My bedroom ceiling was dripping. I went up on the roof and found a perfect little quarter-inch hole showing a slightly off-vertical angle of entry. It could have been a meteorite. I suspect not.
This was about a year ago. Maybe two.
How about calling the number for the “Time Lady”? When we wanted to set our watches/clocks to the exact time, we’d dial a number that we all had memorized and a recording would tell you the time. Towards the end, the Time Lady would even tell you what the current temp was.
I may be mistaken, but I believe that service (the “time lady”) was considered so valuable that it was required by regulation for service areas of a certain size.
An article about this finally ending in CA back in 2007. Doesn’t mention the regulatory requirement, so I may be wrong on that, but that is a good one.
I still remember the number for my city’s time and temperature (747-1212), but it wasn’t a Lady. You’d hear a man give a one-sentence plug for the Marine Bank, followed by “Marine Bank time” and “Marine Bank temperature.”
During the summers when I was in college in the 70s, I worked for Kelly Girl temp services. Usually the job was holding down the desk of a secretary on vacation. I worked two weeks in an office where the bar was opened after lunch on Fridays. I drank Crown Royal and Coke and left there drunk off my ass both times. I figured they owed me for calling me “honey” and making me get them coffee.
I remember an article in the local paper a good number of years ago - late 90s or early-aughts - about a big controversy at the local Elks lodge. It seems they had decided to repeal a bylaw that required men to remove their hats when drinking at the club’s bar. The reasoning behind the repeal was that it was an artifact of a different time and one more obstacle in the way of recruiting younger members.
Add in other “archaic” rules and rituals. The local chapter of the Lions Club holds their weekly lunch where I work. Every lunch includes a singalong, singing a cheesy little song about how great our community is, set to a tune that was popular in the 1930s. It’s a practice that started in a time when that qualified as entertainment. I’m over 50, and that just feels really outdated to me, and not something I would want to do over lunch. And I’m good singer. I can completely understand younger people, particularly if they don’t feel they can sing well, not wanting to participate in that.
I blame the lack of smiling on the now-omnipresent bombardment of advertising, specifically fashion-related advertising, featuring one glamorous model after another with “resting bitch face”. It’s convinced a couple generations of women that being unsmiling is part of being attractive.
I’m betting that this is related to the stereotype of “nerds” being obsessed with Asian women. “Nerds” were the early internet adopters, which allowed them more opportunity to see images of Asian women who live in their native countries (as opposed to Asian-Americans/Europeans who are American/Western-socialized). I remember the very first thing I noticed about photos of Japanese models/actresses/celebrities was that they were always smiling. That made them seem friendly and approachable, as opposed to the unfriendly, vaguely-threatening image of Western models.
Fun fact: My dad is at least partly responsible for Washington State Patrol officers being allowed to wear mustaches. Up until the late 1980s, these guys were required to be completely clean-shaven. Somehow, my dad ended up on a “uniform committee”. Most of his work on the committee involved bringing home a huge assortment of bulletproof vests and wearing them to work to assess the comfort level of different models for all-day wear. They discussed many other uniform options as well. At one meeting, he suggested changing the “no facial hair” regulation to allow mustaches, on the grounds that “this is the only thing we’ve discussed that won’t cost the state a nickel”.
One thing I noticed a while back is what products are advertised. My best example is canned tuna. During my childhood in the 1970s, TV commercials for Bumblebee, Star-Kist, and Chicken of the Sea were staples. The jingles are burned into my memory. I can remember freaking toys featuring Charlie Tuna. At some point in the late 1990s, it dawned on me that I couldn’t remember the last time I saw a tuna commercial.
That reminds me–do high schools still have school songs that they sometimes make you sing at assemblies?
(Also, the IBM songbook made the internet rounds a few years back.)
I suspect that that’s the case for a lot of household staples – the brand names are well-established (in part though those decades of past advertising), but a lot of people now buy those categories based on price, and the margins on those products don’t allow for TV advertising. Plus, a lot of those categories (like old-school canned and frozen foods) are ones that aren’t necessarily “on trend” for consumer preferences and tastes, and they may lack appeal to younger shoppers.
FWIW, StarKist still does some TV ads, though they’re typically for line extensions (like this one for flavored tuna, in pouches), rather than the old-fashioned tuna in a can.
IME in London they went on the decline in the 80s, and then resurged in the 2000s. They’re fairly common here now, in my neighbourhood, even for young people, and you can get them in trendy designs. I used one less than an hour ago and I wasn’t the only one there to have one, but when I first got one about 18 years ago people - always young women about my age - sometimes stopped me to ask where I’d got it because they wanted one.
But it’s a very different sort of neighbourhood, with good public transit, not many people owning cars, and I have five supermarkets within an average person’s five minute walk of my house. They’re probably still unusual in more suburban areas where, like you say, large out of town supermarkets and car ownership is the norm.
My gf works in advertising. Fridays after lunch they bring out the bar and everyone helps themselves. Twice over the years I’ve had to drive down to Pittsburgh to bring my sweetie home. No biggie, except the next morning I have to take her to work, since that’s where her car is.
Oh, good grief.
Women out in public very often have other things on our minds and are not thinking at all about whether you, or any random stranger, finds us attractive.
Men don’t go around with fake smiles on their faces all the time. Why should women?
In my experience, or at least in my community, this is strongly class-based. In the middle- and upper-middle-class areas in and around my city, this is absolutely the case–and this has changed even in the lifetimes of my own kids, who are now in their early thirties. If kids are out doing things like that, and that’s seldom, there’s usually a parent hovering nearby. It’s even rare to see a couple of kids walking along the sidewalk without a parent present, at least up through age 11 or so.
But in the poorer sections of town, it’s quite common to see kids riding their bikes around, shooting hoops in someone’s driveway, jumping rope on the sidewalk, playing various ball games in the street, making their way down the sidewalk. Usually without any indication of adult supervision. It’s an interesting dichotomy.
Thank you. Nothing riles me up faster than some entitled ass asking me to smile. Maybe my mom just died! :mad:
But you might get a free churro!
Nonsense. Models not smiling in high-end fashion ads is not merely “a couple generations” old.
1940s model not smiling
Another 1940s model not smiling
Another 1953 model not smiling
And no, today’s women are not going around in public with carefully arranged unsmiling faces in the hopes that random men like you will find them attractive. The vast majority of women going around in public don’t care whether you or other randos on the street find them attractive, and don’t see why they should have to take your preferences into account in arranging their facial features.
That’s not to say you personally can’t walk around wearing a smile if you want to, of course, but women in general are not being discourteous or misguided just because they’re not constantly smiling in public.
I just remembered that prior to the mid-90s or so, I would always wait until 5 pm or 8 pm to make a non-local phone call. The rates dropped at those times. Do measured plans even still exist? I know GTE stopped offering them when they were bought out by Verizon. I haven’t seen anything other than flat-rate by the month with long distance included in over 20 years.
Now I use the phone to call whenever. The only time I check the clock before dialing is if I’m calling someone in another time zone and want to be sure it’s not too late.
Knowing me, I probably already posted this upthread :D, but when I was a college freshman ('83/'84), I was dating a girl who lived back in my home town. I’d call her, once a week, at like 6:30am, to take advantage of the lowest long-distance rates.
Many of my students don’t understand why we say “dial the phone” or “dial tone.”
You did NOT call my grandmother at 6:59pm Eastern Time, on Sunday, else the rest of the call will be about why you’re paying more to make the same phone call you could have made 2 minutes later. And, of course, if you called at 7:05pm, the call would be about how late the call came. 
However, it just occurred to me that with all the analog clocks set by the fallible hand of Man, we probably should’ve played it safe and called at 7:30.
How about those 10-10-xyz long distance numbers? Anyone remember them? I guess they were in the 90s, but they seem to be gone now.