Okay, Okay I see what you were trying to do.

That was SARCASM, my good man.

I didn't mean my life was literally that bleak.  It was more of me flexing on how candyass kids are these days.  I actually had fun on the farm. Not because it was the 80s and not because Reagan was president but because I was a kid.

I had a decent time, I just don't care about the 80s like I'm 'supposed' to.  I'm sure it was great if you had money and lived in town.

I bring up tainted blood because it was out there and at the time, little was known about it.  All I heard was incurable and fatal. It was scary and unknown
The Russians seemed like a threat.

And here's one for ya.....if your heart didnt skip a beat when you heard the Emergency Broadcast Tone with the Civil Defense logo or you saw SPECIAL REPORT come on with either silence or a weird teletype sound then you weren't there.

Nowadays they do "Special Reports" if some actor gets a divorce.

Special Reports in the middle of cartoons may well have heralded nuclear holocaust.

But I did see the Wall come down.

Take a penny, Leave a penny.

It was what it was but I've no desire to romanticise it or relive it.

I remember one of those during cartoons in 1963, when Kennedy was shot. I ran and told my mom.

The concerts were the best in the 80's. I remember going to see Van Halen on the Diver Down tour for get this... $7.50. The 1984 tour tickets were only $9.50. You could buy muscle cars for less than $3000

Yes... Everywhere.  Lol

80’s were unique. Not like the 60’s hippies that want to feel like a protest would change the world kinda crap. We were the last generation to grow up without our every move tracked, documented, scrutinized for decades to come. Truly free to be! The last real free generation.

Recently a guy asked for beer money and was so overwhelmed with donations that he donated over a million to a local children’s hospital. Apparently 7 years ago when he was 16, he made two poorly worded tweets. Now he is considered racist and for the rest of his life those two tweets will follow him.

Kids in the 80’s were the last free generation.

Some of my 80s pics. Ex gf at my 15th birthday party Attached File
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There was definitely less fat people. Maybe cocaine had something to do w/ this?

I can’t disagree. I wasn’t a teenager and I was driving trucks, tractors, wearing my dads Vietnam jungle fatigues and hunting turkey and deer alone in the woods with an M1 Carbine and a 30 round magazine or an old pump  shotgun until I got meat or sun came down, rode my bike to the nearest town to get cigarettes for grown folks (with a little extra for a soda and candy for me), and nobody batted an eye.

I didn’t care about girls until the 90s.
90s girls were considered so wild but are quaint by today’s standards.

But again, modern tech has made me lazy. I remember making a mixtape from off the radio. Or having records mailed to me from Germany.

And sometimes after midnight on Saturday the UHF station would play horror movies uncut.

I grant you things seemed more innocent only in retrospect.

not really  , we were on the run all the time,  tv sucked balls mostly...... outdoor sports and camping , fishing....everyone was just going places and for the most part the more the merrier.... you would invite strangers along the way or vice versa....everyone got along and helped each other.  beer and pot was all anyone needed .   it was sublime .

Aqua Net hair spray for the win ;)

The 80's were awesome!  I had my 79 Camaro with Centerline rims, BF Goodrich Radial T/A's, Sony radio, MTX amp, MTX subs.  I had a job, 100/month rent, money to blow on stupid shit (spent an obscene amount of money on my gf at 5-7-9, she looked incredible in plaid ;)

People actually talked to each other, when your pager went off you had to find a payphone.  Girls were hot as hell w/ their big hair, short skirts with spandex underneath.

Metallica, Crue, Brittany Fox, House Music.  I'm pretty sure I destroyed some of my hearing with the forementioned music.

People didn't get butthurt over everything/anything.  More people were in shape and healthy.

Sigh...Now I'm depressed

My class motto ...
“ Smokin Dope and Drinking Brew , We re the Class of 82 ! “

Ya it was fun

Remember calling friends and not finding them home, then going to all the places their parents told you they went then not finding them there. (Lied to their parents)

Only to feel that sweet relief and euphoria when you finally did find them where you should have known they would be?

There were some hangouts that I could tell if someone was there, and usually who by the bicycle tracks in the dirt without going all the way to them.

For me part of why the 80's was a great decade was due to how messed up the 70's were. Reagan came in with enthusiasm and everyone had the attitude that things were going to get better. Carter gave us double digit unemployment, high inflation, mortgage interest rates of up to 20% on a 30 year fixed rate loan. Then there was the gas crisis/shortage and gas rationing earlier in the 70's. After all of that a decade where there was optimism was pretty good.

I graduated in 78, I'm sticking with the 80s were best. Carter kept my ass out of the military, by the time Reagan got in I was basically a married man with the best woman ever, until she went nuts in 83. That set me free to be the slut I became the rest of the decade.

Party hardy, rock and roll
Drink a 5th and smoke a bowl
We will party for evermore
We're the class of '84

Heard a short piece about a made for TV move, The Day After, '83, that likely had a profound effect on society and government. Cold war times, the nukes let fly, the results.  The way it was told, it is still has the highest viewership rating, caused Reagan to accept massive national debt trying to develop Star Wars defense and the general pubic too kinda say "fuck it, there may not be a tomorrow", taking on unprecedented debt vs decades prior of saving.

I haven't researched it but will watch if for nothing more than a look at what people were concerned with.  https://www.avclub.com/the-day-after-traumatized-a-generation-with-the-horrors-1798447330

That was filmed in CHS.

Man, after this weekend we should have some awesome live-fire pics and videos for this thread....

I do okay as long as politics aren’t a hang up.

For me personally, the beginning of the 80's was hard.  Lived in the midwest, 20+% unemployment in my area.  I moved out at 18, had 2-3 jobs to make ends meet.  Finally found my way, started making good money by 82 when I moved to Chicago.  Drove nice cars, lived in a hip apartment.  Pussy everywhere and willing.  Lots of drugs, lots of alcohol and the club scene was crazy in Chicago, not New York crazy but probably close.

I wish I could go back.  People were fun to be around, not the antagonistic shit we have now.  I had Democrat friends, I had Republican friends, we all went to the same bars, the same parties and we all got along.  Even most of the egg sucking dog Liberals in Chicago were fun to hang with.

Survived.

I even remember a lot of it

HS 80-84
Army 84-88
Decent job with my own house 88-

80's parties were the best parties

24--34 for me. . . . great antidote to the 70's I can tell you that.. . . girls started wearing skirts again!

Back then most Democrats wouldn't even admit that's what they were. If you asked someone who they voted for, Republicans would tell you. Democrats would say things like *I don't talk about that*, *It's none of your business*, etc. I would reply with *Oh, you're a Democrat. If you were a Republican, you wouldn't be ashamed of it.* Never got one wrong with that, but now they're all *out*.

I miss the old 7-11's. Where the nacho cheese and chili dispensers were never cleaned and topped off weekly and nobody gave a shit.

Dude I think you’re referring too the 70s which was THE greatest decade!

IM inbound

I'm not going to lie.  I actually ate a gas station hot dog once or twice...and survived!

I'm convinced that social media ruined it.  If you go on my Facebook feed it is post after post after post of divisive fear mongering bullshit reposted by hysterical idiots and paid for SJW programming.  It's turned everyone into chicken littles.  Imagine what receiving programming that the sky is falling every single day of your life and how that would effect a person's mentality.

Damn we were so much better before all of that.

In the 80's I worked at one of those places, Ecol Fuel Stop in San Antonio. I would destroy those dogs and load more!

I got robbed at gunpoint by 2 mexican fellows, sure did suck. Amazing how fluent in another language one can get if faced with death. When the police arrived and started asking stupid questions, I was chugging a MD 2020.
Cops said "you can't drink that here" but I didn't care, I kept on drinking that strawberry hill. It's what there was.
Cop - "What did the 2 mexicans look like?
Me - "Really? one was big and the other guy was little, both had jeans and white tee's.
Cop - "What color was their hair?"
Me -

My Dad didn’t farm for a living, but as a side gig. I can remember as a child him cussing Jimmy Carter in tirades similar to Ralphie’s Dad in a Christmas Story. He worked two and sometimes three jobs the first 20 years of my life to pay for the farm. We were lucky he made it.
The 80’s was the best though, that optimism was always there.  Great music, the evil empire defeated, people seemed to just get along better no matter their circumstances.

God damn nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Or, so much drugs were done in the 80's some of you forget that life's struggles do not skip decades.

Everyone just got along, all the girls partied, there weren't fat people.

Yikes.

I lived through it, my romanticism-colored Rayban's must have got lost in the mail or something.

Not mine, but very close to what I had growing up in the 80's...use to ride this thing everywhere

82 - 88 were the best years of my childhood and I will cherish them forever.  It really seemed like a magical time to me.

I remember working the midnight shift.

I tried saying as much but was called a Leftist.

People did not always get along.
Not everyone partied.
Not everyone had a Corvette, money in the bank, and a pile of pre-86 machine guns, and a harem of hirsute, disease free aerobics queens.

Grenada happened, Lebanon happened, Panama happened, Soviet incursion into Afghanistan happened.

Objectively speaking Reagan should have been legit impeached over Iran Contra and Ollie North should have done time in Leavenworth.

We had a severely divided world.

The market crashed. S&L scandal happened.

Televangelists bilked a lot of well meaning people out of money.

$100 went far, but $100 was also harder to come by.
Good luck getting a carry permit unless you were a good ol’ boy.
Urban blight was real.

A computer with 1/200th the capability of my Apple watch cost as much as a car.

I could go on.

If anyone here got to have a sports car, a blonde plaything, and did lines of coke all day and had consequences-free unprotected sex; huzzah good for you.

I dare say the 90s were a little better. Maybe a lot better.

No cancel culture, Leftists weren’t unreasonable and were actually funny, we had the closest thing to total world peace in probably millennia. Race relations were probably the best ever. And aside from the AWB, we had no real problems.

But, I think really people were just young and not old, bald, and fat and people want to conflate that with a decade.

It had ups and downs and there is no way to go back.

Enjoy your 80s music and movies but remember it wasn’t like a John Hughes movie or Saved by the Bell.

I bring up the AIDS crisis because if you had loved ones who needed blood during a surgery then it was very much a concern. They realistically hadn’t devised a nigh solid screening until 87.

The good ol days weren’t always good and tomorrow’s not as bad as it seems.

... some of the best years of my life

The Deranged True Story Of Heavy Metal Parking Lot

The Citizen Kane Of Wasted Teenage Metalness

yep we just wanted to rock and party every weekend

I want to grow up where you guys did. Was it a John Hughes movie? When I was a teenager in the 80's (typical midwest city with a pretty eclectic mix of demographics), most every party or hangout I attended ended up in a fight, and all the same petty shit that follows young people now did then, too.

I remember going to town to cruise with friends, and inevitably someone would be drunk or just filled with testosterone and stupidity and try to start fighting with me or one of my friends, often over nothing at all. What jersey we were wearing, our car, or just the look on our faces. I got jumped one time by 6 guys, broke ribs and missed my homecoming game and to this day have no clue who the guys were or even why they attacked me. Just walking to a mini-stop, bang, I'm getting the shit beat out of me.

80's. Awesome. I remember most of my generation being a bit like wild animals. Clicky, hostile to people who weren't like them. 20 years later I did a field trip with students from my same high school as a chaperone...one we had been drunk through the entire time, wandered off, or caused all kinds of trouble....and the kids I had were totally cool. Had fun, weren't dickheads, didn't get trashed or get into any serious mischief. They all got along. Fuck, we were fighting on the bus to get there.

Yeah, some girls in the 80's were pretty and had poofy hair. A lot of them were fugly. Getting them to touch your junk was no gimme....involved a lot of Boone's Farm, Journey tapes, and no one seemed down to swallow or do any freaky shit. Most of them smoked, wore so much makeup you had no idea what kind of ghoul you'd wake up with in the morning, and it seemed like all the girls I was around wanted knocked up and pregnant, or to rush into marriage way too young, so among my friends there was almost a warfare attitude about dating....you had to be careful. Several of my friends ended up with pregnant girlfriends (some who lied about their birth control).

True story: In the nursing program at my school, there were 22 girls in the junior class. Only 2 graduated high school without becoming pregnant and/or dropping out. It made the news, lol.

I mean, yeah, I wanted to party every weekend too....but I recall the party being lame.

Maybe my experience is a total outlier, but I had waaaaaaaaaaaay more fun in the 90's and 2000's.

Eh, not really. I had fun in high school...played sports, had friends, got laid here and there, but I wasn't oblivious about what was going on around me. I think it's more the difference between being observant and living in a bubble....and a whopping case of selective memory about culture and/or a reasonable knowledge of recent history.

I most certainly remember the political and cultural goings on between people older than me, on TV and on the world stage. It was only a simpler time if you were living a simpler life, as most kids do. Only thing unique about now is the rapid spread of information, but it was there then too, you just didn't get it from listening to Kiss in the back of a Chevy Malibu, fucking Sherry who smells like MadDog puke.

I just loved the 80's.

In all fairness, that's a generous claim to make about Reagan. He didn't hurt the situation, and sped it up for sure, but the USSR was running on fumes when he took office.

Socialism collapses.

That's what it does.

He won by being in the driver's seat when the other guy ran out of gas. Sure, he raced them to the goal line to drive the point home with his defense strategy (which a whole lot of contractors and industry was all too happy to get in on), and had the right moves to do it diplomatically (Gorbechev deserves some credit here, too), but it's a stretch to say he defeated the USSR. Communism defeated the USSR, and its people and leadership eventually got tired of the lie.