Small/subtle human trends & behaviors that have slowly subsided since the 70s/80s.

[JohnT]

I don’t know if this is “small, subtle”, but in another thread, I note that this past Monday marked the 40th anniversary of the release of “Rapper’s Delight”, a song which introduced an art form which just murdered the f*** out of rock and roll’s then-domination of the music and culture scene. And to think we teenaged rock 'n rollers were worried about disco!

[Ulf_the_Unwashed]

@thorny_locust

Switching gears a bit, I just remembered a change that was underway during the 70’s and 80’s, but has progressed significantly since then:

Most businesses used to close on Sundays, and in many areas also part of an additional day. (When I moved to this area in the mid 70’s there were still traces of Wednesday afternoon closures, though most places had given that up.) There were also very few businesses open late at night, and in some areas none at all. People took it for granted that there were times of day, and entire days, when you couldn’t do some types of shopping.

Not sure where “upstate” you are…in my NY-state community there are a number of stores that shut at about 1 or 2 pm on Saturday and don’t reopen till Monday morning. These tend to be independently owned stories selling things that are also available in chain stores. I’m thinking specifically here of the hardware store around the corner, the barber shop two streets over, and the pharmacy across town, all of which do a good solid business despite being closed for three fourths of the weekend, while the Home Depots, SuperCutses, and RiteAids all remain open all day Saturday and much of Sunday too. My car repair place also shuts down at noon at Saturday, but I think that’s more common. (Also, the bank.) --Anyway, interesting to think about.

[thorny_locust]

Finger Lakes.

There are still some businesses that close early Saturday and/or are closed all day Sunday; but (with exception below) they’re decreasing. Some of the local hardware stores are now open not only Saturday afternoon, but part of Sunday.

Somewhat in the other direction, the number of businesses run by Old-Order Mennonites and Amish has increased, and they’re definitely closed on Sunday, as well as on their religious holidays.

[Ludovic]

And when I drive through Western NY, I haven’t done that enough lately to know if there are limited hours, but there does seem to be a culture of old-school convenience stores that don’t have open bathrooms in them. I say “culture” because a few years ago I was driving along Highway 5 toward Buffalo and had to use the restroom so stopped at quite a few places and none of them had a bathroom, and I would have bought gas there too but did not, until I saw a 7/11 (interestingly without a gas station attached to it) and thought “7/11’s ALWAYS have bathrooms” but not this one: maybe they figured no one else has one so why should we? Took me until almost Buffalo to find a new-school large gas station that did have a bathroom.

[Rick_Kitchen]

@Fear_Itself

Jukeboxes. They used to be everywhere, but I see them less and less. Pinball machines and arcade games too.

There are still jukeboxes, but they’re internet connected and don’t have records in them

[Rick_Kitchen]

Powder detergents are almost gone from my local supermarket. All the store sells is liquid and pods. They still have a limited supply of Tide powder and Seventh Generation powder, but that’s it. My mother, who is 90, only uses powder, and it’s becoming harder to find.

[digs]

@Rick_Kitchen

Powder detergents are almost gone from my local supermarket…

And what about tooth powder? My grandmother never used paste, she must have had a cache of vintage metal Pepsodent shakers. She’d shake a little pile into her hand, wet it and scrub it into her toothbrush.
Whoa, you can still get it on Amazon in Colgate flavor…

ETA: Hmmm, looking closely, the Amazon tooth powder shaker is rusty on its base… maybe they’re selling vintage tins.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

Another car-related one: They don’t leak oil like they used to. In vintage aerial photos of freeways you see a dark oil stripe all the way along the lanes; similarly every parking spot had a dark smudge.

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[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@ftg

Are you sure it wasn’t KLondike 5-? KL-5 maps to good old 555. While HOllywood-5 maps to 465.

In Play It Again, Sam, Tony Roberts’ character is always using a pay phone to call his office to let them know where he was and tells them the pay phone number. Lot of KL-5’s IIRC.

I’m also surprised they used a HOllywood exchange, which was a real exchange used not only in Hollywood California, but also in many places around the country. HOllywood was one of a standardized set of alpha exchange names implemented by Bell and designed to be accurately heard and understood by those using the system.

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[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@JohnT

My favorite is that in the 1970s you called places

I don’t know how accurate this was, but on the OTR Dragnet program, Sargeant Friday and his partner would be out questioning a witness or victim, and somebody at their office would call them there. “It’s for you”, the interviewee would say, as if having your phone ring for someone you had never seen in your life until ten minutes before was the most natural thing in the world.
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[Spoons]

@Rick_Kitchen

Powder detergents are almost gone from my local supermarket. All the store sells is liquid and pods. They still have a limited supply of Tide powder and Seventh Generation powder, but that’s it. My mother, who is 90, only uses powder, and it’s becoming harder to find.

True that. I was looking for dishwasher powder recently, and most dishwasher soaps were pods. They did have a couple of choices of powders, and I bought one, but I guess I’ll have to switch over eventually.

[actualliberalnotoneofthose]

@california_jobcase

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.

Yeah, since someone else mentioned calling his GF off-hours in the early 80s, the 10-10 numbers (or discount calling cards) was how I called my GF in the late 90s. I also sold (and made a decent amount of money and recurring commissions for several years) dial-around and bundled phone services.

[actualliberalnotoneofthose]

@Annie-Xmas

Bottled water has been mentioned, but what about Snapple? When did bottled Kool-Aid for grownups become so popular?

I wish I had thought up that idea.

The Snapple lady peaked in popularity almost 30 years ago.

[Red_Wiggler]

@Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus

Another car-related one: They don’t leak oil like they used to. In vintage aerial photos of freeways you see a dark oil stripe all the way along the lanes; similarly every parking spot had a dark smudge.

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Good one. And somewhere along the line they vastly improved the quality of the paint jobs. I never feel the need to wax my eight year old car, which is not garage kept. The cars I had 40 years ago dulled and rusted without constant maintenance.

[bump]

@thorny_locust

Here they’ve still got it; but the selection’s minimal, and there often isn’t any unscented. Most of the shelf space is taken up with expensive plastic-using pump bottles.

Maybe it’s a regional thing… here, every grocery store/drugstore/Wal-Mart has a decent choice of bar soaps- last time I bought some (a few weeks back), they had several varieties each of Dial, Caress, Dove (men and women varieties), and Irish Spring, as well as some more random varieties- Ivory and Safeguard come to mind.

I can’t say that I’ve seen a bar of Lifebuoy, Shield or Camay in a long time, but that’s been decades, not like a few years.

[eschereal]

@Rick_Kitchen

Powder detergents are almost gone from my local supermarket. All the store sells is liquid and pods. They still have a limited supply of Tide powder and Seventh Generation powder, but that’s it. My mother, who is 90, only uses powder, and it’s becoming harder to find.

Look on the internets for the recipe. Apparently it is pretty easy stuff to mix up, for bajillions less than you pay for the boxed product. At the store I go to (a small regional chain of cavernous grocery stores), they at least have Fels Naptha and washing soda, two of the primary ingredients in most recipes. I went looking for Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing and that was the place that had it – too niche for the big chains, I guess.

[John_Bredin]

@Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus

I don’t know how accurate this was, but on the OTR Dragnet program, Sargeant Friday and his partner would be out questioning a witness or victim, and somebody at their office would call them there. “It’s for you”, the interviewee would say, as if having your phone ring for someone you had never seen in your life until ten minutes before was the most natural thing in the world.

Perry Mason was rife with this, probably at least once an episode. Perry and Paul Drake did have (pre-cellular) car phones, though I’m sure having Della or Paul call Perry at a witness’s number was cheaper than calling his mobile number.

[AK84]

@kenobi_65

For that matter, here in the U.S., men’s suits are certainly far less common now. Up until the 1990s, business attire was the norm in professional environments; many businesses which had been “business attire” fairly rapidly changed over to “business casual” 20 years ago, more or less. Certainly, there are still some professions and firms which expect men to wear suits, but even then, it’s often been loosened – for example, many lawyers now only wear a suit and tie when they actually go to the courthouse.

A generation or so ago, most men probably owned at least a single suit, which they wore to weddings and funerals, if nothing else. What I’ve observed is that, while this may still be the case with the upper-middle-class and above, I suspect that many men, now, don’t own a single suit (nor a tie).

Case in point: two years ago, I went to a memorial service for the mother of two friends of mine, in a small town in northeastern Wisconsin. As my wife and I discussed what we’d wear, I said, “well, I’m going to wear a suit, because it’s a memorial service, and that’s what I do. But, other than me, I will guarantee that you’ll only see one other suit there – Brad (one of the sons of the deceased) will be in a suit, because he’s a sharp dresser, but that’ll be it…and you’ll see at least one person wearing something with a Packers logo on it.” My prediction was exactly right, down to the Packers logos.

This shows to me that the Dope demographic really skews old. Since wearing a suit or at least jacket and tie has become more fashionable in recent years.

[Annie-Xmas]

Speaking of soaps, all natural soap is now common and sold with the regular stuff. I recent went totally whackadoodle when the store I worked at got a huge shipment of method soap–all natural, scented with oils and not chemicals. When some co-workers smelt it, they all smelt the difference and bought some.

And three of them each gave me a free bottle for doing it!

[KarlGauss]

Has anybody mentioned that blue hair used to be confined to little old white ladies?