Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
Press photo: September 26, 1981
Looks like the kids are going to or coming from baseball practice. The collection they’re pulling out of the boxes is a mix of comics and magazines. The boy on the left is holding a sheet of baseball cards. I think the kid on the right might be reading Starlog.
(Photo via Big Ole Photos/eBay)
Hey, Michael Hyland, the Eastern seaboard called: they’re running out of MOTU.
Actually, let’s make a deal. You keep the toys and your studly A-Team pajamas. I’ll take that righteous carpet, the matching tablecloth, and the boss wood paneling.
You’ll see Stinkor in the last photo (top left), and that red spider thing is—yet another winner from Mattel’s Clever Name Department—Spydor.
No, you’re not mistaken. The dude sitting furthest back really is wearing a unicorn shirt with a rolled-brim Busch Beer hat. Got a problem?
And that’s the original 1978 Player’s Handbook with the David Trampier cover that scared the shit out of all the people who believed Satan was taking over the Earth one polyhedral die roll at a time.
If you haven’t already, check out my D&D Portrait series.
(Photo via Mojo Yugen/Flickr)
A really interesting early example of the arguments for and against video games, and some good arcade footage to go with it.
Ronnie Lamm, President of the Middle Country PTA Council in Long Island, received national attention at the time for convincing the residents of Brookhaven to issue a 6-month moratorium on the issuance of game permits. If she’d had her way, video games would have been banned completely.
I found some good stories on her “crusade” at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (July 22, 1982) and two issues of the Spokesman-Review (January 16, 1982 and June 8, 1982). She calls the games “definitely addictive” and “not wholesome,” and says the proliferation of arcades leads to an increase in robbery and drug trafficking.
In the video, she laments that when kids go to the store to pick up something for school, they drop the leftover change into a game instead of bringing it home. Her solution: get rid of the games.
Another parent complains that his son took money in advance from his paper route to play games. His solution: take away the kid’s paper route.
One of the managers and part owners of Foosball World, soft-spoken Diane Lacicero, dispatches them easily with a small dose of common sense: “You can’t expect the game room to be at fault because they [parents] don’t have the control that they should have.”
I’m not all that convinced that arcades kept kids away from drugs and other nasty habits, or that they “discharge” violent feelings, but they sure did give us a place to be with others our own age in a non-school environment. They were little communities, with a special set of rules, and we had to learn how to function within them.
Kids have nowhere to go anymore partly because of people like Ronnie Lam. As a society, we no longer raise our children as adults-in-training, giving them the independence they need to learn how to act independently and handle tough situations. Instead, we’re raising them to be codependent, inflated, and entitled.
(Video via kamenliter/YouTube)
Published in an unidentified newspaper, probably The Miami Herald, in 1984. Someone named Larry Meyer is speaking at Ponce de Leon High School in northwest Florida. I’ve got no idea who Meyer is, but the students look intrigued.
The kid on the far left of the front row is wearing an OP (Ocean Pacific) polo.
The kid in the middle is wearing a Bud Light t-shirt. (The Annual Budweiser Light… something. I can’t make it out.) The kid to his right is wearing a JCPenney-exclusive “Fox Shirt,” designed to compete with Lacoste’s crocodile. Le Tigre’s tiger polos were another big Lacoste competitor.
(Images via Big Ole Photos/eBay and Etsy)
December 26, 1983. (Photo: Denver Post)
Nice ferns?
By the way, true story, there was actually something called a fern bar in the late ’70s and early ’80s: “an upscale or preppy (or yuppie) bar or tavern catering to singles usually decorated with ferns or other `fussy’ plants, as well as such decor as fake Tiffany lamps.”
(Photo via Lexibell/eBay)
Very cool stuff via The Retroist via atarigames1/YouTube. Watch the kid put his quarter on the Defender machine (1:04), say something to the kid playing (i.e. “Are you any good?”), then take the quarter down again. Intimidation was a foundational ingredient of early arcade culture.
The game sights and sounds (especially Defender), the wall art close-ups, the braces, the Nikes, the bemused mom handing out quarters—it’s a complete, high quality time capsule. I found another video at the same channel that’s shorter but equally fascinating.
It’s a 7-11 in the same year, 1981. Those dudes are us.
Coral Gables High School, Florida, 1986. (Photo: Erica Berger/Miami Herald)
This stylish gentleman is asking a question of Vice President George Bush during the latter’s visit to the former’s high school. That night, filled with newfound confidence, he (the stylish gentleman, not the VP) surprised Molly Ringwald at the prom.
(Photo via the Boston Archive/eBay)
Cherry Creek High School, Englewood, CO, 1983. (Photo: Denver Post/Aaron E. Tomlinson)
Actually, these dudes are editors of the school paper, the Union Street Journal, after winning an award from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. I love it when nerds try to look tough.
(Photo via Lexibell/eBay)
1981 (photo source unknown)
What a line-up. That’s Asteroids Deluxe on the right. (Click to enlarge.)
January 27, 1982. (Ann E. Yow/Seattle Times)
That’s a lot of hair! And what’s with the guy wearing a jacket but no shirt?
(Photos via Vintage Photos 2012 and Seattle Washington Archive)
2 Warps to Neptune 