I Love the 80’s-Part 2-Entertainment and Research

80's VCR Tapes

As I wrote last night in Part 1 of my 80’s series about the phone and shopping in the 80’s, I’d like to continue our journey so grab my hand, show me the way, darlin….do you feel my heart beating (Bangals circa some year in the 80’s).

I Love the 80’s- Entertainment

Movies

Do you remember how we would have to find out what time the movie was playing? We had 3 ways:

  1. go to the theater and hope your arrival coincides with the movie you want to see.
  2. check the newspaper if you get it delivered and if your dad hasn’t thrown it out. Or, pedal to the gas station and pick up a paper just to see the movie times.
  3. call and endure the entire recording of times. Of course the one you would want to hear was the last one because it was the most popular. If everyone was calling you’d get a busy signal and the worst thing? When your times would come on but then someone is calling you and the call waiting beep, beeps out the movie time. You must now repeat the process.

80’s Television

Are you as amazed as I am that we can record (I almost said taped, not going to date myself) several programs at once then binge watch? Listen up youngins’, we had to put a VCR tape into the VCR and hit record. I can’t remember, could we set a timer to record if we weren’t home? Anyone? Bueller? We would amass tapes upon tapes, some labeled, some not so you had to pop it in the VCR and hit play to make sure you weren’t recording over your dad’s favorite show.

I think it was a pissing match for some families to show off their extensive VCR tape collection. I would walk into a friend’s den and gasp, looking at an entire wall of VCR tapes. And they weren’t recorded from Sunday night movies on NBC. No, the jacket were the real deal. Indiana Jones, The Money Pit, Alien….these were purchased at Blockbuster and should be displayed proudly.

I Love the 80’s- Research

Children born in the 90’s, would you like to see my Google growing up? Ok, here it is:

My Google in the 80's

Yes, we had just a few options when working on a book report or wanting to learn more about a particular topic:

  1. the encyclopedias you may have at home. My mom bought ours from an end cap at the grocery store.
  2. you had to drive to the library and go through books that were potentially decades old to learn about the topic you were researching.

So there is my list! I will be creating a third and final installment but I haven’t decided the final topics. I’m open to suggestions!

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