What was the best thing about the 90s?

I could hit a woman in the mouth to force her down on me and not have to answer any questions about it.

All the track records by Geb, Tergat and Komen. Not that many world track records in 1980s.

Pub wrote:

Without a doubt: the landing strip. So much prettier than the sasquatch style which preceded it or the bald eagle which has been en vogue since.

OMG yes. The landing strip is best.

Fugazi

Sonic Youth

Jawbreaker

Pearl Jam live

U2 live

Soundgarden

The Yankees win, thaaaaa Yankees win!

No cell phone

No email

No social media

Headbangers Ball and Yo MTV Raps

Jimmy V's ESPY speech

EPO.

This is Letsrun after all.

All of my running PRs.

Rainy Day wrote:

McLaren F1

Good choice.

The Y2K bug/fraud

Braveheart

The 1991 Atlanta Braves ("worst to first")

Music, especially euro dance and middle distance running, especially the great Kipketer.

Someone said it already, but primarily it was that we had a break between the Cold War and terrorism. The kickoff for this, though, was 1983, the day the Beirut barracks were bombed, and coverage was DURING the NYC marathon, and the race hardly interrupted.

This was exemplified for me by an AP column in maybe 1998 or 99, where the writer talked about how we were at some sort of high water mark of civilization indicated by, among other things, that all TV commercials were self-deprecating, and a huge expenditure of money to basically seem idiotic. He was clearly onto something, given how the 2000s kicked off, and what has followed since.

This said, things during the 90s that also stand out to me:

Distance running in a low-mileage funk, but it didn't seem to matter really.

You could have a cell phone and not lust after another in two months, we kept them years.

Computers were advancing at a huge rate of speed, but unless you were a gamer there was no point in upgrading like we upgrade phones now, because once you got on the WWW it was all over, it was enough.

Choice in computers and operating systems. You had Windows, Mac, NeXT, Sun Solaris, SGI Irix, Acorn, BeOS, Apollo Unix, Linux was born, and LOTS more I'm forgetting.

The Internet was actually fun and exciting, not Google for everything, then of course the social media explosion on smartphones, but we could LEAVE it and do other stuff.

Flying was a hecka' lot easier, you could bring anything aboard.

90s music was of course better than all that came after.

Cars were recovering from the 80s dog era, gas cheap enough to have fun with them.

Road races were not far removed from the peak of the early-80s, meaning not the same 5K course or loops of it that has followed since, you still had cool routes.

No viable GPS of routes, so nothing was certain, which meant you never stared a 9:07 average pace or whatever in the face.

Crack wasn't quite an epidemic any more, nothing really was.

EPIC crime decade. Menendez Bros, Ruby Ridge, OJ, etc. The entire decade was courtroom TV.

But it was also a TV trash boom.

Gas still a dollar something, a low dollar when things were good.

I WANNA DIP MY BALLS IN IT!!!!

High 5 if you know what that's from

The prostate problems from my early 80s are gone-- I just peed through a ureteral stent.

Mr. Jones by Counting Crows

Friends on NBC

Ask yourself the tough ? wrote:

No cell phone

No email

No social media

This

Bad Wigins wrote:

Mondo Hondo wrote:

Nirvana and Cobain

Collective shame of Gen X to have let MTV spoon feed them halfass garage rock like it was a new thing. You might as well call Def Leopard the highlight of the 80's.

Ultimately Cobain blew his brains out because he was living a lie from which he couldn't escape.

We all know you're an Eagles fan, who drinks diet beer.