Good riddance to vintage things that have disappeared in your lifetime

[Shangas]

This may or may not be applicable, but how about the Red Menace? The communist scourge that so terrified the world from the 1940s to the 1980s? The Cold War?

One could argue that it died out with the Soviets, but one might also argue that it lingers with North Korea.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't know how it goes in the rest of the world, but Americans can always find something to be paranoid about. The Communists may not be an issue anymore, but fifteen minutes spent watching cable news will prove that we've more than replaced them with other boogeymen. The mentality that spawned the two big Red Scares is still very much alive and well, and just waiting for an excuse to erupt again.

It's terribly jarring for people my age to realize there are functional adults in the world who were not alive when the Soviet Union existed.

 

[kiwilrdg]

I agree with you about the soup kitchens of course Kiwi and I had not realised they still existed in some form in the States.

Sorry it didn't register when I looked at your locationthat you are in England. I live close to so many places with English names I slip every now and then.

It always amazes me how much free food there is around. I often visit the free dinners at churches and the homeless shelters to work security and I am usually impressed with the quality of the food. The real good thing about the church dinners is that the lower income families can help with the meal and then get a free meal without feeling like they are taking charity.

The US has not had as much luck in getting rid of slums as the UK. It seems we just chase the problem from one place to another. At least as we find new places for the families some of them end up in neighborhoods that do not turn onto a 'hood.

 

[Edward]

My life hasn't really been long enough yet for me to observe something truly vintage disappearing in front of me - but I am so glad I was never forced to write right-handed in school. I have never understood why an entire society would be so subtly and fundamentally against something so totally benign. It's almost difficult to believe that it was happening when my parents were in school, because the entirety of the stigma has vanished almost overnight. Only linguistic artifacts like gauche and sinister remain to betray to the once-prevalent cultural force.

Yes. My paternal grandfather had it beaten into him in school to write with his right.... I had a preschool teacher in 78/79 (I turned four in 78) crack me over the knuckles with a ruler every time she caught me drawing or painting with my left hand.... and then try to imply to my parents that I was mentally sub-normal when, among other things, I avoided those activities. I hope times are improving on that front. It is still very much a right handed world (as any of us who play guitar certainly know!), but while there is still a considerable amount of ignorance around, there is nonetheless a significantly lower level of outright discrimination of that sort. I'd certainly take being left handed a long way over Muslim in today's world.

Another "vintage" thing I don't miss: being followed round shops in England when they clocked an Irish accent. There were times, if they assumed I was a Scot, it was just easier. Fortunately I wasn't over here during the real old days when pubs used to have "No Irish" signs. Do have a relative who was turned away from a guesthouse for being an Irish in the early eighties. It was sort of flattering, I suppose, to be considered dangerous (ha!), but it did get to be rather a pain. I do remember once seeing an abandoned bag at St Paul's tube station and thinking twice about whether to report it in case I was.... misinterpreted. That's all in the past, now, and now I only ever get told "go back where you came from" by the sort of soccer fan who is unable to distinguish between a St George's flag and a shirt. lol

It's terribly jarring for people my age to realize there are functional adults in the world who were not alive when the Soviet Union existed.

Jinkies, yes. I'm teaching final year, undergraduate kids (20/21) some of whom were born in 1992. Boggles the mind.

 

[sheeplady]

To me those pictures looked very strange - we have what is known as "the Million Program" here which indicates a lot of concrete houses built in the 60's and 70's as part of a national aim to build 1 million new flats. Certain "suburbs" here are completely dominated by those and in some areas they are all publically owned. However, they are all very neat and letting houses go to waste isn't allowed - private landlords can have their houses placed under management by someone else if they are mismanaged and it's unthinkable (legally and politically) that public housing would ever be allowed to crumble and there's no debris, no broken windows, no peeling paint and no crumbling pavements. So to me that looks shocking, even though I realise it doesn't to you. People still look down on those areas and there's absolutely not like no areas have any social problems - segregation exists here as well. But it's different and goes almost entirely along the lines of ethnicity since immigration and low income goes hand in hand here.

Yeah, we don't really have anything that will take properties away from landlords who keep them in disrepair or allow them to become slums (unsafe and unlivable, unfortunately.) We have a really messed up system here. If you qualify for low income housing, often your landlord is paid directly by the state. My city has a problem with the landlords not paying property taxes, yet there is no way to stop the state's payments to landlords who don't pay the taxes because the systems aren't connected. This is a huge problem for my city, because then they don't have any tax money collected. The city can technically seize the properties after 3 years of non-paid taxes, but typically the properties that would go into non-paid taxes are unsaleable or will not tend to sell to people who are going to care about how they are kept (in the slums here, you can buy a large Victorian for $1,000-$10,000 which typically has two 3-bedroom apartments). Even worse, the landlords are often paid for electric and water directly, but they pocket that money rather than paying the power bill and you can guess who suffers when the power or water is shut off.

Of course, there are plenty of good landlords, but this group of absentee non-bill payers are the worse. If the roof leaks, they don't bother to fix it, because they aren't even paying their basic bills.

In my experience, the actual public housing is much better than the slums, but it is very hard to get into. There is a lot of violence attracted to the public housing here (mainly drug dealers) who come out of the community and into the public housing to sell (mainly to people who are attracted there to buy drugs, not the people who live here). But honestly, it's not nearly as bad as living in the slum section- if you call the cops to the public housing, they apparently come quickly and there is a great feeling of community there. Basically it's very hard to qualify for public housing unless you have young children or are elderly, and even then it is difficult to get a place, so a lot of people end up in the slums because of the stigma attached to having a housing voucher.

 

[kiwilrdg]

I do hope that the stereotyping of the past continues to decrease. There is some still, but nothing like it was.

Every area has their own type whether it is racial, place of birth, economic, gender, etc.

It's terribly jarring for people my age to realize there are functional adults in the world who were not alive when the Soviet Union existed.

I have a friend who was recently asked by an imbedded reporter why he first joined the Army. It confused the younger soldiers when he said it was so he could fight the Russians.

 

[Chowderhouse]

It's terribly jarring for people my age to realize there are functional adults in the world who were not alive when the Soviet Union existed.

Yes, it is jarring. When I was a kid, my friends and I were absolutely convinced that, sooner or later, we would be killed in a nuclear attack. There was no question about it. The world was divided in half --"Free World half" and "Soviet Union/People's Republic of China half"-- and everyone had to take a side.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

I'm always freaked out when I meet someone born in 1993!! I graduated high school that year!! lol I met a wonderful bartender in England born in '93 and some of my husband's army mates were born that year. It still needs to register!!!!

Other than slight improvement of feminine care products since 1985, I got nothing. I was born in 1975 -- smack dab in the middle of lots of changes and improvements from the "olden" days. Most "bad" things from the era were already done away with before I had any memories of them.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

My brother and sister were born in '93 lol

I'm always freaked out when I meet someone born in 1993!! I graduated high school that year!! lol I met a wonderful bartender in England born in '93 and some of my husband's army mates were born that year. It still needs to register!!!!

Other than slight improvement of feminine care products since 1985, I got nothing. I was born in 1975 -- smack dab in the middle of lots of changes and improvements from the "olden" days. Most "bad" things from the era were already done away with before I had any memories of them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Gad. 1993 was the year a co-worker looked at me with amazement because I mentioned that I remembered the moon landing.

I don't miss parking meters -- I never had spare change when I needed it and burned up a lot of gas looking for a meter with some time left on it.

 

[kiwilrdg]

Blue laws that kept everything closed on Sundays is something that I am glad is gone.

 

[DNO]

Gad. 1993 was the year a co-worker looked at me with amazement because I mentioned that I remembered the moon landing.

I don't miss parking meters -- I never had spare change when I needed it and burned up a lot of gas looking for a meter with some time left on it.

Try telling them that you remember standing on your front lawn with a bunch of neighbours watching Sputnik go over. "Sput-what"?

Sometimes I rather wish we still had parking meters here. Now we have to walk half a block to find the solar powered ticket dispensing device, all the time hoping that it's still functioning properly. I must admit, unless it's a particularly cold winter day, the ticket monster is usually work.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Blue laws that kept everything closed on Sundays is something that I am glad is gone.

In Hoosierville you can't buy booze or sell cars on Sunday.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

We got parking meters in Philly. But if you know where to park on the back roads they can be avoided.

I'd like to see those stupid toll buckets go away. No one carries 35 cents anymore. They are so 60s in design, too -- the only neat thing about them.

Did some cleaning and I doubt this is vintage enough....but I'm glad cassette tapes are done. Just picked up a few off the floor behind my stereo. I do treasure the ones I have, but (for the most part) they sounded like crap, got easily mangled, and a whole bunch of mine have the little sponge-y thing on them dry rotted off so they are unplayable. (Unless I do some tape surgery!) I still love records. CDs are ok, but kinda glad they are on the way out. I like the Mp3 because I can't stand having a lot of "stuff" around me.

 

[Big Bertie]

I'm glad cassette tapes are done...CDs are ok, but kinda glad they are on the way out.

That wasn't quite what I had in mind when I mentioned 'vintage things' (I only started my CD collection about 10 years ago) but its interesting how fast things age now.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

The cassette tape was invented in 1962, which is in the scope of this forum. I just went off on one with the CDs and Mp3s...lol

Camera film = I'm glad to not be dependent on it. As a hobby photographer I like that I can take instant pictures and not have an unknown party look at them. Not saying camera film is a "good riddance" because it's still widely in use and has it's place. But for someone like me, I love the digital camera.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm no fan of the granddaddy of the tape cassette:

Clumsy to handle, clumsy to store, and the player mechanism was unreliable. RCA had a lot of smart ideas, but this wasn't one of them.

 

[DanielJones]

8-track tapes.

Outbreaks of influenza like in 1918.

Cheers!

Dan

 

[LizzieMaine]

Or as recently as 1969 -- my mother nearly died from the Hong Kong flu.

 

[Mr. Hallack]

When were sound tape cartridges out?? I was born in 1966, clearly remember 8-tracks, and vaguely reel to reel tapes, but not these!!