Looking Back at Summer in the '60s (PHOTOS)

Great if you were white generally looking at those pics, which is not to criticise the photos themselves but that does rather stand out. Zero representation or recognition of non white culture being displayed by whoever put that article together. When you consider the contribution made to US culture generally by this group I'm a little bemused!

There are things I miss about that era ... and things I don't.

I remember there being a similar thread regarding the '50s. Similarly compiled photos of good, happy, white people enjoying themselves. But I do find the style - the photography - of the '60s one looser and freer. Which makes me happy. Photographs cannot lie about themselves: the Zeitgeist did evolve.
 
What do I miss most about the 60's?

That radio thing mentioned above. Radio stations weren't divided into genres. Radio stations played almost every type of music--you got rock, pop, light jazz, country, folk, soul...anything goes. You would hear The Beatles for one song, Martha and the Vandellas for the next song and then it might be Merle Haggard or Sergio Mendes or Frank Sinatra. Talk about diversity!

But the 60's was also a time of naivete. We thought we could fix the bad stuff and we thought the good stuff would last forever. But the young of every generation believe that as well.
 
What I miss, early 1971, Tri-X in 100ft. bulk, a box of 10 Kodak snap caps and change back from a $10.
I know, a little later than the 60's but in 1969 I had just turned 20 and bought a Minolta HiMatic-9. Shortly after that a friend took me down to Darkroom Aids in Chicago and got me started in doing my own D&P.
 
...
There are things I miss about that era ... and things I don't.

I think any era, any decade had good and bad things, if we were not affected by the bad ones we'll remember the good ones, the ones we liked...

If we had to suffer for the bad things we'll for sure remember them ...
robert
 
brainwashing at University that cost them a bundle of greenbacks. :D

My brainwashing only cost me 8 years in the Navy, loss of my hearing, early degenerative discs, spinal stenosis, neuropathy, IBS, a yet undiagnosed persistent cough, destroyed knees, multiple concussions and TBI, vision loss and a healthy dose of PTSD to top it off. As for the money, I'm putting your hard earned tax dollars to work becoming a mental health and physical rehabilitation therapist. At the end of this education, I want to help veterans.
As for all the racist past, I know of that and I'm not seething. I knew the ugly past of the US long before I began my higher education. I just love pointing out hypocrisy in overbroad statements.
Phil Forrest
 
Cigarette smoking reached its peak in the mid-1960's.
For many tobacco is a good appetite suppressant.

We were also typically less sedentary in our jobs and leisure activities then.

I suspect there is some correlation with these factors.

Chris
 
My brainwashing only cost me 8 years in the Navy, loss of my hearing, early degenerative discs, spinal stenosis, neuropathy, IBS, a yet undiagnosed persistent cough, destroyed knees, multiple concussions and TBI, vision loss and a healthy dose of PTSD to top it off. As for the money, I'm putting your hard earned tax dollars to work becoming a mental health and physical rehabilitation therapist. At the end of this education, I want to help veterans.
As for all the racist past, I know of that and I'm not seething. I knew the ugly past of the US long before I began my higher education. I just love pointing out hypocrisy in overbroad statements.
Phil Forrest

Photographs are just photographs, even if they are photos from the past, we can enjoy looking at them without having to atone for anything or to anyone, or condemn anyone that posts a retro photo look-back from past decades on a thread. The past is the past, we as unique individuals had no control over it for the most part.

eg: If I post photos of the Paris Commune from 1871( by Bruno Braquehais Et al) it does not mean I am responsible for the Paris Commune or the excesses or the violence or the deaths or the destruction of beautiful Parisian buildings, nor does it mean that I agree with that political ethos of that historical happening, I just like the aesthetics of wet-plate albumen prints and the drama and to ponder the folly of man through time.
 
I remember my grandparents lamenting the good old days, the 1900s and talking about how the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, this of course was in the middle '50s.
 
I remember my grandparents lamenting the good old days, the 1900s and talking about how the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, this of course was in the middle '50s.




There is a quote (can't remember the specifics) from Plato that is in a similar vein- though regarding the "youth of today". Millenia later and the only thing that hasn't changed since then is that sentiment. Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Best avoided :p
 
Cigarette smoking reached its peak in the mid-1960's.
For many tobacco is a good appetite suppressant.


My feeling is that cigarettes are the only major difference between then and now. Maybe with vaping pens the new generation will stay thin again without (possibly) the cancer.
 
Lovely photos. Sad to see such threads are being hijacked into politics.


Politics? I'm reading discussion about the culture of the time and attitudes but I'm struggling to find your references to politics!
 
Cigarette smoking reached its peak in the mid-1960's.
For many tobacco is a good appetite suppressant.

We were also typically less sedentary in our jobs and leisure activities then.

I suspect there is some correlation with these factors.

Chris

Amphetamines were also popular as a doctor's prescription for appetite suppressant in that era. Check out photos of Johnny Cash from about 1965 or Bob Dylan from the same time frame, sad and self-destructive behaviour for sure.
 
Amphetamines were also popular as a doctor's prescription for appetite suppressant in that era. Check out photos of Johnny Cash from about 1965 or Bob Dylan from the same time frame, sad and self-destructive behaviour for sure.

Now they are also very popular, if not mostly for weight loss. They are being given like candy by doctors to children to study and college students use tons of them - with or without ADHD diagnoses.

Based on remarks my mother has made, college students in the 60s didn't think it was a big deal to use amphetamines to study either so I don't know if much has changed in that regard.
 
Yep, "Those were the days, my friends, we thought they'd never end . . ."
(Song on the radio in the 1960's. What was her name? Mary Hopkin?)
Yes, that was it. Mary Hopkin.
 
Now they are also very popular, if not mostly for weight loss. They are being given like candy by doctors to children to study and college students use tons of them - with or without ADHD diagnoses.

Based on remarks my mother has made, college students in the 60s didn't think it was a big deal to use amphetamines to study either so I don't know if much has changed in that regard.

Yes, I have heard about that so called ADHD diagnoses and the prescribing of Adderall and Ritalin to children ( mostly boys). One of these drugs is a slightly modified form of amphetamine.

In my day there was no ADHD.. that all was normal school boy behaviour, things like hyperactivity, not paying attention in class and wanting to go out to the playing field to play baseball on sunny warm days instead of being cooped up in a class room.
 
I remember my grandparents lamenting the good old days, the 1900s and talking about how the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, this of course was in the middle '50s.
FWIW I first encountered that phrase in bold while reading a Perry Mason mystery novel. Might have been written in the 1960's, but those books were also from the '30's onward into the '60's. Could well have been "spoken" by Paul Drake... :)
 
I remember my grandparents lamenting the good old days, the 1900s and talking about how the world has gone to hell in a hand basket, this of course was in the middle '50s.

...it started many years ago that sometimes I found myself making some mental remarks about the times, the society, the.... and soon think "ohhh this is what my father was thinking when I was young and I thought that he was thinking in that way simply because he was old..."

The wheel his still spinning :)

robert
 
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