1980s American Cars, Guns, Gadgets and Consumer Goods [Atmosphere, look, minutiae]

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Ok, thanks. Incidentally, do you remember/know what the situation with driving licences in Maine in the 1970s to the 1980s would have been? Just so I don't put in some blooper in the background of an NPC...

That I don't know, sorry. I was in Ontario at the time.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Makes sense. On the other hand, do even the small border towns of Maine have a better selection than Canadian stores, or do people drive for three hours to the bigger towns?

The selection in small border towns on both sides of the border will be small. Canadians are willing to drive two or three hours to get to the larger US towns to do their shopping. EDIT: Although they might stop at border towns for lunch and gas.

Originally Posted by Icelander

About when did Canada start taxing alcohol higher than the US? What about cigarettes? I know they were much cheaper in the States than Canada starting in about 1990, due to severe excise tax hikes in Canada, but I haven't been able to figure out the relative pricing on cigarettes and alcohol during the 60s, 70s and 80s.

I'll have to do some research there. It was about this time, bit I can't say exactly when.

(Fuel taxes are definitely higher in Canada than the US at this point - there's more road infrastructure to pay for and fewer people to pay for it.)

Originally Posted by Icelander

The long and interesting travelogue I read about a city boy in the 2010s visiting this area looking for family history had him remarking several times how open people were about the 'good old times' of unrestricted smuggling before 9/11 border controls. Respectable people did not hesitate to tell funny stories to a stranger about smuggling, either by themselves or family members. No one was ashamed to mention a relative who grew rich smuggling cigarettes in the 90s or an ancestor who was an alcohol bootlegger.

Unfortunately, the writer didn't mention what they were smuggling and in which direction, once Prohibition ended and before the cigarette smuggling bonanza of the 90s.

There's also the statute of limitations to take into consideration - did the stories take place long enough ago that the people involved wouldn't be charged?

(That said, your FBI agent will probably be able to discover something taking place at the time - nobody can keep a smuggling operation completely secret.)

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Actually, I never thought of it as especially luxurious. Expensive, yes, so it might as well have some nice interior materials. But the main selling point when it appeared was that it was an actual military vehicle! So it had to be tough and off-road-worthy, right? Or so the marketing went. And the military was still popular after the first Gulf War. It wasn't "here's a really high end super-luxury SUV" -- that was the more usual suspects like Lexus, Mercedes, BMW. The H2 and H3 were new civilian designed, but they kept the look.

Also, the Gulf War was still a few years off, and one in which the US at the time was unprepared for (Operation: Desert Shield in late '90-early '91 was the build-up, and I recall that taking months, while Operation: Desert Storm, the ground war, was over in weeks). The military Hummer basically debuted during that war (we'd had it for several years prior, but mostly it was "the Army's new Jeep" in mags like Popular Mechanics); it was the war that pushed it into the public consciousness, leading to the civilian H2 being put out.

In '88, I don't think the public was even aware of who ran Iraq, much less having any clue Saddam was plotting an invasion of Kuwait. Iran-Contra was still being talked about, despite it being earlier in Reagan's era, mostly because of Bush's alleged role in it during the election season.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

it was the war that pushed {the Hummer} into the public consciousness, leading to the civilian H2 being put out.

Yep. That, and the desert hats were quite fashionable.

At any rate, the Hummer doesn't mark the appearance of luxury SUVs.

[cvannrederode]

Originally Posted by Icelander

9)

I know that she likely would have used ARPANET at Stanford, where I think she would have gone in ca '81, as a sixteen-year-old math prodigy with an application so heavy with academic honours and resume-adorning extra-curricular activities that the dean of admissions must have thought she was in her thirties.

What would she have used in terms of OS and 'Internet' while working summers and school breaks as a computer programming and general tech geek intern/technician (between early 1983 and 1985) for the Las Angeles office of the FBI and later as a programmer/designer at ViCAP at Quantico (1986 to mid-1988)?

The character is meant to be one of the unsung tech geeks behind the creation of the ViCAP and the digital technology revolution at the FBI. She's an off-the-scale genius who grew up in a household that was at the forefront of early digital computer technology and she was a superstar student of Computer Science at Stanford.

A little bit of digging on google found this site about computers at Stanford.

A quick glance at the list shows a lot of DECSYSTEM, PDP, and IBM machines in the list, along with some others such as Burroughs machines. All of these machines could run proprietary OSs specific to them, but most could just as likely run a variant of UNIX; BSD and AT&T System V where knee deep in the Unix Wars in the 80's. Sun OS is also an option, if she had her own workstation at home. Suffice to say, she's more than likely a *nix guru.

Access to ARPANET outside of a campus or other direct "node" is probably going to be problematic for the time and location; ISPs still had the "new industry smell". Personally, around '93 or so I was calling io.com in Austin (long distance from Everett, WA) to get on the (pre WWW) Internet.

Chances are she has more than on email account/address, given her background. Probably more than one on ARPANET, and probably FidoNet, given it's up-and-coming popularity with any "power-users" of the time who didn't have access to ARPANET.

As an aside, the larger number of different systems and OSs during the 80s probably warrants thought about enforcing familiarity penalties for Computer Operation skill and related.

(and yes, I called into that io.com)

C

[Litvyak]

I don't know if any of this will be helpful, but here are some random facts that I recall from growing up in New Hampshire in the 80's:

Dunkin' Donuts started in the northeast and was extremely dominant in the area during the time period (it still pretty much is). TV commercials featuring Fred the Baker saying, "Time to make the donuts," were common.

Walmart didn't expand into New England until the 90's and Target came even later. Back then we had K-Mart, Sears, Lechmere, Ames, Bradlee's, Zayre, Caldor and probably some others I can't remember.

While not a New England specific thing, McDonald's food came in styrofoam containers back then.

I recall a pack of Marlboros cost somewhere between $1.15-$1.25 in New Hampshire and I had no problem buying them at nine years old.

In 1994 I went on a 28 day canoe trip on the Allagash with Outward Bound. Near the end of the trip I snuck away from the group and went into Allagash (the town) to buy candy bars. One detail I distinctly remember was that the little general store I went to sold some serious looking chainsaws behind the counter. Of course that was 1994, like I said, but I don't imagine it was that much different in 1988.

[Phantasm]

One thing I remember is people getting around the "no smoking" prohibition in school by buying chewing tobacco. There was no carding for tobacco back then in rural areas - not sure about the urban areas, to be honest - and due to growing up in Pennsylvania I'm uncertain about carding for alcohol. (Pennsylvania's one of the weird states whose Liquor Control Board's state-owned liquor stores has a monopoly on wines and spirits, and even beer is only available in the bars - you can buy six-packs of cans or bottles, and even twelve-packs of cans at the bar - or at distributors. Beer was not available at the general stores or supermarkets, unlike most other states. I'm uncertain as to the laws in Maine, though.)

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I know that she likely would have used ARPANET at Stanford, where I think she would have gone in ca '81, as a sixteen-year-old math prodigy ...

If she was an outstanding student in math and computing at Stanford in the 1980s, consider taking Donald Knuth as a Contact. He wasn't as famous then as he is today, but he's already widely respected and has a lot of contacts.

[mhd]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If she was an outstanding student in math and computing at Stanford in the 1980s, consider taking Donald Knuth as a Contact. He wasn't as famous then as he is today, but he's already widely respected and has a lot of contacts.

"We really need to sort out this weird wave of ritual murders. Wait a minute…"

[mr beer]

Maybe not so great on specifics but general stuff I would do for this would be:

- Read (or re-read) some Stephen King books, since he sets so much of his stuff in Maine, starting in the 60s onwards IIRC; also the atmosphere is generally creepy of course and may provide ideas.

For throwing in general background info, check the following:

- Openings dates and domestic box office take for movies in 1988 are as follows. This seems more useful than the more retrospective look at most popular movies of 1988 that you'd get from IMDB : http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=1988

- Billboard Hot 100 single for 1988 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billbo...ingles_of_1988

- List of albums hitting gold, platinum etc. at the time: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1...on-anita-baker

The Cosby Show continued its multi-year domination as the most watched TV show at the time. Bill Cosby is considered the living embodiment of family rectitude, something I would play for laughs given the chance, that's just me though. It's about to be overtaken by Roseanne, the allegedly hilarious sitcom of a loud fat harpy who terrorises her long-suffering family. This kicked off in Oct 1988 but hasn't yet penetrated the national psyche.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by mr beer

The Cosby Show continued its multi-year domination as the most watched TV show at the time. Bill Cosby is considered the living embodiment of family rectitude, something I would play for laughs given the chance, that's just me though. It's about to be overtaken by Roseanne, the allegedly hilarious sitcom of a loud fat harpy who terrorises her long-suffering family. This kicked off in Oct 1988 but hasn't yet penetrated the national psyche.

The way I see it, The Cosby Show is the typical Status +1 sitcom (Bill played a doctor), and Full House (which was also popular at the time) was the first "atypical" Status 0 sitcom (a widower and two bachelors in 'Frisco splitting the mortgage), while Roseanne was the first big Status -1 sitcom that wasn't played for non-stop laughs every episode (like Married With Children).

My mom hated Roseanne, probably because it struck a bit too close to home; I enjoyed it because the middle child reminded me a lot of me. :)