Gen X Bites

Gen X house parties started out innocently enough.  Just a few friends hanging out while your parents were out of town. Until word got around. The outcome? Four kegs, a full band, 200 people you didn't know and Paulie Shore passed out on your front lawn the next morning.  

Attending school social events in the Gen X days was supposed to be fun and help teach us social skills.  In the end, we wound up with prom photos featuring pastel cummerbunds and super wave hair bangs. 

Gen X spawned some of the most iconic horror franchises of all time.  Michael Myers managed to move at a snails pace and still rack up a body count.  Jason Voorhees taught us all to avoid the camp CIT.  And Freddy Krueger made sure we didn't get a good night's sleep for most of our teenage years.      

Long before streaming whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-watch we had a whopping 7 channels and we never had it so good. We'd all land on the couch after dinner and watch Fonzie, Laverne and Shirley, Hawkeye Pierce, JR Ewing and Bo and Luke Duke. Those were, without a doubt, "Good Times" (dy-no MITE!)

Game shows in the 70s and 80s were a cocktail of boozed up hosts and celebrities guiding contestants down the road to a brand new washer and dryer or cold, hard cash.  We played the Feud, pressed our luck, made a deal and banged a gong from the comfort of our living rooms. 

Growing up gen x, nothing got the competitve family jucies flowing quite like a good board game! We thrilled at bankrupting our parents in a heated game of Monopoly or sinking a sibling's aircraft carrier in Battleship. The only time the TV stayed off was on game night!

Capturing memories on film was an art form in the Gen X days.  You threw a 24 exposure roll into your Kodak Instamatic and hoped for the best.  A trip to the neighborhood Fotomat usually returned 3 usable pics and 21 shots of a fat thumb. Don't forget to order double prints!

Halloween in the gen x days was a treat for so many reasons. We couldn't wait to don our cheap plastic costumes with those masks that nearly caused suffocation and demand our fair share of Milky Way bars and Smarties. It was all pure candy bliss.

If you're like us, the first thing your 7 year old self did in the morning was pour a bowl of Lucky Charms and sit down in front of the tube to feast on an oh so satisfying array of animatied mania. We gorged on Looney Toons, Warner Bros, Sid & Marty Krofft, Hanna Barbera and topped it off with some Ren & Stimpy. The real question is, what cocktail of drugs were those writers on?! Must've been goo...

In the beginning... there was vinyl!!! LPs and 45s reigned supreme for generations but the need for portability spawned the age of plastic music media. Soon four track cassettes were melting in the summer heat of our car interiors - and out of the primordial cassette ooze the digital age of the Compact Disc was born.

Variety is the spice of life. In the 70s and 80s, we had a ton of it. Variety shows meant singing, superstars, sketches and sex. Carol Burnett, Sonny & Cher, Hee Haw, Donny & Marie, Laugh In and the inimitable Muppet Show brought us all of the above and more. And while not always suitable for impressionalbe young viewers - we ate that S#!t up!!!!

With enormous screens, Lo-Fi sound and exhaust fumes that could kill a young elephant, who wouldn't love a drive-in movie?! They were the best places to catch a flick in the 70s and 80s. Roll down your window, ease the seat back and enjoy the aroma of weed, popcorn and engine oil. It's movie time for Gen X!

Remember the days when the family used to gather on the living room couch, overjoyed to watch the evening sitcom on a tiny lo-fi screen the size of your computer monitor? Or how about listening to records on your parents "hi-fi" system that was as big as a loveseat? From early Super 8 video recorders to our first Walkmans and pull out car stereos, Gen Xers have seen and heard it all.

As Gen X kids, as soon as we could walk we wanted to ride. Looking for adventure - rollin' around on Tonka trucks, Big Wheels, skateboards and rollerblades. All of it culminating with the ultimate freedom of crusing the neighborhood seated high atop our first banana seat without training wheels. We ruled the streets. Let's roll!

From the family station wagon that hauled us around town to getting behind the wheel of the first vehicles of our own, cars were a different kind of beast in the 70s and 80s. Seatbelts? Optional. Would they start on a cold morning? Probably not. We were lucky if we had air conditioning and a tape deck. And let's not forget the infamous cigarette lighter. As kids, cars took us places we wanted to g...

In the 70s and 80s we made it our mission to shove as much fast food into our gaping pieholes as humanly possible. Burgers, fries, tacos, burritos and a stready stream of soda to wash it all down. If Sheriff Brody and Hooper sliced us open they wouldn't have found a Virginia license plate, but instead a steady stream of sugar, sodium and a bunch of chemicals you can't pronounce. But it all tasted...

Slides, swings, monkey bars, merry-go-rounds and ball pits. In the Gen X days these playgrounds were mine fields just waiting to skin our knees and crack our wrists. Simultaneaously teetering on almost certain disaster. There was no fear in the hearts of the young. Only in the faces of the parents looking on. Or were they even paying attention??

Arcades were all the rage in the 80s. We were kids hell bent on keeping the planet safe from Space Invaders, traumatized by the inevitable destruction of the world in Missile Command and completely addicted to scarfing down dots with Ms. Pac Man. Whether we played at the arcade or at home on our Atari consoles, video games were our drug of choice.

Like, gag-me-with-a-spoon, the Galleria! For Gen Xers in the 80s there was no better after school hang than the local mall. Grab a Slurpie, scarf down a Hot Dog on a Stick and get your 5 dollar movie ticket to see Fast Times at Ridgemont High. From hanging in the food court with your friends to finding the best deal on parachute pants, the mall was the place to be seen.

Southern California was a haven for theme parks in the Gen X days. You could puke your guts our on spinout at ride Six Flags Magic Mountain and use your E ticket to ride the Matterhorn at Disneyland while munching on a corn dog then be face to face with Jaws at Universal Studios before the weekend was over.

In the 70s and 80s, recess and lunch were more important than church. Any opportunity to wolf down as much sugar as possible before beating the crap out of each other during a spirited game of jungle ball was a welcome relief from the duldrums of sister mary whatshername. Any Gen Xers will tell you that recess and lunch were battles of the fittest.

If you grew up Gen X then come flash back with us to better days as we remember the 70s and 80s, share stories of Gen X movies, TV, holidays, pop culture and everything else that shaped who were are today.  

What were GenX birthday parties like, you ask? Picture this: homemade Betty Crocker cakes,  mountains of ice cream over which you could not see, gallons of soda, scoring handfuls of quarters to play old school arcade games at the local pizza parlour and the pressure of trying to keep up with the "cool factor" of rich kid b-day parties.