Congratulations. You live in the early twentieth century. You may hate it now, but, unless armageddon happens soon-ish, one day people will be thinking how romantic this era was and lavish holo costumes dramas will be made about our lifestyles. Personally I don’t think it’s a very bad time to be alive, although it has is downsides.
Having said that, if you could choose any time period, when would it be?
As far as I’m concerned you can choose anything and you can be as specific or vague as you want (i.e. ten years of the Sixties or roughly a thousand years of Medieval Times).
One more rule. You can assume you’re not an orphaned chimney sweep, but you don’t get to be filthy rich, nobility or royalty. Just an ordinary but comfortable citizen of the period of your choosing.
Poll is also not too serious. You just need to be about realistic enough to make it fun, but it’s more about having some fun than comtemplating pre-modern sewerage and the diseases.
My personal choice would be a Roman in Roman Times. Nice comfy clothes, bathhouses, central heating (if I could afford it), civilised pursuits like books and plays available, real city living to had, women’s rights okay relatively speaking, plenty of wine, plus you I’d get to do that superior thing and grumble about the rest of the world being barbarians and what a tough job it is civilising them all.
I’m convinced these are the best times to be alive (at least for some of us) but…
Early 1800’s American west would be kinda fun. I’d head to Tahoe and stake me out a big spread. Huge log cabin on the water, plenty of fresh air, fish, game. When the lumber boom hit, I’d be rolling in the dough. Could maybe make a little off the pioneers heading west, then milk the miners dry during the gold/silver rush. I’d have a small Inn and Brewery. Most likely a casino and whorehouse on the side.
Good times on the shore of the lake.
Overheard in the public restroom: “That’ll leave a skidmark all the way to the treatment plant!”
The 20s - for the clothes and sleeper trains.
The 40s- for the clothes
The 60s - for the civil rights advancements, music, and the clothes. I would like to have been a bit older living through this time of social awakening, instead of a young teenager, which is what I was.
I know this is a typo, but I would choose 100 years ago if I had to “switch.” Not only could I do the same job I do now (publishing was pretty open to women), I could work at the same company I work at now!
Plus, I love the clothes, music, architecture of La Belle Epoch.
US 1960s. I’d have made a point to be in Dallas on 11-20-63 with a rig that would take 5 home movies simultaneuously and shoot the whole JFK assassination. Or better still, take out Oswald myself. But the 60s for the music and the culture in general.
I think being a North American Native American must have about as good as it gets, before whites showed up. There’s a lot of variability, of course. I’d want to be a member of one of the more comfy tribes.
If what some people think about ancient Crete was true (peaceful matriarchy), I’d like to try that.
India during the Buddhist part of Ashoka’s reign, and the early Ottoman empire would would tie for third.
You only hear about the successes—it was just as easy to fail in H’wood in the '20s as it is today. I even have a magazine article from the mid-1910s about how difficult it was to get extra work with the studios!
The likes of Brideshead Revisited, the works of PG Wodehouse, various classic mystery novels, and the final season of Upstairs Downstairs have convinced me that England in the 1920’s and early '30’s was a great time and place to be (if only one could be stuck in that time period like a fly in amber and not have to deal with a horrific world war on either end). Being one of the Bright Young Things in a short skirt and string of beads, visiting night clubs to see jazz bands, getting engaged to any number of pleasant and vacuous young men and breaking it off again for the most frivolous of reasons… those were the days!
Yeah, neuroman, the more I think about it, the more I’m afraid that maybe the mid-to-late '90s were the apex of human civilization. I mean, that would say a lot about human civilization.
So yeah, the '90s might be fun to relive. Clothing fashions sucked slightly more than they do currently, and music was pretty dismal, but it seems to have been a pretty carefree time in American history.
After that, maybe I would choose America or Britain in the 1960s, or Zurich during the founding of Dada in 1916. Being a Viking would also be really badass.
Hmmm… let’s see. Going through a few decades of the 20th century that have always intrigued me.
I would have loved to have been a young woman in the 40s, especially in the area where my mom grew up (Northern NJ – just a few minutes outside NYC). My grandmother had fun tales of dress-up parties, meeting young soldiers at dances in the city (ended up marrying one), getting so excited by the “new” music that was being played and technicolor movies being introduced. I love the pictures of her and her friends in full-skirts and tiny bodices, sleek hairdos, and red lipstick.
I would have loved to be a kid growing up in 1950s Brooklyn. To have such a sense of “neighborhood” and experience true depths of cultures that were barely a generation off Ellis Island would be incredible.
I would have liked to march for peace as a older teen/early twenties young woman in the late 1960s, attend Woodstock, experience free love, march for civil rights in Washington DC, and rebel against “the man”.
I believe you, but the OP said I could be a ‘comfortable citizen’, so even if I couldn’t land a career in the movies I could still afford to host reefer parties featuring some of the neighborhood flapper girls, no?
New Orleans around 1910-1920. It would have been wild to walk down a city street and hear all the greats playing: Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, Jellyroll Morton. What a party!
