Signs of the Times - They Are A-Changin'

[BigShadow]

One change is the closing of VHS/DVD stores due to the vast amounts of streaming services.  I used to love going to the mom and pop movie stores on a Friday night.  A few movies, some candy, and maybe a comic book or two.  A good friend of mine used to own a video store in the 80's to early 90's.  I have a good majority of his products that he saved from when the store closed. 

[Monsters For Sale]

One change is the closing of VHS/DVD stores due to the vast amounts of streaming services.  I used to love going to the mom and pop movie stores on a Friday night.  A few movies, some candy, and maybe a comic book or two.  A good friend of mine used to own a video store in the 80's to early 90's.  I have a good majority of his products that he saved from when the store closed. 

Was that the reason?  Or was it largely the fact that online sellers could sell movies so much cheaper than brick and mortar stores?

Yeah.  I loved browsing the packed shelves of Suncoast Video.  They specialized is stocking all the lesser-known movies that other stores didn't bother carrying.  They got a LOT of my money.

[BigShadow]

Was that the reason?  Or was it largely the fact that online sellers could sell movies so much cheaper than brick and mortar stores?

Yeah.  I loved browsing the packed shelves of Suncoast Video.  They specialized is stocking all the lesser-known movies that other stores didn't bother carrying.  They got a LOT of my money.

He had to close mainly because Blockbuster, Family Video, and other larger stores took over.  I believe he closed up about 1993-94, so way before movies hit the internet. 

I used to love Suncoast.  I could always find hard-to-find videos and toys.  Really suck when they closed.

[Hepcat]

Suspect Video on Markham Street in Toronto was very similar but it too closed in January 2017:

[marsattacks666]

Things today are different from when I was a kid.

Saw this quote on the Interwebnet:

       "The average age of Major League Baseball fans is 57.  That's up from 50 in 2000."


Sounds to me like a sport on the way out. 

Never would have thought it could happen when I was a kid in the 1950's.  In school, the World Series games were on the radio and the kiss-butt Hallway Monitor would tell the teachers the score as she moved from class to class, collecting attendance for the main office.

Then the teacher would announce it to the class before she could continue.


Some things is just differ'nt than they used-to-was.

Personally,  I am not a fan of Sports and I am in my early fifties.  However. Most of my friends who average different ages, all of them watch Sports. In fact. Where I use to live  the Demographic is 20'ish through late 60s. Las Vegas is definitely a Sports fan(atic)s' State. Almost every Casino has a Sportsbook, for betting.
It got to the point for me, I loathed working in a Casino.

[BigShadow]

Personally,  I am not a fan of Sports and I am in my early fifties.  However. Most of my friends who average different ages, all of them watch Sports. In fact. Where I use to live  the Demographic is 20'ish through late 60s. Las Vegas is definitely a Sports fan(atic)s' State. Almost every Casino has a Sportsbook, for betting.
It got to the point for me, I loathed working in a Casino.

I used to be a sports fanatic about 15 years ago.  Then I started getting pissed at the players going on strike because they wanted millions more.  About five year ago I started watching the Cleveland Browns and Indians again, which I enjoyed.  However, politics and social issues began to rear its ugly head into the arena of sports, something that is supposed to be a form of escapism.  So this year, with all these players virtue signaling, and wanting to be political and social heads during the game, I think I'm out.  My time would be better spent watching a horror movie or reading.

[Hepcat]

I/we did so many things when I was a kid in elementary school from 1957-65 in London, Ontario that I never see kids doing today:

* Walking just over half a kilometre to kindergarten unaccompanied by any parent/adult in the fall of 1957. Walking unaccompanied the nearly two kilometres to grade school in the fall of 1958.

* Just leaving the house in the morning to go out and play with friends, whether it was baseball, football or whatever activity in the park, or hide-and-go-seek or any other game right out on the street. Sometimes we'd ride our bikes as much as a mile away to a particular park or street. The key though was that there was no need to report to parents, so long as we were home by the time it got dark.

* Trick or treating on Halloween with my buddies without any balls and chains(a.k.a. adults) in tow. Using a pillowcase to maximize my haul.

* Being given bus fare and taking the bus downtown by myself for French, Lithuanian or accordion classes at the Ontario Conservatory of Music. The latter of course required lugging a full-size accordion on the bus.

* Hitting up my parents for a dime to go to the skating rink or swimming pool with friends. No parents to supervise of course. Pools had lifeguards. What more did you need?

* Hitting up parents for the twenty cents to go to the Saturday afternoon kids' matinees with two movies and cartoons or Three Stooges shorts at the neighbourhood theatre.

* Going out for little league football (Chester Pegg at the Normal School Grounds) without the parents knowing anything about it. I mean why would they care?

* Reaching into ice water coolers in variety stores to select soda pop in dripping wet proper ten ounce refillable glass bottles. Such joy on a hot summer's day!

* Roaming streets looking for empty pop bottles for the two cent deposit. I needed the money for cards, comics and potato chips because I was always collecting something.

* Going to the local library several times a week to check out books and read the newspaper and magazines such as Boy's Life, Model Airplane News, Life and Look. I didn't watch much TV at all since we didn't get a TV until the summer of 1961 in the first place and we picked up only one channel anyway. Nor was I allowed to watch TV on school nights either.

* Looking through the spinner rack at corner variety and drug stores to select ten and then twelve cent (eeeeek!) comic books. Specialty comic shops weren't even imaginable, let alone comic books that cost over 25 cents.

* Sneaking peaks at the titty magazines in corner variety stores.

* Flinging baseball, hockey, etc. cards up against brick walls in winner take all games with nary a thought as to future "values".

* Selling newspapers and chocolate bars door-to-door.

* Having an early morning or after school paper route.

* Being sent to the store to buy cigarettes for my dad, or six bottles of pop for the family.

* Hitting up my parents for dimes and quarters to buy firecrackers before Firecracker(Victoria) Day. I mean what's wrong with young boys letting off firecrackers? Playing with caps all year round.

* Playing with marbles, Yo-Yos and Duncan Spin Tops. Sidewalks would often be taken up by young girls skipping rope. When was the last time any of us saw any little girls engaged in this splendid aerobic activity?

* My skateboard was a first generation wooden one with steel wheels very much like this Nash Shark model here:



We didn't do any tricks with it. We just did our best to navigate down hilly pothole infested roads (such as Cove Road) without wiping out.

* Doing wheelies on my bike. That's something rarely seen these days. Whether wheelies are no longer fashionable or whether kids don't get the chance to pop any wheelies under the ever present gaze of helicopter parents is a question I can't answer.

* Playing nickel pinball machines at local variety stores or diners. There were no pinball arcades in London at the time. Then the killjoys banned pinball machines as potential gambling devices for about a decade.

* Building model kits and slot cars. Racing these slot cars at the hobby shop track downtown (Cowan's Hardware). Kids don't build models anymore. Kids these days aren't interested in anything that doesn't provide instant gratification, i.e. anything not TV screen related. Just check out the clientele of the few remaining hobby shops. They're all aging boomers.

* Firing up the .049 Thimbledrone engine of my Cox Spitfire gas powered plane in the house. What a racket! It was line control but I never mastered the trick of flying it without crashing immediately. I had to order a new body from Cox to replace the one I'd shattered beyond repair.

* Playing with pea shooters. My parents giving me a BB gun and a bow and arrow with a steel point.

* Carrying a jack knife around for games such as knife baseball.

* Going for a dip in the creek behind the house on Phyllis Street which my father had dammed up to form a swimming hole.

* Camping out in a tent overnight with friends in the backyard.

* Climbing trees.

Oh, I'm sure modern parents would all be aghast. They want the kids safe in front of the TV with video game consoles at all times. And that's why so many kids are obese and end up with deadly peanut and bee sting allergies. Keep kids squeaky clean and of course they don't develop their natural immunities. And of course when these overprotected kids eventually leave the nest to go to college or somewhere, they're all snowflakes with such fragile egos that they need "safe places" where they can be insulated from dissenting opinions/inconvenient facts.

Deny kids deadly pea shooters and (heaven forbid!) metal lunch boxes and they end up arming themselves with real knives and even guns to go to school. It's the principle of the dam. Keep denying kids whatever is "unsafe" and the pressure just keeps building up and building up till it explodes.

The ultimate irony of course is the parents who demonize sugar (of course their inactive kids don't need the extra calories). These kids then take to experimenting with alcohol, pot, crystal meth and cocaine at first opportunity. It's the boy who cried wolf syndrome. "Hey, remember, you were the ones who told us sugar was so bad! You think we're going to listen to you now when you tell us to avoid booze and drugs? And what about all that Scotch and gin you drink and those sleeping pills and pain killers you pop all the time? Sure, sure, we kids are going to listen to you old farts. Yeah, right."

[geezer butler]

I used to be a sports fanatic about 15 years ago.  Then I started getting pissed at the players going on strike because they wanted millions more.  About five year ago I started watching the Cleveland Browns and Indians again, which I enjoyed.  However, politics and social issues began to rear its ugly head into the arena of sports, something that is supposed to be a form of escapism.  So this year, with all these players virtue signaling, and wanting to be political and social heads during the game, I think I'm out.  My time would be better spent watching a horror movie or reading.

This is interesting topic. I used to be big sports fan as well. As much as I loved my monsters and superheros, I loved collecting sports cards equally as much (especially baseball cards.) I was kind of a jock, in that I played sports when i was a kid, including baseball and football in high school. I used to play softball and hockey as an adult too. I was addicted to fantasy football for awhile, especially in my early to mid 20s.

Around my early to mid 30s, I started to lose interest. I stopped gambling on sports all together. No longer play any sports (or go to the gym for that matter), and that's actually a problem because now i'm turning into a fat ass, but I digress  . Gave away and sold most of my sports memorabilia. It wasn't political for me, I just started to realize how watching sports doesn't make me happy. When you have money on the line, you get real pissed off when the team (or players) you're betting on don't come through. And I would have anger management issues watching my favorite teams. I started to realize "why am I doing this?"

I can't remember last time I watched a college football or basketball game. Have no idea what's going on in the NBA, NHL, or Boxing. I admit, baseball and football were always my favorite sports, so I can't completely give them up. I follow the standings and still watch some games, but not as many as I used to. And even when I watch my fav teams, I don't know all the players like i used to.

Anyhow, last 10-15 yrs, I try to focus on things that bring me 100% happiness, like watching horror movies, listening to rock music,  and collecting. Never disappointed that way.

[Monsters For Sale]

I posted this over at "The Last Non-Monster Movie You Watched" thread.  After, I read the latest here, I thought maybe it belonged here.


"I have never been a sports fan.  I have this one major flaw.  No matter how hard they tried, no one could ever get me to care who won.  I just don't give a damn, and I've never been able to understand why anyone else would.

Oddly, I do like the idea of old-time baseball.  The pastural setting, small town company teams battling for some stupid trophy.  I even like the general history of the game.

To that end, I own some movies about baseball that offer fun character studies of some of the game's more interesting players.

If you do like the sport, can't go to a game and want to watch some baseball-themed entertainment, try these:  (in no particular order)

Major League, 1989
Natural, The, 1984
Bull Durham, 1988
Field of Dreams, A, 1989
For Love of the Game, 1999
Bingo Long's Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, The, 1976
Rookie, The, 2002
Ken Burns' Baseball, 2009 - (Documentary) at least through the 1950's

I recently (last 10 days or so) watched three of the above.  That got me thinking about the "idealized" sport - you know, no strikes, no drug scandals and players that don't get several million dollars to sit out a season with injuries."

[BigShadow]

Not only has sports changed, but also how kids grow up.

When I was around 6 or 7 my grandmother, who babysat me during the day while my parents worked, was a great life teacher.  She taught me how to sew, wash clothes, dry clothes on a line outside, clean, cook, and proper manners.  At about 8 or 9 she taught me yard work and how to work with tools.  I also had to memorize the National Anthem. 

I cherished my times with her.  She was the only grandparent that was really around for me.  I had my time to be a kid, but I also enjoyed learning life skills when she taught me them.  I also learned how to cook from her.  We made my favorite at the time, and her specialty, breaded chicken! 

When I a kid up I was disciplined.  If I said a bad work, I had soap in my mouth.  Grandma was strict but fair.  Her and her brother also took me to the horse track and taught me how to bet on the races, lol.  It was fun, but a lesson in money. 

At home I was involved with all types of sports, taught more about yard and house work, and about academics.  Every night I had to read for 30 minutes.  This made a world of difference for me in school.  Now I read everyday.  I was taught more about manners and how to treat people.  My parents made sure I would be able to survive and that I k ew life wouldn't be easy.

I see too many teens and young adults that do t know the basics about house and yard work, let alone manners.  It's a shame that their parents and grandparents became part of these generations of coddling and trophies for everyone.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Hepcat]

Around my early to mid 30s, I started to lose interest. I stopped gambling on sports all together. No longer play any sports (or go to the gym for that matter), and that's actually a problem because now i'm turning into a fat ass, but I digress  . Gave away and sold most of my sports memorabilia. It wasn't political for me, I just started to realize how watching sports doesn't make me happy. When you have money on the line, you get real pissed off when the team (or players) you're betting on don't come through. And I would have anger management issues watching my favorite teams. I started to realize "why am I doing this?"

I can't remember last time I watched a college football or basketball game. Have no idea what's going on in the NBA, NHL, or Boxing. I admit, baseball and football were always my favorite sports, so I can't completely give them up. I follow the standings and still watch some games, but not as many as I used to. And even when I watch my fav teams, I don't know all the players like i used to.

Being a hardcore Canadian sports fan, I strongly resent the interest that sports of, for and by Americans, e.g. the Toronto Blue Jays, the Toronto Raptors and the NFL, elicit here in Toronto. The American wannabeism of so many Torontonians rubs me the wrong way.

And of all the cancellations and sundry changes prompted by the pandemic, what I miss the most is the indefinite postponement of the CFL season. A very powerful contributing factor is that I've been participating in the TSN CFL Fantasy League for the last four seasons and this has acted to give me an active vested interest in almost every game played. Moreover I'm a very good Fantasy player. I finished at #23 out of 16,488 participants last year just one really good player pick in a single solitary week out of the top ten. So I was just itching to jump back into the fray this year with my ambition being to crack the top three. But it's not to be I guess.

[Monsters For Sale]

Being a hardcore Canadian sports fan,     

Canada has sports?  First I've head about it.

Ice fishing and guys clobbering each other with crooked boards, I guess - no civilized competition requiring teamwork though, right?

[BigShadow]

Canada has sports?  First I've head about it.

Ice fishing and guys clobbering each other with crooked boards, I guess - no civilized competition requiring teamwork though, right?

I thought the only other Canadian sports were Curling and Beer Drinking.  and sometimes those two combined into one mega-sport. 

[Hepcat]

I used to be a sports fanatic about 15 years ago.  Then I started getting pissed at the players going on strike because they wanted millions more.  About five year ago I started watching the Cleveland Browns and Indians again, which I enjoyed.  However, politics and social issues began to rear its ugly head into the arena of sports, something that is supposed to be a form of escapism.  So this year, with all these players virtue signaling, and wanting to be political and social heads during the game, I think I'm out.  My time would be better spent watching a horror movie or reading.

And now of course the Cleveland Indians are no more and for decades they've been perhaps my favourite baseball team of them all. Worse yet I lost the Edmonton Eskimos, the football team that I'd embraced as my favourite back in 1960, just over two years ago.