High school, early eighties. Big jock guy comes up to me and, commenting on my t-shirt, says:
“U2? That’s a dumb name for a band.”
That’s all it took to make me not care at all about what’s cool for the rest of my life.
Sadly, my first thought was Melrose Place. Watching that show became a staple on poker nights in college and it sure seems like we were hooked on it just slightly before the rest of the people with too little to do were engrossed in Sydney, Michael, Amanda, et al.
The chest bump - you know it, when an athlete does something outstanding it’s not followed with a high five. Instead the 2 guys run at each other, jump, and just about knock each other out of the air while banging against the others chest. My AAU team did this regularly during our glory years in the early 90’s. Maybe we helped get it going since we played throughout the country.
I watched Willie Wonka a couple years ago and noticed them in the candyland room. I didn’t remeber them from at all from when I watched it in the 70’s.
Late 1990 at the Metro in Chicago.
A three piece band on stage. Bassist is a very tall man, the singer a thin blond man, very long hair, looks kind of like Axl Rose. The first song of the set was called “Love Buzz.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Nirvana.
I also find it amusing that Rob Van Dam is the hot thing in wrestling today. I have tapes of him back in the ECW days.
The Simpsons.
I was a big Matt Groening and “Life in Hell” fan even though, as a teenager, 50% of the jokes probably went over my head. So I was eagerly waiting for the first Christmas special and I remember taping the first couple of seasons. None of my friends knew about the show.
Of course, I wasn’t hardcore enough to make the effort to watch the shorts on that Tracy Ullman show. Tracy Ullman?! I did have my limits…
I used to make a point of catching the local “Eyewitness News” on channel 13… they had a really funny weatherman… his name was David Letterman.
After Letterman got big, I went to see one of the comedians do standup who had just been on his show… his name was Jay Leno.
And my girlfriend (now wife) dragged me to see this band that her roommates swore was going to make it big soon. I really didn’t want to go, but they had good seats… turned out REM wasn’t too bad after all.
I was into Transformers even before the first toys hit the stores.
And since I haven’t left the fandom, and there’s a groundswell of Transformers nostalgia right now, I suppose I qualify for being on the ground floor of that trend again. 
Ren & Stimpy – I saw it when no one had heard of it. And I watched Tracy Ullman just for the Simpsons bits. And I wore a long cloak way before everyone else started doing it
–oh, wait. That trend hasn’t caught on yet.
Daniel
I was a Sarah McLachlan fan in 1991 before almost anyone else in CA had heard of her…does that count? I became enough of a fan that I went to her first concert in SF at a tiny club, despite the fact that I was underage and that it was April 30, 1992, and the Rodney King riots were in full swing.
Just after I got married, a friend of mine got sick of her job and decided to go into a home business. She picked the obscure sport of scrapbooking, only it wasn’t called that then, and asked me and a friend to be her guinea pigs. I take a lot of photos, so I kind of got into it. Two years later, scrapbooking was all the rage among the stay-at-home-mommy crowd. But I was cool first, and I want you to know that!
Dan, I too wore a long cloak…so I guess we’re still waiting…
Bizarrely enough I was just the opposite. I would watch Tracy Ullman solely for the the Simpsons shorts. But then when the TV show came out I couldn’t be bothered. They didn’t look like my Simpsons. And worse it was on FOX. And then still worse, they became popular! shudder SO I didn’t watch the series. In fact I didn’t even start watching the religiously till a few years ago and even then not the new ones but the re-runs. How weird is that?
My wife and I introduced Junkyard Wars to all of our friends.
Like hapaXL, I was a fan of Groening’s work when only the first two cartoon collections were on the shelf. Unlike hapaXL, I watched Tracey Ullman for the Simpsons shorts.
I’m the only straight guy I know who has been a fan of Melissa Etheridge from the very beginning. I bought the first album within a month of its first release, after hearing “Somebody Bring Me Some Water” on the radio and being blown away.
A trend I missed: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Why? Because I saw the original movie in the cinema, and passed on the series. :rolleyes:
It was two full years before I saw anyone else in our city with my bright idea of double piercing my ears (man, does that reveal my age or what :eek: )
I started suggesting it to my mom early one Sunday morning - by mid afternoon I had talked her into it and she pierced them for me. She’s still a cool mom 
I was (gulp) one of the first 2.0 AOL users. I bailed out and got a real Net account before they hit 100,000 though
Grunge
No, not the music…the grunge “fashion”. I dressed in flannels, etc, long before Nirvana cracked the top 10. I was in college when everybody started dressing all “grungey”. I was actually fashionable for the first time in my life.
And I still dress like that. Hey–flannels are damn comfortable! Someday the style will come back, and I’ll once again be “trendy”. I hope.
from thinksnow’s “JAMS”:
You remember them, those HORRIBLY PATTERNED SHITS and shorts, sometimes tropical,SOMETIMES JUST A MISH-MASH OF WHATEVER.
Does that come in plaid?
Sorry, thinksnow; still giggling…