Things from the 1990's you just don't see anymore

Innocent people dying from AIDS

STOMP

Bill Clinton

I was going to say Riverdance, but STOMP is better r2.

Correctly capitalized sentences from the OP of a DL thread.

Oh, dear.

Products made in America

People who don’t believe their ethnicity is a personality trait.

Bag phones I had one with a bag much bigger than this.

Clearly Canadian, Snackwells, beepers/pagers.

Unnecessary apostrophes.

Oh wait.

Corded car phones

My youth

Savion Glover

Beepers

Pay phones.

Answering machines

Mickey holding the handset

Manners.

Ashtrays.

Greg02116's supersecret recipe for ice cubes and prunes.

Jolt Cola. OK Cola.

Kids playing outside

Commercials for trashy 900 numbers

People pretending Travolta is straight. And, now, Diddy.

Cathy Mitchell

Mansonites

The "kinderwhore" look - baby doll dresses, ripped stockings, etc. Although I suppose someone will eventually try to revive it.

Call Now!

The Rachel

Retirement

Pagers

Group showers

Safe sex

Poppers

Cock rings

Speedos

Super Mario Brothers

Palm pilots

Princess Diana, JFK Jr.

Madonna’s real face.

Britney Spears as an alleged virgin.

Interesting pop stars.

YMCA Indian Guides

Rock being more popular than rap

R6- By the 1990’s you were twenty years too late.

The peep show stores on 42nd Street.

Good looking guys with slim natural bodies- no tattoos, no piercings, no rings and no shaved 🪒 pubic hair.

R18- Oh SHIT

Manners!

Video rental stores.

Mass market cars in colors other than black/white/silver/gray/red.

Matt Lauer

Jerry Speinger

Cigarette smoking in bars.

Snackwells Cookies

Every TV show and PSA screaming about condom use.

Barnes and Noble is an evil corporate overlord and must be stopped!

That horrible Caesar cut so many men had in 1996/97

sand art bottles

Decent movies with original storylines

Forehead lines and crow's feet on celebrities.

R44 I had forgotten all about Snackwell cookies. I wrongly used to think they were healthier snack because they were fat free, but they weren't healthier. They had high fructose corn syrup, emulsifiers, and highly processed seed oils.

People answering their front door even if they're not expecting an Amazon delivery.

People answering their phone even if they don't recognize the number.

Layaway

Rather, *people answering their doorbell.

Ha, these days, I don't answer my doorbell unless I expect a parcel or a visitor. R49

Shame.

People walking down the sidewalk with their eyes faced forward.

People reading books, magazines, and newspapers out in public.

People in photos actually looking like themselves.

Memorized phone numbers

Civility.

The face of a guy in his 30s when I look into a mirror.

Navigation skills

R41 must have thought this was the "things you miss from the 1970s" thread. The '90s were precisely the time when alternative culture took hold and tattoos and piercings became commonplace.

[quote]Cathy Mitchell

I miss her. I miss her stupid gadgets and her dump cakes.

Roseanne pretending to be somewhat sane.

Old brickish, black Motorola startac flip phones and holsters for such

Borders Books and Coffee! (and CDs!)

VHS Tapes (although those are coming back I hear)

Braun coffee bean grinders and French press coffee. Dark roast of course, because Seattle said so

Loud, obnoxious fragrances you couldn't miss (ckOne, Escape, Eternity for Men, Acqua di Gio, Fahrenheit, Joop! Curve)

Makeup that is all in shades of brown and more brown and makes people look dead

Really baggy clothes for very fit people on TV (Seinfeld, Mad About You, Friends)

Pay phones.

Rayon shirts for men, in the most godawful colors and patterns imaginable

Porn stashes

Christmas cards

Considering people with "unlisted numbers" weirdos

High school reunions being a big deal

And yet I still get Christmas card, R66. I'm sorry that you don't.

Neo-Deadheads in their brightly-colored tie-die shirts driving their beaters with dancing bear bumper stickers.

If anyone stunk of patchouli it was Neo-Deadheads.

Mullets. Even though they flourished in the late eighties, mullets crossed over into the 90s, especially in non-urban areas.

Zima.

Pete's Wicked Ale.

Teenage girls being clueless about proper makeup application and skincare.

Franklin Covey planners .

Great music! Going to see a band that was more about the MUSIC, and not ridiculous dancing/lip syncing crap.

The TV series Melrose Place and In Living Color. I especially miss Men On Film.

Phone sex lines

They’re still around r77, now they’re free.

Printed maps and people who knew how to use them.

Hookup lines , R79?

Hookup lines , R78?

Hookup lines, R80?

Hookup lines, R81?

Jean Claude VanDamme

Gorgeous supermodels like Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss, Karen Mulder, Heidi Klum, etc..

Today's models are Gigi Hadid, Cara Delevingne, and Kendall Jenner.

Hardly impressive.

Anyone remember those Snackwell yogurts with the chocolate sauce?

My mom got diagnosed with cancer in 1999. So my dad's house is a shrine to this era. She had impeccable taste, but there are wallpaper borders, faux finishes, a lot of forest green and burgundy, topiaries, those baskets of balls, Bombay Company and Ethan Allen furniture and in the kitchen a set of bottles from William Sonoma of pickled vegetables probably just rotting away like Mrs Havisham's wedding cake. My dad and I joked that one day they will burst and render the house uninhabitable, but they still look almost edible. I'm sure one day all this shit will be fashionable again.

Analog watches. At least you don't see them as much.

Bruce Jenner.

R87 That sounds just like my mother's house. Also the sponge-painted walls and plastic ivy plants everywhere (although those are now hideously back on trend).

Waterbeds

Giant satellite dishes on roofs

Riverdance

Outlet stores

Blockbuster

Sam Goodey

I remember Christianity actually being cool with teenagers for a hot minute in the late 90's. WWJD bracelets and youth groups and Christian rock bands like Jars of Clay became mainstream.

Contraceptive sponges.

Humility.

Hacky Sacks

Rainsticks and didgeridoos

Adult Contemporary and New-Age as huge music markets

Cucumber melon scented everything

Malls

Tommy Hilfiger

Diaphragms

Tweety Birds and Tasmanian Devils on everything

The explosion of novelty candy

HUGE trends in kids toys (now all they care about are apps and videogames)

Chain letters

AOL email addresses

Catalogs. They were a pleasure to order from. Yo7 called the 800 number and got an American in the United States on the otter end of the phone. You could ask them questions about the product and they’d find the answer for you. They were polite and engaging.

You wouldn’t get your order delivered for 2 weeks, but that was fine. You didn’t expect companies to refuse bathroom breaks to truck drivers so you could get everything to you immediately.

[looks askance and shuffles papers on a desk]

Mike's Hard Lemonade- born between Zima and hard ciders, giving acid reflux to drinkers everywhere!

Politics that were basically boring and didn't become people's entire identities.

Radio being a huge thing.

Finding your friends out in the wild because people actually had "hangout" spots.

r60...

Kids hanging out and drinking Snapples on one of these bad boys.

Affordable housing

Kids riding around on bicycles

Being unreachable

Customer service

My youth.

Full service gas stations, where they'd pump, check your oil if asked, would recommend dry gas if the cold called for it. They seemed to die in the 00s.

Coffee shop culture

R110, meet R12.

What's "dry gas"? Lived in Chicago for 15 years and never heard of it.

The unspoken rule to never talk about politics or religion unless it was in the proper context. Now, every aspect of life has become politicized.

Mix tapes/cd's as the ultimate romantic gesture

My feet.

Robert Downey Jr. sleeping it off in your infant's crib.

Novelty outgoing voicemail greetings

Jennifer Connelly sacked out on the sofa behind him.

Nightclubs.

Condoms!

(No, not really.)

Video rental sections at grocery stores.

Family-run video rental places with back rooms full of carefully-curated porn.

R95 you must be talking about the "Jesus Is My Homeboy"/"Mary Is My Homegirl" T-shirts that all the celebs wore.

Gas stations used to be places you could stop for directions all my life. In 1990s, all of a sudden nobody working at gas stations even knew where they were. They’d all just arrived from Turkey.

TripTiks

And if you have to ask…

Pop machines specifically for Fruitopia.

Those automatic coupon machines attached to the shelf in the aisles of the grocery store.

R114 It helped maintain viscosity in extremely cold temperatures, beyond that, NO clue what it was. The guy at the gas station would know if you needed it, which was valuable (probably as it relates to the quality of gas you put in).

That lil whore.

[quote] Coffee shop culture

Where the hell do you live where people don’t go to coffee shops any more?

Rat tails on little boys

Jerry Orbach

Nicole Brown Simpson, Jon Benet Ramsey, JFK Jr.

R115 Because it kind of become necessary. That’s how extreme our politics have become. We must have these discussions so things don’t go unchecked.

Playgirl was still showing bush. Here's Glenn Brown, Nov 91 issue, also Colt Studio model Tom Harnett.

100 different trashy talk shows

Colorful Apple computers.

More diverse music. The 90s offered tons of different music genres for all ages to enjoy. Now all music sounds the same shit.

Floppy bucket hats, often crushed velvet or with a big fake flower or bow on it. Think Blossom, 4 Non Blondes, etc.

Women of color in the entertainment industry with flat asses.

Warren Christopher

[quote]People reading books, magazines, and newspapers out in public.

People still do this, just on their phones/tablets.

Everybody and their brother shopping at the Gap and Banana Republic.

R145 right. So quintessentially 90s though they were still vastly popular in the early aughts.

Good crime thrillers.

R144 Yes, but the fun thing about the former was you could see what people were reading and it made a great a conversation starter.

John Grisham

Confused by R1. As opposed to guilty people dying of AIDS? Or what?

R150 What r1 said actually cuts both way. Is he being a douche and passing judgment on lifestyle or asserting that ALL the victims from that time period were innocent due to the failure of Reagan during the 80s.

All AIDS victims were (mostly) innocent people who did not deserve the horrendous death they got.

I say mostly because I'm sure there was some sick fucks who had it and spread it anyway.

Ace of Base

Hootie

Blowfish

Eric Von Detton. Yes, that is the same person.

Lick-em envelopes and postage stamps

Hearing "Smoking or nonsmoking" when you walk into a restaurant

Regular gasoline

Free air pumps at gas stations

Ivana Trump hairdos

Entertaining tabloid headlines at the grocery store

Refreshment coolers that only offered Evian if you wanted water

WWII vets marching in parades

The last of the European immigrant generation, and hearing their accents around town

Articles and prepositions

Linda Fiorentino.

Winter and Summer Olympics in the same year

Caesar haircuts

Kevin Bacon or Gary Busey in every other film

Busy gay bars

Drag bars without bachelorette parties

A newspaper worth reading

Vending machines that only take coins

Phone booths

A decent meal on a plane

Airports full of people who are properly dressed

Making several trips to Kinko's if you were planning any kind of event

Seeing an HRC sticker on a car and being one of the few who knew what it meant

Road cyclists who didn't fear for their lives because the road was full of people texting while driving

Alarm clocks

Answering machines

Snapple

Penny loafers

Pleated khakis

Dial-up internet connections

AOL CDs in the mail twice a month

Phone books

Paper drives

Phone trees

Changing your own oil, looking under the hood to adjust a carburetor

Kids playing outside

Church bells on Sunday morning

Personal ads

Decent Sunday comics

"This Old House"

Women putting on lipstick and heels to run errands

Camping out for concert tickets

Stationery stores

Bic pens

George Michael's ass in Levi's

Wall-mounted phones with stretched-out cords

Dialing the phone with a pencil

Above-ground pools

"Missing" notices on milk cartons

Tube TVs

Door handles with a thumb button

Separate keys for ignition and doors/trunk

Chicken breasts that weren't bigger than your hand

Roller blades

Rolodexes

Scrunchies.

Capri-suns

Nose-rings

Tribal tattoos

Phone-cards.

R159 marry me.

Oldies stations that played music from the 50s

Billboards for radio shows

Leather jackets

After-school specials

Saturday morning cartoons

$4.99 lunch specials

Blue plate specials

VCRs

Pocket knives

Fat wallets

Well-stocked bars with fewer than 60 bottles on the shelf

Dreaming of flying on the Concorde

Christmas cards

Paperback exchanges

Pescetarians

Slow news days

Waterbeds

Napster P2P

CompUSA

Pogs

Encarta Encyclopedia

Zip drives

Tamagotchi

Game Boy

Wet Seal

No-tell motels

Corner bars

Neon signs

Direct mail campaigns

Spaghetti dinner fundraisers

Corporal punishment

Gas station checkouts with Lucky Rabbits' Foot keychains

10-cent wing night

Wordperfect

"Surfing the internet"

Lillian Vernon catalogs

Muscle cars

Land's End jumpers and turtlenecks

School box-top drives

Box dots

Perestroika

Shaker furniture

Barn coats

Friends dropping by because they were in the neighborhood

Flower shops

Bakeries

Stick shifts

Midnight Rocky Horror at the old theater downtown

The Soviet Union

[quote]Shaker furniture

Do you mean Craftsman furniture? That had a huge revival in the 90's.

Who is the autistic person who keeps posting these inane lists? You don't see bakeries any more? Maybe you need to get out of the house once in awhile.

Bars, shady motels, neon signs, etc. all still exist, especially in more rural areas.

Stick shifts don't exist anymore?

Of course they do.

Chola brows

Hyper color T-shirts

Craisins in everything

[quote] Chola brows

this can still be seen

Stanley Kubrick alive

Whitney Houston alive

Aaliyah alive

Left Eye alive

R Kelly with a career

Good Poppers

Floppy disks

[quote] Floppy disks

What about these floppy disks?

The giant Sunday New York Times with he huge real estate section and wonderful metro section.

Fax machines.

Drakkar Noir, Joop, Fahrenheit

Z.Cavaricci Black Pants

White on White Kitchen Appliances

Juicer Appliances

Answering Machines

Dishwasher and Laundry detergents with phosphates

Viatical Settlement adds in Gay Publications

International Male Catalogs

Showing the waistband of your Calvin Klein briefs at the club.

Hummers

Answering Machines

The WB.

MTV Spring Break.

Whitney Houston

Jelly Swatch

The Twin Towers

Enya, Kenny G.

[quote]Everybody and their brother shopping at the Gap and Banana Republic.

Ahem!

GM’s attempts at Japanese cars: Saturn and Geo.

Janet Reno

The Geo line was a joint Toyota and Suzuki attempt with GM. Saturn was before it's time. I wish they were still around.

Fubu

Jams. I think they started in the 1980s but carried over into the 90s.

United Colors of Benneton

[quote]Showing the waistband of your Calvin Klein briefs at the club.

Nope. Calvin's name still shows up on everybutt.

There is nothing because of some boring ass is stuck on all things 90s on the DL.

^ Hope she forgets to chew her devils food snack well

Tower Records. The porn section at Tower Records. The porn star signings at Tower Records.

They had that R194? At the Tower Records on Market Street in SF?

Michael Jackson in person because he’s dead or maybe he just wants us to think that?

Zima

Magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue were printed on thick luxurious paper.

Magazines in general.

HOT guys cruising or flirting with me.

Video rental sections in grocery store chains.

R172 still around although you have to order them from France.

Which can take some of the spontaneity out of the sodomy.

Rentboys and hustler bars in the West 40s.

Yanni

Limp Bizkit

Creed

Mom and pop bakeries that discount their day-old products as opposed to some kind of artisinal bakery that still charges full price for a two-week old roll that crumbles into dust when you bite into it.

R203 And for those three losses, I'm eternally grateful. We are f@cked if Fred Durst gets a reboot of The Apprentice, we'll see Trump 2.0 in short pants and an Ed Hardy hat.

Creed blew donkey balls when they were new, nobody has time for their lead singers Messiah complex.

Limp Bizkit, Creed and also Kid Rock were fucking AWFUL. Thankfully their respective stardoms were short-lived. Absolute assholes who made garbage music.

AOL - trivia chats, chats hosted by writers for NY Times, the Atlantic, Harper’s.

The following stores and products mentioned on Seinfeld were real and I miss them

Champagne Video

Love Cosmetics

Brentano’s

Hunan Balcony

Movie Phone

Fat Free Yogurt Store that wasn’t fat free (Tasti D Lite)

The Wiz (electronics store, not the play)

Contraceptive sponges, and their withdrawal from the market (TODAY sponge)

Yes, R204, this is one of my pet peeves. It deserves its own thread! When did it become acceptable to sell day old pastries and bread for full price? Probably at the same time when it became acceptable to ask for tip for handing you over a bread roll.

R205/R206, agreed completely. That's something I don't miss about the 90's, the descent into Nu Metal and rap. Especially Southern rap.

Same, r209. The late 90s pop music landscape had a lot of shit. The recent Woodstock 99 documentaries on HBO and Netflix are a time capsule of how much the music sucked.

R210, Jesus Christ, that Woodstock 99 documentary on netflix was horrific for so many reasons, including the music. It was like hell on earth. I feel bad for any woman who attended that festival, it sounds like pure anarchy (I'm thinking of the large amount of sexual abuse that occurred). And that's without mentioning that people were rubbing mud all over themselves. Except it wasn't mud, it was shit.

R208, Yes, and they let things stay in the case forever until they taste like refrigerator.

R211 The one on Max is a bit older, but also very good. That was one festival I had zero interest in by lineup alone, but it was a hell unto itself where it was, with the temp and no water. It was heater skelter.

^helter 🥴

I miss waiting in line to buy tickets for concerts. It was fun when you would get up early and be the first one and get really good seats. 5th row center for the Blonde Ambition Concert. Those were the days.

R213, I have never been interested in going to any music festival and that documentary just sealed the deal for me. I know other ones are way less chaotic but it just looks like hell.

Rolled denim 501’s Shorts and Combat Boots

Stirrup pants.

Glenn Close from “Fatal Attraction” permanent wave.

R25, Cathy Mitchell is everywhere and is bigger today than she was in the 90s.

Zines

[quote] Limp Bizkit, Creed and also Kid Rock were fucking AWFUL. Thankfully their respective stardoms were short-lived. Absolute assholes who made garbage music.

They’re still making hit albums.

But they haven't been pop culture celebrities in a long time r221. You don't really hear about them anymore like you did in the late 90s

Actual sets/locations instead of fake, blue looking CGI.

Along those same lines R223, network and major shows still being filmed in Los Angeles instead of Canada.

Janbot in their prime

Meg Ryan being successful

People believing Julia Roberts is "America's Sweetheart"

By the 1990s, DL fave Brendad Ixon was already completely washed up as an actress. She last worked in the 1980s.

R216 I did not mean to imply I'd gone. I had older friends who did 94 and although they did have a good time it was because they were tripping, it was all mud, but really, just, mud. Unlike the shitshow that was greedstock. A friend did have it through pay-per-view/MTV, and the footage was a mess, and exploitative as hell.

Pro-choice Republicans

The great documentaries on HBO:

Pimps Up, Ho's Down

Hookers At The Point

Autopsy

Life Stories: Families In Crisis

And all the true crime: Brett Killed Mom, Paradise Lost, etc.

Music Videos on MTV

My toes.

Dire warnings about the havoc that will ensue when computers are crippled by the transition to the year 2000.

The fabulous Reality TV series "Love Connection." A man or woman has to decide which of 3 people he wants to go out on a date with. They can either choose themselves or go out with the one the audience voted for.

Then they have to come back and the person that was chosen tells the audience how the date went. Some have great dates, some are horrid.

They need to bring this back.

Love Connection will be back in “two and two.”

Brittany Murphy Matthew Perry Anna Nicole Smith

[quote]Things from the 1990's you just don't see anymore

We did keep photographs, but....

I was going to mention Snapple and Clearly Canadian but was beaten to it in two different posts.

So I will add: Raves

r235 They did bring it back. Andy Cohen did, he hosted It died a fast death. He was terrible

Apple Slice soda

Kurt Cobain.

My mistake.

Apple Slice was discontinued in 1988.

I can't find my Rolodex anywhere.

Service Merchandise. It was a little creepy. You paid for an item, then stood around a small area with other people waiting for your purchase to roll down a shaft from the warehouse behind the store. It seemed so impersonal.

Talent. Great trashy TV. Groundbreaking cartoons for kids and some of the best of all of time(Rugrats, Ren&Stimpy,Hey Arnold Ahhh Real Monsters) and some of the best club music ever. A great economy, diversity but everyone knew their place. There's more I want to add but I have to wait until I'm sober.

Franklin Covey Planners

Movie show/airing type programming like TBS's Dinner and Movie and USA's Up All Night.

[quote] Mix tapes/cd's as the ultimate romantic gesture

This was an '80s thing, as well. I'm sure it was popular in the '70s, too.

Anyway, I had a friend named Rosie (Roseanne, actually). Someone made her a mix tape (or CD) of all songs that mention the name Rosie. There's a surprising amount of songs that do. One of my faves: Cracklin' Rosie by Neil Diamond.

For the Patsy Ramsey posters. This is how you sign off:

[quote] Limp Bizkit, Creed and also Kid Rock were fucking AWFUL. Thankfully their respective stardoms were short-lived. Absolute assholes who made garbage music.

[quote] They’re still making hit albums.

I doubt that. I would like to hear the name (title) of one of these "hit albums."

R195, I lived in Boston and it had a very generous porn section. At the time my boyfriend was a manager at Tower and set up all the bartenders in gay clubs with free accounts. We didn’t pay for a drink for well over a decade!

I remember several straight porn stars and all their hangers on coming by our apartment late night a few times, boyfriend was bisexual. We had a Gogo box for a coffee table and he’d get more than a few straightish guys to get up and dance on it late night in ther underwear. Although I was annoyed at the time, it was HAWT.

[quote]For the Patsy Ramsey posters. This is how you sign off:

[quote]—Mrs. Patsy Ramsey, Formerly of Boulder, CO

Yes, except that you would lower-case "formerly."

And not to be nit-pickier, but was it not once “The former Mrs. Patsy Ramsey” (noting she too has shuffled off this mortal coil) “formerly of Boulder, CO”?

R64 I loved those shirts! However they lasted only maybe three to four wearings before self-destructing. I remember tropical /Hawaiian styles being very popular.

Hardons

R252 You lost me at porn "Stars" in Boston

Jenny Jones

Merit cigarettes

The QE2 unless you want to go to Dubai where (like the Queen Mary in Long Beach) it's permanently moored as a floating hotel.

And, at $54 a night (for two) it's a helluva lot cheaper than when it last sailed 15 years ago.

Sally Jessy Raphael.

Rolonda

Jenny Jones.

[quote]Zines

YES! Definitely.

Also: Prodigy Internet Soho sodas

UFO documentaries on TLC.

Internet cafés.

[quote]UFO documentaries on TLC.

They're still on the History Channel constantly.

About a dozen US daytime soap operas.

David Faustino

Pan Am

Northwest Orient

TWA

Eastern Airlines

Air Tran

MGM Grand Air

Aloha Air

America West

US Air

Braniff

Midwest Express

WB

UPN

The Family Channel

People dying from AIDS