Also once about eight years ago I was in Kentucky doing the bourbon trail. It’s pretty rural aside from the distilleries, and finding somewhere to eat lunch on Sunday was hard as almost everything is closed, we ended up at some place they called a bourbon gastropub, but that meant that the dining room side was the only part fit to eat in, but all that was open was the horrible bar which was made of raw particle board, and there were members of the Klan sitting at it, who had the leather vests with the blood drop cross. There was literally nowhere else to eat so we ordered, but I felt terrified the whole time, and as we were wrapping up one of the Klan lit a cigarette at the bar and just sat there, and nobody said anything. It was quite stunning.
Crazy that these places still exist, but I guess not that surprising.
Yeah, it was weird. Most restaurants had a non-smoking section because allowing people to smoke everywhere was the norm. Leaded gasoline. Little kids playing with real fireworks. The 70s and 80s were a wild ride of irresponsibility.
It wasn’t all bad, though. It was cool being a kid at times. Playing outside almost every day until dinner time with the other kids in the neighborhood.
Don’t forget no cell phones. It’s hard to overstate the (I believe negative) impact constant connection and notification has had on every aspect of our lives
Some boomer on Facebook recently posted a meme with a photo of a rotary phone and how those were better days, and I had to laugh because they decidedly weren’t. When we had no answering machine or call waiting, and had to hang around for phone calls that might come, or have the car break down on the side of the road and hope that someone would stop and help you and that they weren’t a serial killer, that was purely awful. We actually had a serial killer couple abducting and killing teenage girls in my city before cell phones existed, and they made tapes of them raping and torturing these girls before they killed them. A cell phone would probably have helped them a lot.
There also weren’t people broadcasting mass shootings live on Facebook and inspiring copycat shootings, or being indoctrinated into incel culture alone in their bedrooms. There are legitimate pros and legitimate cons to 24/7 connection, this isn’t just some “boomer yells at the sky” thing
It’s decidedly worse for mental health. Despite living in the safest times in living memory, we are biased to think our cities are dangerous and economies are failing because of doomscrolling and the dominance of online news.
That’s why I would say that cell phones are fine. It’s when they turned into smartphones where I would draw the line. I just get the feeling that we’d be a lot better off if mobile phone tech never advanced much further than the mid-2000’s flip phone.
YES. Flip phones were fine and were enough to handle all the problems mentioned about pre-cellphones. Calls, texts, voice mail. All the new problems mentioned are caused BY smartphones. If the meme showed a Nokia flip phone it would have been perfect.
Totally agree with this
It’s just I went to one of the victim’s funerals. I’ll never feel nostalgic for those days as a result.
Little kids playing with real fireworks.
In the early 2000s as teenagers we’d go play in the town with bags of fireworks on new year lmao
Non smoking section with like an 18 inch wall separating it from the smoking section. My mom almost got into a fistfight at a couple of restaurants for seating us directly next to the smoking section instead of in the opposite corner with less secondhand smoke.
And it was usually next to the kitchen and the restrooms. Worst tables all around.
No one can win on this one.
Seat the smokers in back and “oh no, I have to sit next to the kitchen and restroom.”
Seat the smokers in front and “oh no, I have to walk through the smoking section to get to or from my seat, or go to the restroom.”
Or at least that’s how Denny’s was setup in our town.
I don’t know how it was in the U.S., but where I’m from it was like 10% of the seats only, so even if they put it all on good seats, there would still be plenty of good seats for smokers.
In most restaurants I saw there was no wall in between.
In most restaurants I saw there was no wall in between.
This was my experience as well. I can still see it today in some older restaurants that haven’t been renovated in years, where there’s an area of the dining room with a much higher ceiling.
As a child of the 70s/80s, although I don’t remember a great deal of the 70s, your parents had no idea where you were until you came home when the streetlights went on, unless you happened to call from a friend’s house to ask if you could sleep over. I remember my friend getting run over by a car which broke her leg because there was no crossing guard on the busy street where the kids had to cross to go to school, and after that they hired one. I lived up the street from the school, and had a cat that went outside, on hot days the front doors were always open and sometimes she’d go nap in the library or show up in my classroom. Then the neighbour who hates animals and had lost his teaching job for exposing himself to students abducted her and dumped her way across town, but someone found her and put an ad in the list and found section of the paper so I got her back.
That poor cat went through so much.
She was happy as can be and loved visiting.
From my experience, it’s always been the other way around. There usually were small smoking sections partitioned away from the rest of the restaurant. This was the norm. And it was usually a fraction of the tables compared to the non-smoking sections.
Source: Worked as a server through most of the 80’s-90’s.
They had smoking/non-smoking sections into the 90s and early 2000s in Texas. I remember very clearly that my parents would have to ask for seats away from the bar if the restaurant had one, because they almost always allowed smoking. Also hotel rooms being smoking/non-smoking, and you could tell when a hotel was cheap and just swapped the door sign.
Wish I could still buy one of those.
My neighbour smokes indoors. When she opens the door, I get the smell you are talking about.
My aunt smoked two packs a day, in the house, and when I visited I had to wear clothes I was ready to throw away, had to strip and shower when I got home, and once in the space of an hour she smoked seven cigarettes and finally one of my eyes swelled shut, and she demanded to know why I didn’t say anything. My husband pointed out the walls were yellow with tobacco, she lived in the house she grew up in and all the furniture was the same as when she was a child. When she died it all had to be junked, despite some of it probably being antique.
When she died it all had to be junked
The tar might have helped it burn better
You can also just take a trip to the Waffle House off I-95 in Florence, SC. It allowed smoking when I was there in 2014 and probably still does.
Well they literally get killed for asking.
There’s a small city in the Kansas City, Missouri metro (Raytown) that lobbied to keep it legal in restaurants and bars. I just looked it up, and apparently it’s fine to smoke weed as of 2023, too
Even as a kid I always liked the smell
And the cold tobacco doesn’t bother me either
However there’s one tobacco smell I don’t like, when someone smoked a cigaret (in cold weather) very fast before boarding the train/bus. It’s a very strong, musky smell
Since my colleagues have missed the invention of Deodorant and washing themselves I’d beg to differ.
In the 80s and 90s a cool ash tray was a good gift for literally anyone. Even teenagers since half of them were smoking reefer
As a kid I liked the shitty little ashtrays they had in fast food restaurants. Like McDonald’s. I think they were aluminum and meant to be pretty much disposable. You could play with them like flying saucers. Or a shield for your GI Joe guys. Or if your GI Joe guys were going on vacation in the snow. They were maluable so you could shape them.
Before that, every place had these massive brown glass ashtrays.
It’s true! Making clay ashtrays for your parents in art class was a thing.
My mum kept the triangular one I made her for over 20 years. Still quite proud of it.
My mother in law smokes, so a visit to her house always results in throwing whatever clothes we’ve taken directly into the washing machine when we get home.
Worse though, is that it takes a few days for the smell to leave my CPAP machine. I put a new filter in, but it still somehow lingers.
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Straight up child abuse. Fuck…
Every once in a while I still spot someone smoking with kids in the car. That shit makes me irate.
i’m old enough to remember smoking sections on airplanes. Not to be dramatic but, I felt like I was going to die!
Wow that looks awful
It was absolutely disgusting. I only flew once as a kid prior to it being outlawed but I was sick from it.
Even as a smoker I hated indoor smoking.
Grew up in Asia. The less fancy one. Used to go buy my Dad cigarettes from across the street and toss out the filters when I was like 8 lol.
*He’s been smoke free for over 22 years. The amount of disinformation from Big tobacco, at least where I grew up, was insane. He is a very educated man and still… Cigarette was a status symbol, symbol of sophistication, when he was growing up.
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Noone could smell anything from smoking so much, the smoke stank paradox
I remember coming home from shows in high school/college and I would have to shower and throw my clothes in the washer. I was so happy when smoking was finally banned in clubs.
