK with that. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/15 "2014-07-13T16:32:02Z")
Just to add that of course if I HAD spent my 20s in the NYC of the 1950s, I’d be in my 80s now, and I’m not ready for that. But if I _had_ been born in 1930, again NYC would have been a choice spot for me during the 1950s, I think. I’m not necessarily asking where you wish you had spent your 20s, just which place and decade you think would have been a good fit. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/16 "2014-07-13T17:20:28Z")
Houston, 80s, loved it. An alternative I might have enjoyed would be LA of the 30s or Denver of the 70s. Yeah, I’m weird. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/17 "2014-07-13T17:37:38Z")
West suburbs of Chicago in the 90’s. I was a bartender and the amount of sex, coke, pot, and booze that seemed to be the norm in those days was astonishing. Everybody was boning everyone else and usually too high to remember it. I was making about 1000 a week cash, I think my rent was 250 a month, I drank practically for free at the bar I worked at, dealers would give me whatever they had just for making sure their glass never got empty, girls would ask if they could stay after closing and “help clean the bar”. Sure seemed like fun at the time but I would never want to do it again in a million years. I’m sure it took a few years off my life. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/18 "2014-07-13T17:42:23Z")
Seattle in the 90s (Reality: Ohio in the 2000s) ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/19 "2014-07-13T19:09:46Z")
Most of my twenties were spent in Knoxville/Bristol Tennessee. If I had it to do over I would have gotten out of there much earlier. Spent the rest of my twenties in Brooklyn; I wish I’d gotten there earlier. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973/20 "2014-07-13T19:18:37Z")
Washington DC in the late 80s and early 90s, when it was called murder capital of the US. It’s a completely different city now. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/place-and-decade-for-your-20s/692973.md?page=2)