Vintage things that have REAPPEARED in your lifetime?

[belfastboy]

As a fat old man, I can remember the days of carrying a beeper. Then came the cellphone. Because of the rate plans, many people kept their beepers, and used them with a cell phone. Alphanumeric beepers were sophisticated enough for messages to be sent. You got your messages on the pager system, then used the cell phone to return only the most important calls. Cell phones were charged with a flat fee just to have the phone turned on, then you still had to pay by the minute.

By 2001, the shift was to cellular phone only. Motorola stopped making beepers altogether. Soon thereafter, commercial beeper service disappeared. Cellular phone service contract rates were still very high, but people had become accustomed to using mobile phones. In that era, I was using a brand named Nextel, which allowed for cellular phone service, and a two way radio. Nobody needed to send a text message. All that they had to do was activate the Push To Talk button and talk to me in real time. I still have the pagers and Nextel radios sitting in my garage. Actually, I've still got a complete 800 mhz radio dispatch system in my garage. When armageddon occurs, I will power it up.

The year 2002 brought us the iconic Blackberry. The smartphone era began. Text, fax, web browsing........ it was better than sex. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone. 2008 brought the first Android in the form of the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1. Today, children have smartphones with more computing power than The Moon Mission........ if you actually believed that man went to the moon with almost zero technology, then declared that there was no reason to keep going back, and hasn't been able to do anything remotely close to that for over half a century.



Vintage Technology has returned. Along with "vintage" pricing. When you roll the calendar back to The 80's, I cringe at how many thousands of 1980's dollars I spent for technology. Today, I can get a free mobile phone, and it only costs $20 a month. For less than an hour's wage, I have telecommunications. And it's only 1/3 of the cost of a landline telephone from The Phone Company. No wonder ATT stock keeps plummeting.






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And the smart phone has more computing capacity than the first computer installed in my workplace in 1972. They had to add a climate controlled wing to the building to house it and all it really did was costing and inventory control.....even at that it did it poorly. We worried it was going to replace us when in fact they had to hire a few more people.

 

[belfastboy]

Prices on consumer electronics are a small fraction (in adjusted dollars) of what they were. Same with airfare.

Housing, on the other hand …
and automobiles.

The days of the serviceable beater that could be had for less than a workingman’s week’s pay are long gone. As is the time when it was typical to pay less than 20 percent of one’s take home pay on housing.

I think my airfare to Europe in the late 1960's when the first 'charter' (affinity group) flights began cost me $400+. I was making $1.07 an hour so it def was not cheap. On seats sales I can now fly to London for $600 - $700. I graduated from uni in 1972, travelled a bit, came home, got a job and bought a house and a new car with money in the bank from my summer job in uni. And I lived away from home and paid my way all through uni. So yes, different times indeed.

 

[Trenchfriend]

What always surprises me, is, that even younger folks still seem to use plumeaus/day sheets/coverlets on their bed.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I await at any time the reappearance of the chenille bedspread, sold at a highly-inflated price as "cottage core" or some such.

 

[LostInTyme]

Chenille was BIG in our house.

 

[Brandrea33]

Omega did a wonderful remake of their iconic 321 Speedmaster.

The movement was recreated using a tomography process, from the very watch that Gene Cernan wore on the last moon landing. It’s an exact 1:1 copy (Sedna gold plating on the movement instead of copper for increased durability).

 

[tonyb]

Chenille was BIG in our house.

It seemed “old people” style to me when I was a kid. And I’m now old people myself.

Quilting, on the other hand, never went away, but I’ve been seeing more of it of late.

 

[LizzieMaine]

All we had in the house growing up was very old, very worn chenille bedspreads. When I was home sick from school and I got bored I'd lie on the bed and pick out the little tufts until my mother came in and yelled at me.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
Among the few ways in which my upbringing was fortunate was the lack of precious things in our home.

I might’ve caught hell for maliciously tearing things up, but we had no “special” furnishings that I might fear using as they were intended to be used. And I doubt my parents gave a hoot about the condition of our bedding. Wash it every so often and call it good.

 

[belfastboy]

^^^^^
Among the few ways in which my upbringing was fortunate was the lack of precious things in our home.

I might’ve caught hell for maliciously tearing things up, but we had no “special” furnishings that I might fear using as they were intended to be used. And I doubt my parents gave a hoot about the condition of our bedding. Wash it every so often and call it good.

My experience was 180 degrees dif. My parents were born dirt poor, teenagers during the Depression and clawed their way into middle class suburbia as adults. Generationally they had 'arrived'. They bought nice things on layaway and were prideful of their accomplishments and the things they owned. Being a big dumb kid, would catch hell all the time as I, apparently, dragged my feet when I walked and risked prematurely wearing out the wall to wall carpet. It was frowned upon when I sat on the new sofa as my weight preternaturally compressed the foam cushions. I slammed the car door instead of gently closing it and thus risked prematurely wearing out those steel hinges. The list goes on and on and on.

So as an adult I am a weird amalgam of thrift (I take very good care of the things I own) and don't buy new unless the thing has worn out but my wife and I celebrate when we do wear something out and relegate it to recycling or horrors, the trash.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
Much of our stuff was hand-me-downs. This was typical among my people during my earliest years, when I still lived near extended family. Stuff just went from cousin to cousin, it seemed.

When I was in my teens my mother acquired from a coworker a pretty nice coffee table and the matching pair of end tables. Not “high-end” furniture, but of better quality and in a better condition than most of our swag. I still have one of those end tables. The last I saw the other one it was alongside my sister’s trash cart. It was a little busted up. That was probably 30 years ago. Or more.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't think I ever saw a house furnished in "the latest style," as illustrated in House Beautiful or the Sears catalog -- all the furniture in all the houses I frequented were a mishmash of styles, ranging from whatever was on sale at Grants to leftovers from the 1880s. My parents slept in a bed that first saw the light of day during the second administration of Grover Cleveland, and my mother was still using that bed until it finally collapsed out from under her four years ago.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Wouldn't wonder, if the western Futonbed will become trendy again! It was the ultimate trend for teens and twens, when it appeared in the 2000s.
Now 20 years are gone and the traditional trend cycle will surely come back to the marketing boys.

My 2010s is still working, so let's see, how long it will last.
The super basic/super affordable concept is surely not for sexual active couples. It would collapse maybe after two months, I think.
AND it's not made for repositioning often!
But the (classic spring core) mattresses are really cheap, for whatever reason.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
Did futons go away while I wasn’t looking?

It must’ve been the 1980s when I first became aware of the things. I never objected to sleeping on one, but the folding frames were, in my experience, cheaply constructed and poorly engineered. I don’t discount the possibility that better examples exist, but I’m supposing their price would reflect that, which in the minds of many in the futon-buying public would be contrary to the very point of getting a futon in the first place: the low cost relative to other beds.

I still have a futon mattress — a “double” bed size, which is probably the least popular bed size these days, what with prevalence of the queen- and king-sized options. The double bed was what couples who slept together used back before we got into super-sizing everything. My futon is on a 1930s(?) vintage brass bed frame, atop the open spring base that came with the old bed. Visitors are cautioned against vigorous activities thereon, lest the squeaks and rattles give away the story.

 

[LostInTyme]

I once found a futon in the trash. Loaded it up and delivered it to my son who had just moved into his first house. Free bed from dad.

 

[tonyb]

I once found a futon in the trash. Loaded it up and delivered it to my son who had just moved into his first house. Free bed from dad.

I’m looking forward to the book …

“Tyme-Tested Parenting Tips from LostinTyme”

 

[LostInTyme]

Three sons, all had homes furnished from items purchased at auction for little money. For the cost of a good bottle of booze, a ten piece dining room set can be purchased. Upholstered chairs and couches typically go for only a few dollars.

 

[tonyb]

Three sons, all had homes furnished from items purchased at auction for little money. For the cost of a good bottle of booze, a ten piece dining room set can be purchased. Upholstered chairs and couches typically go for only a few dollars.

Among the Old Man’s many failed ventures was a sales and auction business. It was a partnership of maybe a year’s duration. If I learned anything from that time, it was that a person needn’t pay much at all for home furnishings, provided he ain’t too picky. There’s tons (literally) of good stuff out there for little if any money.

 

[Trenchfriend]

^^^^^
Did futons go away while I wasn’t looking?

In old Germany, they became very popular in the 2000s, there was a FLOOD, but they start to slowly disappear from 2010 on. Now, there are less on the market, especially the matresses.
But you still can get cheap ones, solid middle-class and expensive massive wood ones (>500 EUR).

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have a 80-odd-year-old double bed and mattress set given to me by a friend after her parents died -- when I was married, we had a queen bed, but we did not, and I do not now, have a queen-sized bed*room*. When I got home from getting divorced the first thing I did was get rid of that bed -- I gave it a friend who made it the centerpiece of her very small apartment, and when she decided that was a poor decor statement she, in turn, gave it to her sister-in-law. And I, with my simple normal-sized bed, no longer have to crawl to the foot of the bed to get up in the morning because I now have space available on either side.