The last time I hitchhiked was in college. The guy who picked me up was so drunk he couldn't find the stick shift with both hands. I mean this literally. At one point he took both hands off the steering wheel to feel around for the stick shift.
He said the only place he would drive me to was the bar he was going to anyway. The bar had a payphone and I called a friend or a cab or something.
I can't help thinking that prostitution somehow follows this model too. [goes on to talk about how it's not bad so much as just tacky]
Ehhhh... yeah, that's sort of a WTF. I mean, well, sure, but it's not like non-tacky models of selling your body are all that easy to come by.
I don't see how getting more people to hitch-hike will make the practice safer, either. That's like saying Somalia should be superior for firearms safety on account of more people there are using to firing guns.
We can still discuss hitch-hiking. I mean, not me; I'm going to bed. But in the morning.
Hey! I was trying to wish happy belated greetings to another newlywed person and realized there is no standard greeting for someone after they get married (that I can think of): 'Happy Marriage!' 'Merry Wedding!' 'Merry Marriage!'
What, said I, about 'Happy Shoe Polish and Merry Rice!'? And then I realized that that was slightly amusing but dumb. Humph. Need more research.
At any rate: you got married! And you didn't tell anybody! Congrats!
max
['There's a hook... hanging off this comment.']
Why hitchhike when you can just boost some car for a few hours?
Yes, you must post wedding pictures to the flickr pool. We especially need to see HP's outfit.
You know how I know hitch-hiking is dangerous? Because I was in that very car that night.
I've found that the hitch-hiking population has an unfortunately high proportion of annoying-losers-who-I-don't-want-to-be-stuck-in-a-car-with types. So I havn't picked anyone up in years.
That article Rottin' links to about prostitution is the most predictable thing ever. You see, prostitutes are great because you don't have to lie to them like other women! Haw haw! And they cost less than girlfriends. Zing!
For those who didn't geek out and join the game thread, I posted a full review of the wedding.
10: I suppose 8 could be more charitably amended to "the small sample of the hitch-hiking population that I have picked up..."
But seriously, some totally uncomfortable annoying car-rides. Maybe the problem is that I just don't care for other people?
I think it's fear of the innocuous looking serial killer.
As it happens, I knew a woman who was murdered while hitchhiking by a serial killer. From the photo I've seen of him, I can't imagine him looking innocuous, but he must have looked innocuous enough for her to get into his truck. So while I've hitchhiked myself (mostly in places with better reputations for safety), I'm inclined to advise against it.
Actually, the real reason not to hitchhike is because the driver who picks you up might be wealthy and friendly, but he could die suddenly for no apparent reason in the middle of nowhere and you'd be afraid to go tell someone because they'd find his body there and think you, disreputable hitchhiker, had killed him so you hide him and ditch the car but then you get involved with some woman and your life is all trouble.
I must admit that these days I would probably only pick up a hitchhiker under special circumstances. (You know, maybe like some poor soul stuck thumbing in one of the "Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers" warning areas close to prisons.) One of those things that changed significantly during my lifetime.
I would not have posted 14 had I seen 13 first.
||
I trust few will be surprised by my reaction to the latest updates to ogged's Flickr stream.
|>
I've hitchhiked maybe once: with my then-boyfriend, in Marin.
I've never picked up a hitchhiker, but I've been in several situations where the driver (not me) picked up a person who was not actually hitchhiking. This is probably the kind I'd be most likely to do myself as a solo driver: See somebody getting soaked at the bus stop on a miserable night, stop and ask if they want a ride.
It's a class thing more than anything else; the bus routes where I'd do that are mostly used by domestic workers.
On a not-really-related-note: Can somebody who understands AM radio point me towards a simple explanation of why it gets all staticky if I put the car heater on? I feel clueless for not understanding this. (And also cold. But: Go Phils!)
Are you driving, listening to the game, and commenting?
I've been offered rides a couple of times as I sat waiting for an arranged ride in some desolate area. I suppose I might have taken up one of the offers had I needed to.
19: Electromagnetic interference from the blower motor of the car heater? Thats my guess.
The criticism in the linked post of DC commuters not sharing their commute with strangers is clearly ignorant of slugging.
I've done a fair amount of hitchhiking in remote Alpine areas in France and Switzerland. The occasional bit in Poland. Only done it once in the US - skiing in VT with friends and we got separated. I've also been in cars with hitchhikers many, many times since my parents have a policy of picking them up. Never done so myself but that's got something to do with the no license thing. I've never done intercity hitchhiking since it's always seemed to me to be more of a pain than it's worth.
19: Can somebody who understands AM radio point me towards a simple explanation of why it gets all staticky if I put the car heater on
If it happens when the A/C is on as well, then it's the blower motor magnetic field chirping the antenna. (RFI)
Alternatively, the power to the motor is not sufficiently isolated from the power to the radio, such that the line noise caused by the blower running is causing interferance with the radio power supply.
The latter would feature a drop in output volume followed by a low buzzing and a little static. The former would likely sounds like a high-pitched squeal with lots of intermittant chatter. It can also be caused by a ground failure.
max
['Just like noise on the TV when you turn on the vacuum cleaner.']
Is slugging really unique to DC? I've heard of the idea for other places with carpool/HOV lanes, but don't know any particular place that does it.
Having looked at the linked post, I don't think hitchhiking has ever been considered middle-class acceptable, except for middle-class youth. Also, in addition to slugging, people share their commutes on the DC metro, which has been reaching record levels and pushing its capacity lately. The buses get pretty busy too.
annoying-losers-who-I-don't-want-to-be-stuck-in-a-car-with types
That about sums me up. I was lousy at hitchhiking, not paying my way with conversation or stories.
I am trying to count the 70s. Great Lakes to Dallas & back 3 times, Dallas to California & back 4 times, Dallas to Austin 3 times. Up and down the California coast. Kentucky. Mississippi. N Florida. Tucson. And that doesn't count the trips in cars. Did a lot of fasting.
I wasn't a drinker or that big a druggie but people would know me for a week and somehow realize that "I can be thousand miles away in 3 days" was just a thought I could not get out of my head. One foot out the door.
It was probably the kitten. Jaunted with it twice, and then settled for the decade it lived. Cats are territorial. And I lost the urge for going.
If I think of anything interestin abouit hitchhiking, I'll let you know. Cold on the side of the road, and lots of people.
If we are talking crosstown trips, I walked it. I never minded 10+ mile walks. If if took hurrying, it wasn't worth doing.
I'm not sure about that. It at least was considered normal in areas where people did a lot of hiking, and still is in Europe. Before cell phones it was pretty much your only option in many cases, and even now it's a huge convenience.
Having thought more about it I also remember doing it in both the US and Europe when I'd missed one of those once every two hour suburban buses, or late at night when I didn't want to shell out for a cab to get back from town in Europe. I think the risks are exaggerated, most people are basically decent.
I think I've said before that I saw more people hitchhiking in one week in New Mexico (maybe six) than in an entire lifetime in Pennsylvania. Unless you consider people who are just walking along the side of the highway as hitchhikers, which maybe we should.
Is slugging really unique to DC? I've heard of the idea for other places with carpool/HOV lanes, but don't know any particular place that does it.
Hey look, there's all your Bay Area cred, spiraling down the drain!
I think I've said before that I saw more people hitchhiking in one week in New Mexico (maybe six) than in an entire lifetime in Pennsylvania.
Hardly a surprise.
(When I have a car) I occasionally pick up hitchhikers. I figure serial killers are rare.
I did a post about this a little while back.
30: I meant among Americans and should have specified that. The the difference in car-ownership rates has been huge between the US and Europe from just about the start, and probably accounts for a lot of difference. I don't think most people would consider hitchhiking because you missed a suburban bus a normal middle class activity in the US, since just catching the suburban bus might not meet that standard. Also, I don't mean what's a common behavior, but what's held out as ideal behavior.
32: That cred was gone a long time ago. But now I remember seeing what was probably a form of slugging near a bus stop I used to use frequently.
Thanks, Spike and max. I haven't noticed it happening with the A/C, but then again I don't use air conditioning very often.
Alternatively, the power to the motor is not sufficiently isolated from the power to the radio, such that the line noise caused by the blower running is causing interferance with the radio power supply.
Sounds the most likely, per the symptoms you list.
(Shouldn't this be a problem that's been solved by now? Is this one of those demographic donut holes, such that owners of Car X are presumed not to want to listen to AM radio, or to have satellite, or something?)
I hitched more in Japan than anywhere else, and there it was great. Almost too good, because people would go to such great lengths to get me where I was headed, when I just wanted them to drop me off wherever it was most convenient for them. I had people cruise parking lots trying to find someone who would take me the rest of my way, and one guy put a friend and me up for the night; others told me of drivers who went literally hours out of their way.
I think I would feel a lot happier if I lived in a world where hitchhiking seemed to be possible. Yet another missing part of the safety net.
I hitched in the midwest as a teenager in the mid-80s. I'm male, some people were taciturn, some talkative, and some creepy gay men who exposed themselves almost immediately and asked for something. Generally "no, stop now, I'm out" worked, but I carried a knife and pulled it twice. Near cities maybe, but then it's a cost-saving convenience-- spend the money. It's dangerous in the US because it's rarely done, I think; maybe cell phones have changed things, because calling for help is plausible. I wouldn't recommend it-- I didn't hitch on the return trip, but looked pretty hard for a ride to share.
I stopped to pick-up a guy stranded on I-70 (in Indiana). I did it because he had a wife and four kids with him and was not local. I had a pick-up truck and he insisted on riding in the back. Probably in case I was a serial killer.
Over the weekend, I witnessed a cop car, blue lights off, following a person up an off ramp. I guessed it was a hitchhiker situation, but I don't really know. While sad, I dorkily wondered if the hitchhiker failed to bring a towel.
I hitchhiked from San Francisco to New York (well, really from Placerville to Syracuse, but whatever) back in the late 80s. It was awesome, an excellent way to travel. That is all.
I am under the impression that hitchhiking is illegal in many parts of the United States.
I hitchhiked from Amherst, MA to Stamford, CT for my first job interview after college. A Korean nuclear engineer picked me up. I'd not hitchhiked before, and he'd not offered a ride before, and I ended up getting him to get off the freeway and drop me at the office, but it seemed he found it too awkward to just leave me on the highway near my exit.
||
My cob-logger has an adorable short story up about the problem of irony on the internet.
|>
45: Not exactly. Most restrictions have to do with controlled-access roads such as Interstates, or soliciting rides (or just being a pedestrian) on roadways, meaning you have to be careful about where exactly you're standing when you're thumbing a ride. I don't know of any place with a blanket prohibition on hitchhiking; I don't know if such a thing would be legally defensible.
There seems to be a lot of conflicting information out there on the internet as to the legality of hitchhiking, but most of the more reputable-looking sources seem to echo 48. Here's an example. Basically, you can do it as long as you don't physically step onto the road while soliciting a ride.
47: | I frequent a number of widely-read political blogs, and have never ever heard of either the trend or the countertrend that's the subject of that post. |
| Oh wait, that's the point, isn't it, never mind. |
24
A 1988 NYT article on informal DC ride sharing.
Another 2003 NYT article .
48 49
Just the possibility that it is illegal is enough to discourage some people (like me).
Hard to legally hitchhike in Utah.
41-6a-1009. Use of roadway by pedestrians -- Prohibited activities.
(4) A person may not sit, stand, or loiter on or near a roadway for the purpose of soliciting from the occupant of a vehicle:
(a) a ride;
(b) contributions;
(c) employment;
(d) the parking, watching, or guarding of a vehicle; or
(e) other business.
54: Seems to leave open the option of soliciting while walking alongside the roadway. Does it?
Does that apply to national parks? I'm pretty sure we hitchhiked in Zion. Wtf are you supposed to do when you're doing a hike that doesn't take you back to your starting place, it's not like you've even got those singsong Swiss postal buses there?
53 Like jaywalking or speeding presumably?
[Denken Sie an die Kinder!]
57
Like jaywalking or speeding presumably?
Speed limits cause me to drive slower at times than I would if there was no limit.
17. I don't know what your reaction was, but I laughed.
My Dad offered aa ride to some guy when it was pouring rain, but he advised me against doing it.
I had to take a ride once when my car broke down in Maine at night. I didn't have a cell phone, and some local hicks offered to call AAA for me, but they couldn't get reception in this town.
Then a family with kids came by, and they were going to take me in to town, but my house was actually 5 miles down the road. My Dad and I called AAA from the house, and then we drove back to where the car was. Such a pain.
54: I spent quite a lot of my cross-country hitchhiking trip in Utah. Got lots of rides. That was when I discovered the Arches/Moab/Canyonlands area, and I hitched in circles around it for a week or two.
I had a sign that said "Harmless Student".
I was totally raised with the idea that hitchhiking was something that was utterly unacceptable, but that had been perfectly normal just before I was born. My mom also told me that it used to be a good idea to drive along with truckers, but that now they're all crazy/irresponsible*. Now that I think about it, this is probably a real phenomenon tied to deregulation of the trucking industry - ironic, as mom was pretty conservative (altho I don't know that she cared much about that side of things).
* Had an awesome drive to South Bend when I was in college - I was solo, it was a bit foggy (nighttime), and I fell in with a long line of trucks. They were totally looking out for me, signalling when to slow down for cops and the like. Man, I used to love long drives.
I trust few will be surprised by my reaction to the latest updates to ogged's Flickr stream.
You're stunned that he has moved again, this time to live among the ruins? He does seem to be getting more flighty.
||
The kids from the black student union group just came by with a rose for each woman (non-student) on campus. They do this each semester. It's a wee bit odd to have students celebrating you for being a Woman at the workplace.
|>
I've only hitchhiked a little bit. Given my appearance, that should not be surprising.
However, I know quite a few "travelling kids" who hitchhike/ride the rails/rideshare/walk places pretty constantly. A friend in Philly has gone all over the country that way, with her dog and sometimes a boyfriend in tow. A lot of people got into it in the 1990s, based on Aaron Cometbus's example. Of course, he mostly went Greyhound, but all the good scams are impossible now.
Once, when I was a teenager, I got a ride from a nice young woman (older than I was at the time) from a very seedy part of town where I was waiting for the last bus. I almost felt like lecturing her on not picking people up in bad neighborhoods, but felt that would have been ungracious.
Seems to leave open the option of soliciting while walking alongside the roadway. Does it?
That's my reading of it as well, but I don't patrol highways. I'm not sure anyone's even enforcing that. Although I guess there's probably a trooper somewhere out there with a bug in his ass over hitchhikers.
I knew a girl that hitchhiked cross-country with her friend, catching rides exclusively from truckers, all the while filming the deal for a documentary (I feel like I've talked about this here before). There was one dude who was really insistent that one of the girls give him a backrub, but that was about as creepy as it got. Although I think they did learn certain kinds of truckers to avoid, information I would impart to you dear people if I could remember it.
There's a preview of the documentary here.
65: No, he's got pictures of the new home and all that.
A friend's (very attractive) ex and one of her (very attractive) girlfriends used to hitch to the south of France, from central Scotland, every year to get casual work on yachts. They had only one scary story --- with a drunk driver -- but other than that, it was mostly leering. Perhaps the fact that there was always two of them made the difference.
Still no pictures of HP in an octopus costume. :(
72: They will come! I'm a little behind at work and need to get photos from other people.
75: Tentative tentacles!*
*a not very good band name.
Another hazards of hitchhiking story: I picked up a young man on route 50 going into Washington DC from Anapolis. Almost immediately after I picked him up, he started asking me for money. After the third time I told him I would let him out right there. He said he wouldn't leave the car until I gave him money. I pulled over, and there was a steely moment where I wasn't sure who would back down. Then suddenly he left the car.
Tentative tentacles
Sounds like teasing anime porn for the unsure.
||
I posted a picture of Hawaiian Punch The Octopus on Flickr.
|>
Yay! Adorable Octopus. Mom and Dad looked great, too. Congratulations Geebies!
I once hitchhiked on a godforsaken Canadian highway by standing in the middle of the road on the on-ramp from a truck stop. My car had run out of gas, and I was trying to get back to the car with a container of gas. Some trucker clearly debated the relative merits of squashing me like a bug versus giving me a ride before stopping and letting me on.
One of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee novels -- I think it's The Green Ripper, but I'm not certain -- has a page-long disquisition, in McGee's inimitable voice, on proper and effective hitchhiking technique. I seem to recall that positioning oneself with a great deal of visible road at one's back was described as essential, as well as tipping one's hat to approaching cars. I wonder whether MacDonald spent some time in his youth hoboing around, like the father of a friend of mine.
71: Attractive young women get rides instantaneously, sometimes before even putting their thumb out. Men have to wait 3-5 hours.
34: (When I have a car) I occasionally pick up hitchhikers. I figure serial killers are rare.
Serial killers are rare. VERY rare. Muggers and grifters are unfortunately not rare.
Anytime crap like this comes up it makes it seem like the 70's were some kind of golden age. You could do what you wanted and it wasn't a big deal and the banks never made any money. And that's why conservatives look back on the era in horror.
39: Sounds the most likely, per the symptoms you list. (Shouldn't this be a problem that's been solved by now? Is this one of those demographic donut holes, such that owners of Car X are presumed not to want to listen to AM radio, or to have satellite, or something?)
Does it happen on FM, when the blower is running? Same symptoms are different ones? If it doesn't do the same thing it's probably not a power issue, and probably an antenna issue. If the car radio has always done this, it's a design fault. If it just started doing it, something is going wrong. It's hard to say beyond that.
Anyways, both AM and FM antennas are just pieces of wire, but AM modulation suffers from interference and the band used is really long so mostly the manufacturers use two different kind of internal loop antennas, and so it's easy for bad antenna positioning to result in RFI intereference. Basically you need a decent-sized antenna, and car makers don't want to spend the money, since it wouldn't help that much anyways. So AM sucks. Which makes it cheap for broadcasters. Which is why religious broadcasters and right-wingers use it a lot.
AM is a really old radio implementation and it's just not very good.
|| I do believe I caught something at the post office on Saturday. Bleh.|>
max
['I wish to return this infection as it does not work.']
Anytime crap like this comes up it makes it seem like the 70's were some kind of golden age. You could do what you wanted....
Especially if you were a serial killer!
grifters
Gritty drifters?
Grits gifters?
Graffiti rafters?
The 70s really were a kind of golden age, the last time we had a glimpse of a culture driven by anything other than unfettered materialism.
89: Your pet rock and avocado kitchen appliances confound me, Diogenes.
87, 88: The second definition here seems best to me. What makes grifters different from other cons is that they are homeless or nearly so. I like to think that the word was formed by combining "graft" with "drifter," but this site suggests it just comes from "grafter"
91: To me, "graft" connotes corruption, major and minor, on the part of public officials (or, I suppose, people in middle-man positions like clerks), while "grifting" connotes the long and the short cons.
89: The 70s really were a kind of golden age, the last time we had a glimpse of a culture driven by anything other than unfettered materialism.
And also: pre-cable tv news!
90: 89: Your pet rock and avocado kitchen appliances confound me, Diogenes.
Because that big 80's hair was such an improvement, and in turn, plastic titties, orange skin and butt floss are truly the height of civilized culture.
max
['Bring on the fembots!']
Everybody should read "The Big Con". And "You Can't Win."
88.1: OT but great sequence from the movie (no idea if it is in the book):
Myra Langtry (Annette Bening): I'm Roy's friend.
Lilly Dillon (Anjelica Huston): Yes. I imagine you're lots of people's friend.
Myra Langtry: [taking a good look at LILLY] Oh, of course, now that I see you in the light, you're plenty old enough to be Roy's mother.
Lilly Dillon: Aren't we all?
Roy Dillon (John Cusack): Play nice. Dont fight.
88: A nice light-hearted treatment is The Flim-Flam Man (1967) with George C. Scott.
What a weird comparison in Rottin's post, between hitchhiking and prostitution. In both cases, if the practice were more mainstream, it would ... be more mainstream, less weird or unusual or dubious? And safer. No doubt, but the comparison seems otherwise a stretch.
I know a few places where hitchhiking is utterly normal, and indeed if you repeatedly decline to pick up hitchhikers, word will get around -- that you're selfish, or self-absorbed, or ungiving.
I guess I would say that the fall-off in hitchhiking, going hand-in-hand with the fall-off in the picking up of hitchhikers, is a function of distrust of strangers, a drawing in of our normal realms of interaction; and, or course, a function of the increasing belief that any respectable person must be self-sufficient (which often means owning his/her own car). If you must resort to asking for a helping hand from another, you're a loser.
(/muse)
I hitched a few times in college, with my then boyfriend. And then I progressed to boyfriends with their own transport, so didn't bother any more. I've only picked someone up once - I had a friend in the car, it was about midnight and we were rather stoned. Felt completely paranoid as soon as this man got in the car and no one spoke for the 30 minute journey. Huge sigh of relief when he got out. In theory I would pick up a hitchhiker; in practise, whenever I see them these days there's always some reason why I can't (usually there is no spare seat in the car).
97.last seems quite plausible to me.
I used to pick up hitchhikers all the time in Botswana, but I don't think I would anymore. That's mostly a function of the collapse of the Zimbabwe economy and the resultant increase in crime in Botswana, though.
I don't pick up hitchers, even tho I was one myself as a sprout and sapling. But most people will understand, 24000 miles on a '93 car is what 30 miles a week. I really lost that urge for going.
As far as the danger, waal sheet, we all serial killers down here in Texas, at least in our hearts. Bring on secession. Double dare ya.
I think 97.last makes sense, yet I should note that what I was raised to believe was that being a hitchhiker was incredibly dangerous; not picking them up was just sort of a corollary to that (after all, you are able to pick up hitchhikers years after becoming able to be one).
Also: as I think I've mentioned before, Adam Walsh was (more or less) my peer, and was abducted just a couple miles from my house. So Stranger Danger was definitely a very real concept for me from age 7 on (my mom was actually not crazy paranoid, but I remember the incident and its impact - being able to hang out in the toy aisle while Mom shopped became a curtailed, albeit not eliminated, activity). Point being, hitchhiking seemed about as plausible as as strangers in vans if they had any candy for me.
A possible corollary to the hitchhiker experience is being a no-name band on the road. I've stayed at a number of random places, most of them quite friendly (a couch and breakfast?! yes!). We had one sketchy experience in Kansas City, MO. Just fishy all around, but the guy owned a building with a vacant apartment that smelled of cat pee. Turned out okay, and he even supplied fresh towels for much needed showering.
Strangers: they're often quite nice, even the ones you think are going to kill you, except when they actually kill you.
except when they actually kill you
As I am frequently a stranger, thank you for setting the bar so low.
103: My strategy was sleep light and as far away from the entry points as possible. Dude was loony, but not like killy-loony.
Friends and family Strangers: they're often quite nice, even the ones you think are going to kill you, except when they actually kill you.
The kids and I just read "The Berenstain Bears Learn about Strangers" which pushed the standard message to kids since the 1980s: Don't talk to strangers, don't accept gifts from strangers, and don't get into a strangers car. It wasn't too alarmist. Mama emphasized that most strangers are good, and there are just a few bad apples.
Still, I think the "don't talk to strangers" rule is too strict, and promotes public distrust.
I was thinking that the rule in our house should be "For god's sake, don't accept gifts from strangers or get in their car, but it is ok to make idle chit chat."
Does that seem reasonable?
Yes, rob.
MC was saying she'd thought that things had gone a bit too far when her son was afraid to talk to the cashier at the store.
MC was saying she'd thought that things had gone a bit too far when her son was afraid to talk to the cashier at the store.
I'd worry that my son might be talked into the extended warranty, so I tell him that Best Buy employs only murders on work release.
101: I had a real-live stranger in a van pull up in front of my elementary school as school was getting out and ask the little boy in front of me if he needed a ride. When the little boy said no and proceeded to his bus, windowless van perv asked me. I yelled "No!" and ran around behind his van to get his license plate as he sped off. I only got part of it. The cops came. It was a whole thing.
Later in life, while in nowheresville Mexico and quite drunk, I and 4 friends, all women, would decide it was a good idea to hop in the back of the taverna owner's pick up to "see his house." It -- beyond all reason -- turned out really well! We listened to a K-Tel record ("I Love a Rainy Night" etc.) and then he and his nephew sang. We drank tequila and more or less forced his shy wife to join us. The couldn't have been sweeter or better hosts. But really, what were we imagining?
The fact that everything from the 70s is now regarded -- shag carpet, pet rocks, avocado appliances -- is now regarded as the height of bad taste is not the natural outcome of a non-ideological process.
110: It's because they are inherently stupid. Hey, let's put something on the floor with as many dirt-trapping fibers as possible and purchase a rock for money. (I won't object to the avocado appliances. We had harvest gold, so I'm not sick of the color. And stainless steel strikes me as more pointless than 70s colors.)
re: 110
Also, a lot of the good stuff from the 70s got absorbed into 60s-imperalism. The 70s are clearly a much better decade for music.
Yeah, shag rugs are hard to clean, but I like a lot of stuff from the 70's. In flation, not so much.
But I'm reactionary, I pretty much go for Hardwood floors and oriental rugs.
109.2: That actually doesn't sound egregiously unwise to me - it's the four friends that saves it. Someone with nefarious intentions probably isn't going to be doing anything to four people at once -- it'd just be too much trouble.
You realize nobody actually bought a pet rock as a pet, that it was a joke even then, right?
115: O.K. It was the shag carpet that really got to me. It was in my bedroom growing-up and it was clearly inferior to every other thing that somebody sane would put on a floor.
106: What we told the kids is that talking to anyone is fine if you're with a grownup of your own, and if you're for some reason alone and need help, asking people working in stores, or parents with kids, or cops, or anyone else who seems reasonable is a good idea.
What's dangerous is doing anything a strange adult suggests - going with them anywhere, helping them with anything. And that they should never never worry about being polite in any situation where they're even slightly uncomfortable or worried.
And that they should never never worry about being polite in any situation where they're even slightly uncomfortable or worried.
This one is really key, I think. And not just for little kids, but, in particular, for older girls. I think adolescents will continue a conversation with creepy old semi-pervs because they feel bad being "mean."
112:yea, Weather Report was much better than Coltrane, and Robin Trower could run rings around Hendrix.
The best music of the 1970s was, I think, more interesting than much of the 60s output. I'm thinking here of the rock and pop genres, rather than jazz.
With jazz you can definitely make the case for the 60s [and then trump that with the late 50s, probably].
The fact that everything from the 70s is now regarded -- shag carpet, pet rocks, avocado appliances -- is now regarded as the height of bad taste is not the natural outcome of a non-ideological process.
You know a lot of that stuff was deprecated at the time, right? Dave Barry was riffing on the appliance colors before the decade was out.
You know a lot of that stuff was deprecated at the time, right?
No one told my mom the appliance color thing was deprecated until about 1985.
I find avocado-colored counter tops and appliances warm and homey. They are like the comfort food of interior decoration. Also, Star Trek reruns and footie pajamas.
Footie pajamas are a great invention.
When my eldest two were little, I had this double buggy that I couldn't get in all the little shops that I used to shop in, so I would leave them outside sometimes. I always told kid A (2 1/2 or so) that if anyone touched her or kid B (1) then she should bite them. She was quite disappointed never to have to use this.
Footie pajamas are associated with the 70s?