My mom ran away from home to see Elvis in a high school auditorium, and was in Little Rock when it was being integrated, I always thought that was cool.
I saw Nirvana before they were famous, in a crowd of about 30 people in a club here, and barely missed being blown up over Lockerbie, but the moment that stands out most in my mind is: I was getting frisked (felt up ) by a cop on a US city street when, no shit, the English punk band GBH were walking by and they started shouting at the cops, oh my God I have never felt so cool.
IT really wasn’t. Sure, it had way too much hype, but a lot of the saner predictions really could have happened, except for the huge amount of work so many of us went through.
I was working at an investment management company at the time, one of the first “quant shops”, and there was an unimaginably vast flood of money coming through that could have ground to a halt, with ear splitting squeals and shrieks. Our stuff wasn’t retail, but you bet people would have suffered with any disruption of business, retirement plans of millions in jeopardy, investments of the wealthy, corporate wealth of all types would have been hit hard. And there were so many companies in similar condition. I was on remediation projects for a couple of years, along with most of my team and consultants when we could, and we came through with no glitches!
And yes that was the first time I was tempted to be a consultant, to get a bigger share of the money being spent. And yes I did celebrate New Years with by far the most expensive trip I had gone on to that point - included tickets for three headliner concerts, expensive suites, and unlimited margaritas
I watched the Challenger explode on live TV from my school classroom. The teachers were all ecstatic about the mission because NASA was sending a teacher into space. It took a minute for us to realize what happened, even though we literally watched it explode in front of our eyes.
Years later, I was a child waiting for Columbia to land when all of the adults started acting weird...then we found out. But i didn't quite understand at first. I remember wondering how they landed in Houston when they were planning on Florida. I was smart enough to know that that wasn't really an option but not enough to put it together until later.
I remember leaded gasoline (and prices under USD$1)
I saw (on TV) the Challenger explosion
On 9/11 I was staying at a friend's house, and that morning basically every news site was brought to its knees. Like serving static text only summaries. I remember going outside and seeing the newspaper on the porch and thinking "This is going to be the last normal one for a very long time". It was of course.
Some friends and I took a long road trip and in person we saw this fly the first of the two flights for the X prize (Note: that one actually had some decent reasons to use the name X)
I remember it well. I was in the right place at the right time to be solicited for a real donation t that X-prize, as if I had money. I got to goto one of the first presentations about their plan. I got to shake Burt Routan’s hand and wish him luck I did put in like $10 though
I remember leaded gas too, from 15 seconds ago when a propeller plane flew over my house dumping lead out it's exhaust. They inexplicably are still allowed to use leaded gas in small aircraft. Even new planes are designed to only accept leaded cause it's all they have at the airports.
Seriously, we had snow back then. Lots of. But the world has moved on
I could tell my kids about snow days, school bus sliding into the ditch, walking home when no one could get up our hill. I could talk how anything not cleared quickly, icier over and remained for the winter. My kids will be able to tell stories about me jokingly wishing to get enough snow to try out my new snow blower. They’ll tell about the arguments about clearing the driveway in case we need to go out, vs waiting a couple days for it to melt
I have a buddy in his late 30s who just became a grandpa. He had his kid in high school when he was like 17. His son is now like 19 and just had a kid of his own. That shit is crazy
I was arrested at a G8 summit while I was helping block the road Putin's motorcade was about to use, but police had to let me go cause they didn't have the manpower to process all the protestors.
I still remember the Toronto g20. Police assigned a park as a free speech zone, surrounded it, put on masks, took off their name tags and went in to beat the shit out of everyone in sight. Men, women, children, the disabled. Hundreds of people tossed into coed massive cells with a shared bucket for a toilet, sexual assaults happened etc. That day Canadian police proved without a doubt that they're every bit as bad as American cops, and I've hated them ever since.
I was waiting tables at the Eat N Park across the street from the bank where the "Pizza Bomber" exploded. We couldn't tell what was happening from where we were, but I was there.