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How vintage are we?

How vintage are we?

  • Born in the 20's

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Born in the 30's

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Born in the 40's

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Born in the 50's

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Born in the 60's

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Born in the 70's

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Born in th 80's

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • ...and in the 90's

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    0
  • Poll closed .

Dr Doran

My Mail is Forwarded Here
Messages
3,854
Location
Los Angeles
This is extremely interesting. I am getting insights into all of you. I still recommend the book GENERATIONS by Howe and Straus(s). It tries and largely succeeds to explain American history by generations. I am always surprised that it has not been read more, as it is highly readable. Their major premise might not be correct, though: namely, that four-generation cycles recur. A "civic" generation, a "silent conformist" generation, a "spiritual" generation, and a rebellious cynical generation. In the 20th century, this is exemplified in their schema by the WW2 vets, the post WW2 but pre-hippie people, the hippies, and then the post-hippie Gen X. Supposedly when the generation after X "comes of age" they will be the next "civic" generation. I hope so. The idea of historical cycles has its bogus elements (I say this as a professional historian by trade), but very smart people like the Arthur Schlesingers Sr. and Jr. thought that American politics had gone in cycles, so who knows.

I was born in 1970. I am a latter-day punkrocker. I started listening to punkrock in (as you might guess) my early teens, in the early to mid 1980s, so I was too young to be a part of the first wave of that scene but I identified with it heavily when I was in my early teens, all the way until I was in my early 20s when I got sick of it. But one of the things about punkrock that resonates with me now (now as a 'vintage person') is that it utterly rejected the late 1960s and 1970s entirely. I loved that aspect about punkrock. I hated bell bottoms, long hair, peace signs, overrelaxation, and all of the stuff the writer Joan Didion portrayed in the alarming piece "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" that she wrote. However, I love the back-to-the-land element of the 1960s movement, the sense of freedom, the refusal to live by obsolete rules. But those virtues do not need the ugly parts of the hippie movement which I still hate. Such as tie-dyes, a horror beyond all horror.

My father and mother had me late. I was a surprise. My eldest brother had spun my mother's birth control pills around and around in their plastic hexagon, and I was born 9 months later. i am not joking. I believe it was a happy surprise, but then again perhaps I believe this in order to be OK with it.

My father was born in 1921. He was stationed stateside in WW2 but remembers all of it, growing up in the 1930s and 1940s and trying to make his way in L.A. as a classical musician. My mother was born in 1930 in Canada. Her father had emigrated there from France in 1907 at the age of 14. My mother did not know English until she was 20. She moved to California in the 1950s, was a nurse, and bought a convertible. She met my father at a Catholic dance in L.A. in 1955 and they fell in love. So that explains all the vintage interest I have.
 

Flivver

Practically Family
Messages
821
Location
New England
I've been doing generational research for more than 20 years, using it to help understand how consumers make purchase decisions.

Doran...I agree with you that Howe and Straus' premise that generations repeat themselves every four generations is flawed.

Back in the 1960s, Prof. Morris Massey at the University of Colorado suggested that a person's values are formed by their growing up experience. Since the majority in a cohort group have a similar-enough growing up experience, the cohort group will exhibit similar values, and hence, behavior, as a group. This hypothesis is now generally accepted in the social science community.

It is doubtful that people four generations removed could have a similar growing up experience! But it made an interesting basis for a book.

With a business associate, I have delved into the growing up experience of Americans born since 1900. It's been a fascinating trip, and has proved to be very useful in understanding behavioral similarities and differences across generational groups.
 

Foofoogal

Banned
Messages
4,884
Location
Vintage Land
My eldest brother had spun my mother's birth control pills around and around in their plastic hexagon, and I was born 9 months later. i am not joking.

this is truly too funny for words. :eusa_clap lol


As a lay person and not a scholar like Doran I see it as stages but spiritually.
the 20's were loose, the depression and war made the conservative 50's which led to the beatniks and then the 60's rebellion with war again. The 80s were totally out of hand IMHO and led to excess of everything.
I am very surprised to see the 70s so far as the largest group here along with the 80s. To me this means this group is trying desperately to get back to the civic group or time.
I have no idea where we are now as it seems to be totally uncharted waters. :(
 

WinoJunko

One of the Regulars
Messages
121
Location
Southern California
I was born in January of 1990 so I just barely missed out on the 80s but got to experiance all of the 90s. The 90s weren't too bad, not for me at least (but then again I was a kid).

I would consider the 30s and 40s to be vintage.
 

Spitfire

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,078
Location
Copenhagen, Denmark.
IndigoFanatic said:
1982 here...

I'd consider "vintage" to be 20's-40's. "Classic" then is 50's-70's. The 80's aren't really worth thinking about. 90's on would be "modern." Perhaps my views are tinted by music and cars...

Wow - that means we are actually only 10 people here who actually lived the vintage age and has a firsthand impression of how it was like.
Great that so many "younger" members share our interest in the times we lived.:eusa_clap
 

MEDIUMMYND

One of the Regulars
Messages
172
Location
South Shropshire
I was born in 1963 i remember the 1970"s clearly and looking back they were good days.The 1980"s were times of huge change people were only interested in themselves and making vast sum of money without any scruples the world changed forever.
 

Imahomer

Practically Family
Messages
680
Location
Danville, CA.
I was born 09/11/1951 in San Francisco. I was a teenager during the height of the hippie days and during the anti Viet Nam rallies and such. I lived a few blocks away from Golden Gate park, where many an anti war ralley was held. Big time rock bands often played there and I was lucky enough to see a lot of them for free... The Jefferson Airplane, The Who, The Stones just to name a few.
 

draws

Practically Family
Messages
553
Location
Errol, NH
I was born in 1943 and I was old enough to remember the B-24 bombers flying overhead in formation in 1946. I do remember getting our first television in 1949, an Admiral with a roundish screen and test pattern that turned on at 11:00pm. I remember my father watcing the friday night fights sponsored by Pabst-Blue-Ribbon Beer.
 

Big Man

My Mail is Forwarded Here
Messages
3,781
Location
Nebo, NC
draws said:
... I remember my father watcing the friday night fights sponsored by Pabst-Blue-Ribbon Beer.

I'm just a couple years younger (1955), but I also remember my Dad watching the Friday night fights on TV. I can remember him sitting in his big chair, smoking a cigar (the only time I remember him smoking cigars), and watching the fights on our TV. I always felt special when he would let me stay up and watch the fights with him. Those were grand times ...
 

draws

Practically Family
Messages
553
Location
Errol, NH
I can't believe that there are only 12 of us from the 40s or before. One thing is sure, we can provide all you newbies with mucho life experiences. It only proves that when you're ready to bite the dust, you're usually the smartest person on earth but you're still wearing a diaper. ARGH!!!!
 

Sefton

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,132
Location
Somewhere among the owls in Maryland
Vintage 1965 model. I have extremely vivid memories of the 1970s; The house that we lived in in San Francisco, my older teenage sisters weirdo-hippie friends, watching the Apollo-Soyuz missions on TV, seeing my first movie (Willie Wonka and the chocolate factory. At a drive-in). When I think of that time it's like I have a kind of mulitple nostalgia. One for the '70s and one for my love of things of the 30's and 40's which began at that time.
Even then I didn't like long hair. My mother tells me that I would become very unhappy if my hair became long enough that I could feel it touching the tops of my ears. While all of the other children sported longish layered cuts I had to have a "butch" cut!

When I was old enough to have my own room I hung up a poster of Bogie and loved to listen to Louis Armstrong (still do). I've apparently been a Lounger in training for some time...;)

If I had been in my 40s or 50s in the 1970s I may very well have hated the decade. I'm glad that I was young enough to not be affected by the bad parts and yet old enough to have direct memories of the time.

I generally did hate the 80's though. Some of the New Wave/post-Punk music wasn't too bad although I can't seem to find any pleasure in it if I listen now. As I get older I go back farther and farther to find music that I can actually listen to without getting annoyed. I have become "Mr.Moldy Fig" (dress like him too!)
 

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