What were The 70's really like?

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NEPATelecaster

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I was born in 1974 and alot of what I remember is mostly 80's on. I don't quite rememeber what 70's reality was like, but I do past that.

So I've been wondering about it lately, then seen this article with 50 pics of 70s life in NYC.
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/g12199946/new-york-1970s/

So, for those of you who were Teens beyond in the 70's, what was it really like? Not necessarily about music, but just life in general. Random everyday things, thoughts , experiences?
 
KC

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Depends on where you were and what you were doing. I was in Montana which was wilder and stranger than it is lately. I wrote poems & went out with girls that killed themselves & played at a wet t-shirt contest outside the airbase in Great Falls, among other things. I was young and things were stupid and a little dark but I had my fun.
 
Peegoo

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NEPATelecaster said:
Not necessarily about music, but just life in general.
Click to expand...

Popular culture was greatly affected by the previous ~10 years of Vietnam, so when that was over in the early 70s there was an undercurrent of hope that created a sense of open-mindedness and acceptance of new things, such as punk rock.

Sadly, disco was one of these new things :cool:

Disco-Peegoo.jpg

Who LOVES you, baby?
 
elihu

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I remember wearing crazy clothes when I was 13. That would be 1973. Shirts were loud and Hawaiian, pants were crazy big bell bottoms (anyone remember the Red Snap brand?) And the belt was white leather with two rows of brass grommeted holes that went the length of the belt. Shoes were white leather too. And a white necklace of puka shells completed the ensemble.

But there were good things too.

Soul Train and Sanford and Son were on television!

And David Bowie was on the radio.
 
jays0n

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I was only in my early teens in the 70s (13 by the end of it) but I remember a lot about it.

- Seat Belts were sort of just a suggestion
- kids rode in the back of pickup trucks on the freeway
- everything had macrame, especially plant hangers
- we had to line up for Gasoline on the days we could get gasoline (odd/even)
- we had a Subaru!!!! (Felt like owning a Tesla, since my friends parents all had a Ford or Chevy)
- music in the car was Bowie on 8-track
- movie theaters had just one or two rooms max, and we could easily pay for one and sneak into the other.
- kids stayed outside and away from home until the street lights came on, every night.
- all kids rode bicycles and skateboards, like every day

I guess my memories of that life reflect my age at the time. I have fond memories of it. The 80s were better though, as we could do more once a little older.
 
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Esquire Jones

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I remember going to the Chevy dealership with my Dad in 1970.

He paid just over $5k cash on the desk for a brand new C-20 pickup. Of course us kids rode home in the back bed.

Lots of family to rely on. In a good way.

Hippies, Nam vets, Jane Fonda, Nixon, bell bottoms, gas lines, Evel Knievel, bra-less ladies everywhere.

Paper routes, nobody locked their front door. Lots of old folks who lived through the depression.

Compared to now, way more social cohesion.
 
schmee

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Free spirit attitude.
Macrame
Groups of people living in one house, kinda a new thing then... at least to the extent it happened vs before..
Loud music, even at home.
Free-er sex attitudes.
Women walking down a country road topless.
Protests against a lie.

Big outdoor concerts. Woodstock probably the biggest. But more local ones with 40k people attending weren't unusual.
For a few bucks I got to see these all at the same concert:
Band gigs 6 nights a week at the same place.
Hitchhiking.
In the early 60's you joined.
In the early 70's fear of your draft number. I remember, mine was 242.
Questioning social rules that had no reasons as to why.
 
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String Tree

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NEPATelecaster said:
I was born in 1974 and alot of what I remember is mostly 80's on. I don't quite rememeber what 70's reality was like, but I do past that.

So I've been wondering about it lately, then seen this article with 50 pics of 70s life in NYC.
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/g12199946/new-york-1970s/

So, for those of you who were Teens beyond in the 70's, what was it really like? Not necessarily about music, but just life in general. Random everyday things, thoughts , experiences?
Click to expand...
For me, they were a Blast!
No Aids or, HIV!
"Safe Sex" Meant her Boyfriend/Husband wasn't around.
Cars were more fun but, a bit more Dangerous.
Same for the Women.
Same for Live Concerts.

There were not nearly as many Decent Guitars and amps as there are today.
There were however, so many more places to play. I loved that.

You had to go Look-up your own Information. Libraries were Awesome.

The Cold War was in Full Swing. Very strange!

~ST

Newspapers were a good source of information.
 
Dismalhead

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Great decade. I was born in '63, so it really kicked in for me around '76 or so. Graduated high school in '81.

My parents divorced around '73. My mom was socially conservative but my dad ended up going through all the fads - love beads & hippy stuff, puka shells, leisure suits, disco.

First of all, I remember the Vietnam War seemed to last forever and it was weird when it was finally over.

The thing I miss is it was the decade of true freedom - the old saying about sex, drugs, and rock and roll was pretty much true. Unlike most of the decades afterwards, good music ruled on FM radio. It was normal to drive with a beer in your lap (I know, socially reprehensible now), and cops were old neighborhood guys that gave you warnings instead of busting you. At least for me it was pretty much a constant party for the latter half of the decade. It was also the last time I didn't have any real responsibilities, so I'm sure that was a big chunk of it. Oh, and almost everyone had at least one parent who smoked.

The '80s brought on a wave of religious conservatism (The Moral Majority), cops started seeing their jobs as an "us vs. them" thing rather than being part of the community, AIDS and herpes ruined the free loving thing and started the decline of the bar scene, the rich started getting richer and the poor started getting poorer, and crappy pop music started replacing the old rock stations. The government started getting more into your life in the '80s with seatbelt laws, child seat laws, helmet laws, fun fireworks became illegal, they started making people smoke outside (I know, reprehensible to smoke inside now), and the War on Drugs sent a lot of people to jail and gave them criminal records due to zero tolerance policies. Some or all of this may seem good common sense now, but at the time it felt like people were getting all up in your business.

Oh, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.
 
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