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azzuri · 'Our Scotland' Fossil Joined: 12 Sep 2005 Posts: 3796

Saw this on another messageboard and thought it only right to share it with you lot:

The seminal 1980's reborn post on the hpc forum seems to have disappeared, luckily I copied it - always worth repeating:

Please excuse this stream of consciousness, but I feel compelled to share my memories on the 1980's with you as I see parallels with what is happening today, but hopefully I'm wrong. This type of discussion strand has no doubt featured on the HPC forum before and this is just my spin on things. I'm no economic expert, and struggle with the conceptual framework behind much that is discussed here, but I'm trying to get to grips with matters to the best of my abilities. As previously stated, this is only my personal experience of the 1980's. Whilst I now view it as being a rather distasteful decade - arguably lacking in any real substance and fascinated in the main by surface values - I can also fully appreciate that others may have fond memories of this time as I once did. I can also recognise that my experiences may have little in common with the experiences of others.

I'd like to think that I'm reasonably aware of my surroundings and occasionally notice societal change. In the 1980s I first observed life changing in my street and then the press and broadcast media profiled these shifts. The earliest memory that springs to mind is one of seeing TV programmes about barrow boys who'd left their East End market stalls to make millions as traders on the London stock exchange. A classless society was emerging. Chrome replaced gold as a superficial signifier of value. Where today 'brushed aluminium effect' is embraced as the high street consumer's patina of choice, then chrome was king - the proletariat's silverware? Everywhere sparkled and life for me was shiny, fresh and full of optimism. The cult of the individual was born and my friends and I talked for hours about 'personalities' over our s*****y artichoke starters at chic dinner parties. These friends also mentioned on more than one occasion rising housing prices. One particular acquaintance bought a flat in a newly emergent development called Docklands and paid £40,000 for it. It seemed like a huge amount of cash to part with at that time, but he was going places and had a promising career ahead of him. Anyone could become rich or famous, and given the right suite of opportunities - and with a measure of motivation - many of us (wrongly) believed that money could be made without too much effort and that the streets were paved with gold for one and all. It should come as no surprise then that I never did create any serious personal wealth. Like my friend, I too had a promising career ahead of me. But as we soon discovered, that's precisely where our promising careers have remained, i.e. ahead of us. Despite my protestations to the contrary at that time, I now admit that I've always followed the herd and lack any real vision or imagination myself. I've always just stumbled into things, into a career or into a marriage, but maybe that's how a lot of normal people get by in this life. The thing is that I liked the look of 1980s chrome, and I believed in the 1980s value system. It all seemed to make sense somehow. Although my belief system has since shifted, I still hold to a view that a lot of people shared my particular mindset, albeit a defective one.

In the States - and I expect fuelled by a free-flowing credit economy - New York's East Village saw the rapid expansion of contemporary art galleries with unusual names like Nature Mort, Gracie Mansions and CASH Gallery. Whole areas were gentrified overnight. Warehouse living became ultra chic and these vast spaces became the backdrop for countless aspirational films. Anyone remember those deeply questionable John Hughes movies ? Hughes' leading characters were mainly creative artist types, interior designers or city traders. Cocaine was their drug of choice. I wanted to become a famous artist too and I did achieve a small measure of success later on in this field, which still puzzles me to this day. I organised visual arts exhibitions in John Hughes style warehouses in the UK, which were once easily accessed and affordable - unlike the present situation or NY in the late 1980s for that matter. I suppose that I was just in the right place at right time and swept along with by prevalent tides. What interests me more is that - second only to property - the greatest return that one could have made over the past five years would have been in contemporary art. I was amazed when I read this 'fact' in the Financial Times……and couldn't help but think that this was again oh so very 1980s!

Once reserved for only the most affluent of citizens, in the 1980s a growing number of people seemed to be wearing designer clothes and living life in the fast lane. Many of us proudly flaunted our branded goods, and I secretly felt I'd arrived in an economic utopia. Buy now / pay later and take advantage of interest-free credit was my mindset. If my parents suggested caution or criticised me, then my friends and I could point to our T-shirts; suggesting that these people should just 'RELAX', we were all going to be multi-millionaires. Some of us became walking billboards for exotic products - branding was born - and a rash of red Porsche 911's invaded tiny terraced streets, their owners worked in advertising or were graphic designers making a mint. Cerise pink, electric blue and banana yellow featured in wardrobes across the land. We danced to Kylie & Jason and our girlfriends endured the 'ra-rah' or puff-ball skirt. Our haircuts were spiky, dyed different colours and resembled pineapples…or there was the ubiquitous mullet. Like so many, I too tried to convince my father to fit a strip of red lights on the front of his car so it might look more like David Hasslehoff's Trans Am in the popular TV series 'Knight Rider'.

The streets were filled with luminous clothing and mismatched fingerless gloves and towelling socks. I remember 'pixie boots', generally worn with nasty leg warmers, and shiny grey flecked suits, with rolled-up sleeves and all of these items ghastly in the extreme! But hey, there was a spirit of optimism in the atmosphere. Life was great!

And then the crash came and it was all over.

The veneer of personal wealth evaporated, our feeding frenzy stopped and the party ended with a painful hangover for many. The early 1990s dragged on for what seemed like an eternity and life became drab once again. And like today's web-authors / IT gurus similarly the rules of supply and demand were fast kicking-in for those Porsche driving graphic designers / advertising executives who were rapidly becoming two-a-penny and therefore affordable once more. There wasn't an awful lot of optimism and cash was tight. People talked about a recession, but all that I remember was the absence of glamour, everywhere was 'grey' again. My friend's flat in Docklands seemed massively overvalued now. He'd made a terrible mistake. (Although it could be reasonably argued that had he held onto it at that time - and in our current economic climate - then a small personal fortune would have been amassed in the intervening decade or so. He understood that property in the UK had always gained in value, but sadly couldn't hold on for any long-term gains, because of a change in personal circumstances.) The crash came, work contracted and so he sold up.

However, more recently when I take a look outside my window things are different. Admittedly, those red Porsche 911's have long since gone, but of late my street has seen an influx of 'brushed aluminium effect' Audi TT's, with all that shiny interior chrome treatment that I like. (I've counted up to five Audi TTs in my street at any one time to be precise, which is odd because the people who drive them have pretty normal jobs. I know this because my neighbour valets these particular cars. Today's Audi TT owner is not always an advertising executive or city trader, but instead such vehicles might equally be owned by an electrician, plumber, builder, or middle grade civil servant. Like the 1980s fictional 'loadsamoney' plasterer - made popular by Harry Enfield - they too would appear to feel unusually wealthy.)

Jason got the sack years ago, but Kylie has again returned to a position of prominence. Beckham's 'Hoxton Haircut' looks remarkably similar to the good old 1980s mullet that I still wear and Tony & Guy are responsible for releasing fashionable ladies with 'pineapple' haircuts onto our streets at an alarming rate. Knight Rider and Automan are sadly no more, but their suspect neon and flashing LED legacy has been cemented by the likes of Max Power magazine. 'RELAX' T-shirts and pastel colours are now very much back in high street vogue. I'm experiencing a strange feeling of deja vu. Hoxton Square, Tracey Emin, Chris Ofili, Damien Hirst, and Brit Art all echo East Village developments in NY. Artworks by well-known contemporary artists again sell for staggering prices - 1980s prices! These creative individuals are being given a loudspeaker and an opportunity to share their accumulated wisdom in the pages of the glossy Sunday supplements. Sadly, all we ever hear about is where they purchased a new rug from, the benefits of macrobiotic diets or which is the most effective form of yoga? Read an interview with Jeff Koons, Jean Michael Basquiat or Andy Warhol from the 1980s; the parallels between now and then are striking. In my view, a large portion of society today feels that it now has more disposable money that ever before and therefore experiences an inflated impression of personal wealth and well-being.

'1980s style' (surely this is this an oxymoron - a bit like Californian culture) is here again - I read about it in the pages of OK Magazine so it must be true - and also OK- but now I can see the tangible evidence outside my window too! And just as drug use follows clearly identifiable cycles, I've again noticed cocaine enjoying a wider than usual popularity and this is across all strata of society. So there's a 1980s revival at the moment, but is it just a style thing or could it be more deep-rooted? Is it possible that this party will go the same way as the earlier one, which was evidently a property-fuelled economic bubble? Of course not, things will be different this time, because we're going to experience a soft landing. Experts have told us. Honest, it won't hurt, it's going to be fine because that's what the nice people on daytime TV have told us. That's OK then, no need for me do anything other than what I have done for all of my life on Earth. Follow the herd, relax and stop thinking and start dreaming about how I'll spend my millions when I'm rich and famous. That's right I'll invest in property and then sell it in a few years and make a small fortune. Just like the fortune I'm about to make by buying and selling stuff on eBay.

My father always said that the problem with my generation is that we know the price of everything, but sadly the value of nothing.

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