1989: You Had To Be There

Turn the Wayback machine to a long forgotten place… the past. The year is 1989.

In case you think modern times are uniquely shit, culture in 1989 was already starting to suck. For no good reason whatsoever, this was a top song for the year: (WTF is with the disembodied tambourine creature?)

As apology for the abomination above I also link to Danny Elfman’s kick ass soundtrack made the same year. It was a superhero movie without a number after it. Can you imagine that? A single movie about a superhero instead of a dozen interconnected CGI fests! We didn’t know future movies would become giant steaming piles of endless superhero sequels mixed with minority gender swapped third order Disney remakes of pre-existing animated remakes that exist to bitch at us. Even then some of us wanted to set the TV on fire. (Incidentally, cable TV back then was a dozen channels but they didn’t suck nearly as completely as the 50 you’ve got now.).

The internet was a gleam in Al Gore’s eye but the digital age was already emerging. We hoped computer communication would make things like factories and science more efficient. The dystopia where F***book censors someone’s grandma over a difference between her political view and the approved narrative their neighbor broadcast on Twitter would be incomprehensible.

Right now, everything everywhere is censored. Back then the media was somewhat less shady and free speech of individuals was reasonably solid. You could say just about anything that came to your fool head without HR firing you or Siri forwarding your name to a Federal list. You might get your ass kicked if you said stupid shit in a stupid location but you’d have it coming and it wouldn’t be people with badges doing it.

I believed at the time that the FBI solved slightly more crime than it caused. I don’t know if that was true or just me being naïve. By 2023 the FBI has pretty much mastered the art of crime and cover up and it’s branching out into domestic terrorism. In ’89, when the media lied (which they did from time to time) they at least tried to be subtle about it; there was a dignity in that that I miss.

We didn’t have cell phones. When you spoke on a landline you were reasonably sure the NSA wasn’t logging the call. Silicon Valley was viewed as a positive forward growing futuristic place. President George Bush was getting pummeled by the press, just as Reagan before him, as has every other Republican president before or since. You think press bias is new?

Books were in libraries. Magazines came by mail. Newspapers were on paper. People read.

Schools sucked then just as they suck now. But tests like the SAT honestly tried to evaluate just how fuckin’ dumb your kid was. If a kid sucked at school parents would bitch at them to do better. Aside from dissecting shit and chemistry lab, there were no group projects.

Our teetering economy has old roots: The Federal debt in 1989 was $2.8 trillion (by 2022 we’d increased it 15x to $30.8 trillion)*. The Savings and Loan Crisis lead to a bailout of nearly 1/4 of banks. Then again a stamp cost a quarter (and people still used mail). A cup of coffee was a quarter (it was shitty coffee), so was a candy bar, so was a newspaper, by ’89 a payphone cost a quarter too. I used to read dead tree news every day. It seemed almost (but not quite) like they were reporting true information.

Much that vexes and pleases us today was already in play. Among the bad: China went ape at Tiananmen Square and the Exxon Valdez went to the bottom of the ocean in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. To the good, USSR went AWOL causing the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Poland had free elections, and Nintendo released the Gameboy.

Nobody in 1989 waved a flag in America for any nation but America. If a President said he’d look after American interests first nobody had pear clutching fits. Why the hell would we have president who isn’t looking out for our best interests?

Cars were different in 1989. Gas cost a buck a gallon. You could buy a brand new Yugo for $4,349. If you wanted something better (anything with wheels) a Honda Civic would set you back $6,348. Back then “economy” cars really were economy cars. They got high MPG and otherwise sucked. Unlike now, cars came in a variety of shapes and sizes and colors. These were meant to appeal to consumers instead of meet government regulations. A good “real” car (not an economy shitbox) would hit you for $15k or so. Financing a new car took 4 years (I was too poor for that!). You had to swap cars fairly often; they went a lot fewer miles back then.

Drivers were different too. Many knew how to shift. All could brake without antilock. It was normal to drive in snow without all wheel drive. I carried tire chains in my station wagon. I used them unironically. We could get places reading paper maps.

That’s a peek 1989… the year my “new” motorcycle was made. I’ve been happily tooling around on a 34 year old bike. I can’t stop smiling. I’m a frugal guy so I don’t buy “vintage shit” lightly. I’m not a collector. I bought it to use and enjoy. If my “vintage” machine lives up to my expectations I’ll rack up many miles in the future.

More later…

A.C.

*In case you’re wondering our current debt is about $30,824,000,000,000.00. No endeavor in all of human history has ever amassed a debt as large as America. Pharos, Roman Emperors, Popes, Mongolian Hordes, Chinese Dynasties, and British Empires all failed to beat us at the game of going into debt!