• Boozilla@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    Yeah, it was weird. Most restaurants had a non-smoking section because allowing people to smoke everywhere was the norm. Leaded gasoline. Little kids playing with real fireworks. The 70s and 80s were a wild ride of irresponsibility.

    It wasn’t all bad, though. It was cool being a kid at times. Playing outside almost every day until dinner time with the other kids in the neighborhood.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      As a child of the 70s/80s, although I don’t remember a great deal of the 70s, your parents had no idea where you were until you came home when the streetlights went on, unless you happened to call from a friend’s house to ask if you could sleep over. I remember my friend getting run over by a car which broke her leg because there was no crossing guard on the busy street where the kids had to cross to go to school, and after that they hired one. I lived up the street from the school, and had a cat that went outside, on hot days the front doors were always open and sometimes she’d go nap in the library or show up in my classroom. Then the neighbour who hates animals and had lost his teaching job for exposing himself to students abducted her and dumped her way across town, but someone found her and put an ad in the list and found section of the paper so I got her back.

    • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Non smoking section with like an 18 inch wall separating it from the smoking section. My mom almost got into a fistfight at a couple of restaurants for seating us directly next to the smoking section instead of in the opposite corner with less secondhand smoke.

    • WrenFeathers@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      From my experience, it’s always been the other way around. There usually were small smoking sections partitioned away from the rest of the restaurant. This was the norm. And it was usually a fraction of the tables compared to the non-smoking sections.

      Source: Worked as a server through most of the 80’s-90’s.

  • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    In the 80s and 90s a cool ash tray was a good gift for literally anyone. Even teenagers since half of them were smoking reefer

    • jaybone@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      As a kid I liked the shitty little ashtrays they had in fast food restaurants. Like McDonald’s. I think they were aluminum and meant to be pretty much disposable. You could play with them like flying saucers. Or a shield for your GI Joe guys. Or if your GI Joe guys were going on vacation in the snow. They were maluable so you could shape them.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      My aunt smoked two packs a day, in the house, and when I visited I had to wear clothes I was ready to throw away, had to strip and shower when I got home, and once in the space of an hour she smoked seven cigarettes and finally one of my eyes swelled shut, and she demanded to know why I didn’t say anything. My husband pointed out the walls were yellow with tobacco, she lived in the house she grew up in and all the furniture was the same as when she was a child. When she died it all had to be junked, despite some of it probably being antique.

  • NewAgeOldPerson@lemmy.world
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    29 days ago

    Grew up in Asia. The less fancy one. Used to go buy my Dad cigarettes from across the street and toss out the filters when I was like 8 lol.

    *He’s been smoke free for over 22 years. The amount of disinformation from Big tobacco, at least where I grew up, was insane. He is a very educated man and still… Cigarette was a status symbol, symbol of sophistication, when he was growing up.

  • TheLowestStone@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I grew up in a house with smokers, picked it up as a teenager and smoked a pack a day for 20 years after that. Now I can smell someone lighting up 2 blocks away.

    It’s kind of crazy. As time passed without smoking, I noticed many things smelled differently to me. For example, I was repulsed by the smell of cheddar cheese the first time I smelled it after quitting. I can’t put it into words properly but it smelled so different from what I was expecting that the thought of taking a bite made my stomach turn.

  • hardcoreufo@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    I remember coming home from shows in high school/college and I would have to shower and throw my clothes in the washer. I was so happy when smoking was finally banned in clubs.

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 month ago

    Also once about eight years ago I was in Kentucky doing the bourbon trail. It’s pretty rural aside from the distilleries, and finding somewhere to eat lunch on Sunday was hard as almost everything is closed, we ended up at some place they called a bourbon gastropub, but that meant that the dining room side was the only part fit to eat in, but all that was open was the horrible bar which was made of raw particle board, and there were members of the Klan sitting at it, who had the leather vests with the blood drop cross. There was literally nowhere else to eat so we ordered, but I felt terrified the whole time, and as we were wrapping up one of the Klan lit a cigarette at the bar and just sat there, and nobody said anything. It was quite stunning.

  • thesohoriots@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    You can also just take a trip to the Waffle House off I-95 in Florence, SC. It allowed smoking when I was there in 2014 and probably still does.

  • tipicaldik@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    going to the grocery store and seeing an employee with a big dust-mop going up and down the aisles pushing along an ever-growing pile of cigarette butts because everyone would just drop 'em and step on 'em and keep on shopping…

  • capital@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    Born in early 90’s. We were still responding “non” to the first question that was asked entering a restaurant.

    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      Try working in a restaurant. I worked as a server for awhile, right at the tail end of when they still had smoking and nonsmoking sections. It was awful.

  • leadore@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    At one of my first jobs in an office, everyone had an ashtray at their desk and there was always someone smoking at any given time throughout the day. Same with the breakroom. Sometime around then was when they started making people go to the breakroom to smoke, then a few years later it moved to having to go outside, which just meant walking through the cloud of smoke surrounding the door to get inside. Well, at least one thing has changed for the better since then. 😄

    • pahlimur@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Altria, formerly Philip Morris, still allows smoking in their buildings as of a few years ago. It’s trippy to book a non-smoking room in the 2020s.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldOP
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      30 days ago

      Now they all smell like weed. I actually wish people who smoked weed were more attentive to how they stink, because it’s also very gross.

  • JPSound@lemmy.world
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    30 days ago

    I quite a pack a day habit 12 years ago and one of the first things I noticed when my sense of taste and smell returned was how aweful smokers smelled when they’d walk into a building after a cigarette. I had thought the smell was off me within maybe 10 minutes but I found out quick that the smell never really goes away. Feels like a previous life thinking I smoked because I can’t see myself ever smoking even a single cig for the rest of my life because it’s so revolting to me now. Oddly enough, however, sometimes I’ll see someone light up a fresh cig in a movie or something and I’ll get this strong 2-3 second craving for a smoke. It’s so strange how even over 12 years since my last one, I still get these strange urges for a cig by seeing someone of TV light one up.

    • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.worldOP
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      30 days ago

      My aunt hasn’t smoked in 40 years and she says she still gets the odd random moment like that, and she was really just a social smoker, it wasn’t a heavy habit for her. It’s funny.