This might be more fitting for IMHO, but since OJ has been a pop-culture figure for 40+ years and his trial was THE tabloid news event of the '90s I’ll put it here and let he mods decide.
Today is the 19th Anniversary of the OJ/Al Cowlings Bronco Chase. Seems impossible, but as it seems like it was only 5 or 7 years ago in some ways and as it seems it was 30 years ago in others, I suppose 19 is the agreed upon balance. (19th anniversary is bronze for those who plan on sending a gift; bells and cymbals are also popular gifts for the 19th.)
What were you doing 19 years ago today when you watched the chase?
I was resident manager of an apartment complex for the mentally ill with a teensy-tiny apartment (a small sofa dwarfed my living room). I had just graduated college with my B.A. after about a decade of off-on attendance. I did not own a computer yet, but I had recently bought a Brother word processor that I honestly thought was the bomb. A couple of close friends knew I was gay but I wasn’t out at work or to my family. I was still driving Victor, my clunky old Yugo who got you as far as he felt like on any given outing.
At the time way under 50% of U.S. households had internet- probably under 25% (I could look it up, but I’m lazy) and for those that did it was dial up and there was nothing remotely like twitter or FB. It’s hard to imagine how the same event would play today with social media. #TheJuiceisInnocent and #OJDidthatshit would, I’m sure, both be in use in the first minute.
Hanging out with my roommates in the group house we lived in. The next night I had a pottery class where we talked about it a lot, which I remember more distinctly.
Within the next month I had made a life decision to move to Chicago and live with and marry my now wife.
Re: above- in 1993 the stat of U.S. homes with a computer was 22.9%, so presumably it would have been slightly higher the next year (it was up to 30% by 1995), but subtract a few percent for those with computer but no internet access- the 25% would be approximate. And people were still paying for access by the minute at the time, so it’s not likely many would have memories of talking about that chase on the Internet anyway.
Amazing how the world changed twixt then and 9-11, when I, like millions and millions of others, learned of the second plane crashing from an online source (cnn.com for me, though their site became inaccessible soon after).
I was a young mother with two small boys and my husband (now ex) was working second shift. We lived in Rock Hill, SC, he worked in Charlotte (~20 minute drive) and we only had one car. That night I was watching the chase but it was getting close to time to leave to go pick him up. I was packing up the boys but trying to do so slowly so that I could watch as much of it as possible before I absolutely had to leave. I also remember seeing a tiny article in the Sunday paper about OJ’s wife being killed and thinking “hmm” before that chase.
And yes, we had a computer, my husband being a total geek at the time.
I do remember being at a party a few nights before with a favorite professor, who was a major left winger, where we all agreed that OJ probably did it, but we felt guilty how much interest we had in the case and irritated by how much we knew about it just from watching TV. We had no idea oof the airwaves flood and Dancing Itos and Kato-Kaelin-10-Minute-Superstar stuff that was to come, of course.
It was my eighth birthday party. It started to rain so we went inside and someone turned on the TV. I remember having no idea what was going on, but hey, it was a car chase so that was cool.
The Knicks were maybe seriously in the play-offs? (Gosh, has it been only 19 short years? :rolleyes: ) because I remember watching basketball and having that interrupted for the chase. Since it was also, weirdly sports news (due to OJ being who he was) it was getting more in-game coverage than if it had been some random murderer cruising around in a Bronco.
I’m also from Buffalo and people from Buffalo generally had a positive impression of OJ Simpson (I am not really clear on if the rest the country saw him as more of a wannabe Hollywood goofball prior to the antics of the trial) so the whole story seemed very strange, like here’s a perfectly normal guy whose wife is murdered and then there’s a Bronco who to the what now?
Later that weekend, I saw Speed in the theater, and there are a lot of traffic scenes that struck people (or at least, the people I went to the movies with) as familiar after having just watched the Bronco chase.
I was newly married and had just graduated from college. I wasn’t working yet, so was glued to my television. It was quite shocking and exciting at that time. Now, post 9-11, I’m not even sure that many people would be as entranced by that sort of spectacle.
I was out with friends. We watched for a bit and lost interest. At the time, I remember thinking thinking that the chase on TVwas cool to watch, but I couldn’t fathom as to why anyone would care. I didn’t realize that this was the beginning of the biggest news story of the year.
It looks as though the chase ended around 5:00 pm Eastern time on a Friday. I was probably still at work, listening to it on the radio. But I seem to recall being home by the time his son came out to the vehicle.
It was game five of the NBA finals against the Rockets, and I was watching that game when the chase happened. The Knicks won the game but lost the series.
I was in grade school, just about to leave for summer camp. I was worried the whole thing would be over/done with/forgotten about before I got back a week later and I’d never really find out what it was about.
Game 5 of the NBA Finals. I was a lot more into basketball then (I’m not at all now). NBC was broadcasting the game. They had the game as picture in picture. The game was in the smaller picture and the chase filled most of the screen. Also the audio was from the chase. Pissed me off because if you were interested in the chase it was on every other channel. The game was only on one channel.
Hm, 1993. mrAru was stationed on the USS San Juan for the first time and they were on a northern run, and I was stuck at home with a particularly bad run of pneumonia and a roommate that couldn’t drive. We had to wait between bouts of heavy fever for me to do any driving that was required for any form of fresh groceries, drugstore runs or runs to the base for appointments. [roughly 5 miles into town, or 30 miles one way to base] Thankfully I wasn’t working at the time.
Hm, no internet but I did have an Amiga and a few games and other programs. We did have cable TV, and I do vaguely remember the chase hitting the news but we really didn’t watch it.
My girlfriend and I rented a movie that night, had dinner at her house and settled in to watch The Ref.
In the days before Netflix it wasn’t so easy to give up on a movie after five minutes. After going through all the trouble of driving to the video store (remember those?), renting a VHS tape (those too?), putting the tape in a machine and hitting play, I forced myself to watch a lot of terrible films all the way to the end, just on principle.
This film was an extra special kind of terrible, however. After fifteen minutes we both decided to cut our losses and turn off the VCR. When we did, the TV switched back to the broadcast signal and we found ourselves watching live network coverage of the Bronco chase. It was immeasurably more entertaining.
So now whenever I see Dennis Leary, that’s the first thing that comes to mind – if it weren’t for him and his terrible acting, I might have only learned of OJ’s escape attempt from the next morning’s news.
I was hanging out in the group house that the summer stock theatre company had rented for us. As I recall, we were watching the NBA finals, which I was thoroughly enjoying, as John Starks was missing tons of shots, and being a native New Englander, hate all things New York.