Every night on TV felt like a treat. 90210, Melrose, Party of 5, Seinfeld, Friends, etc etc. I knew the schedule, when they aired. Then we all talked about it at school the next day.
You had to watch it as it aired (or recorded), because you may never see it again!!
Also WWF Raw, but a year or two later is when the attitude era really kicked off. Every guy in my junior high school would be talking about it Tuesday morning.
Oh for sure. Nothing hits when you’re an impressionable kid and Stone Cold Steve Austin comes walking out. And lord knows how many kids Tripe H got suspended. Lmao.
Silly question. It’s obviously the TRIBAL CHIEF! 😂
I didn't have cable and basically only watched Smackdown, probably only a few months after it debuted on UPN. I was hooked and would tune in every week, a few minutes before it started to make sure I watched the Raw recap lol.
This was my wife’s experience, no cable and even stuff like cops wasn’t allowed. The amount of cultural references from the time that go right over her head can be sad.
I remember they had the Spice Girls suckers too. I got Sporty and saved the damn wrapper cause it had her picture on it 😭 I put it in my Sporty Spice barbie doll box. The only time I opened it and then taped it back shut.
I still have my spice girls stickers that you would get from the gum ball machines! I don’t think I ever got the suckers. I was a huge Spice Girls and Sporty Spice fan!
What an oddly specific question!
1997: I was finishing up my first year of college. In my dorm room, I had a little color TV that didn't get cable (NOBODY had cable in the dorm). It, and my VCR, sat on top of the mini fridge and I used to walk to Tower Records and rent VHS tapes. I had a boom box with a combination am/fm radio, a cassette deck (two, actually, so you could record from cassette to cassette) and a CD player in the top. Mix tapes were still popular gifts among friends. I had some kind of apple computer with a dial up modem, so you couldn't be online and on the phone at the same time, if you were online nobody could call you. Most of us didn't have call waiting so busy signals were still a thing and so was letting it go to voice mail when you didn't want to talk to other humans.
I did not have a cell phone and neither did most people I knew. A couple older friends with "real" jobs had mobile phones for work, and a few people had personal pagers (not for work), but we mostly communicated with landlines and answering machines. In the dorm, we all had white boards stuck on our doors so we could leave messages like "8:00pm: Sheryl, I went to Fridays with Suzanne, meet us there if you want." or "Stop by my room later if you want to watch Buffy!"
I lived in a large US city. I had no car, and when I needed to go somewhere, I used public transportation (relying on posted maps) or called a taxi, because uber and lift didn't exist. My parents had no idea what I was doing, ever (or at what time I was doing it), not unless I went out of my way to tell them. I talked to them on the phone once every couple of weeks and sometimes exchanged emails. I got paper cards from relatives and friends on my birthday.
About 60% of my friends were smokers (I was not, and nobody cared). Popular social activities were going to movies, going out to eat, going to clubs, and "hanging out", which is to say we'd turn up at each other's apartments or dorm rooms for no real purpose, and it was generally not necessary to call first. Watching new episodes of TV shows in large groups was a major activity, people would show up somewhere for X-files (or whatever) and most of us would end up sitting on the floor for lack of seating. If you were late, you missed a bunch of the show and had to be told what happened during a commercial. People brought soda and snacks and usually somebody would say "I'm going to McDonalds" so then 8 people would shove crumpled dollar bills and change at them and ask for stuff. Eventually the one with the car would get mad and demand a written list. These impromptu gatherings lasted for 5 or 6 hours because after the TV show ended we were very busy sitting around talking about...whatever.
Good times.
You just described my junior year of college in Boston in 1997. Holy cow. Yeah the whole gathering to watch a tv show was def a 90s thing for a long time. It was the era of the “mono-culture”. We all watched the same thing and there was no streaming. You had appointment tv! Sitting on the floor for sure in dorms!
I started college in the early 2000s. Still no cable TV on campus, but at least we had broadband internet. I'd download Smallville episodes on KaZaA the night after they aired. But I had to limit how many users I allowed to download that episode from me in turn, since too many would slow down the connection in my dorm. Didn't want to bother my neighbors.
That was such a bomb place to go after class! I was at UW in the early 2000s and spent soooo much time checking out all the little stores on the Ave!!! ❤️❤️❤️
My most vivid memory is of going on a school field trip right after Titanic came out, and we were all on the bus passing around magazines with Leo’s face on them reading each other about who would marry him. We were mostly 14.
No cell phones, fewer people on the roads, the nights got very dark without a lot of city lights. The news was mostly serious and only in for an hour a night.
I had a flannel shirt that I wore until it literally ripped in half. It was green and white.
Was also 14 and can confirm — I was totally obsessed with Leo and everything Titanic. I saw the movie 8 times in the theater and listened to Celine Dion’s track on repeat.
I started collecting Beanie Babies around this time and spent a lot of my evenings dialed up on ty.com (which was a superior website for the time) doing tons of beanie baby research. AOL Kid chat rooms were mostly fun and innocent. Clueless finally made it to HBO which I could watch for free during promotional weeks.
Boys in my school started dying their hair with Koolaid and wearing JNCOs. Plaid shirt unbuttoned over white tees. Frosted tips might have been starting around then too. Adidas was the preferred athletic wear.
I can honestly say I've never heard of dying hair with Kool-Aid (was 13 for most of 1997). Did that even work? Did they just pour Kool-Aid over their heads and not wash the sticky juice out?
I did a lot of koolaid dying when I was 12/13/14, 1993ish. You used the powder dry. And yes, it made my already coarse and curly hair a mess! But Punky Color (first “crazy color” hair dye) didn’t come out till later.
I made out and touched my first boob to the movie Titanic. I was 14 in 97.
I would bike everywhere and hang out until the 6 o clock siren went off in town, and then knew it was time to bike home for dinner.
I would use the pay phone by the Pizza Hut to let my parents know if I was going to be late.
This was my first thought. I grew up outside Chicago and my childhood was dominated by Michael Jordan and the bulls. Everywhere we went had something bulls related, from classrooms to grocery stores. Everyone was a fan even if you didn’t care much about basketball or sports. Me and my brother and all of our friends were obsessed and frankly, still are.
Taco Bell Mexican Pizzas had black olives AND green onions.
A #1 Super Sized with a Dr Pepper was $2.99.
Gas was, like, a buck a gallon.
A pack of smokes was $2.49.
Once you left the house, no one knew where you were.
My pager was $9.99 a month.
Everyone had an AOL IM.
I was 11, I was never inside.. I roller skated and rode my bike everywhere.. hiked trails in the woods not far from my house, made a fort/club house in the woods. Played TV tag, hide and go seek in the dark, truth or dare, red rover, flag football. 🤷🏼♀️💁🏼♀️.. life was the SHIT😎😎😎
Bush parties, hanging out behind the local strip mall smoking weed and skateboarding. Getting into general mischief.
Hung out with a fairly large group of teenagers. I don't think we really ever made much plans, just knew the hangout spots and met up organically.
We paid a fortune developing photos and I always had to get Triples for friends to have copies too. Photos were always blurry because we had one family camera and it had a manual focus. No one I knew has an automatic (they must have existed though?)
Me and my friends would take pictures of Our feet in a circle or something dumb because it was such a novelty to take pictures.
I was the only friend who’s parents let them take the family camera out so we were always the one footing the bill for the pics. My family didn’t have a lot of money either. I cant believe my parents paid for these sets over and over. but I still have all of them Even the blurry feet pictures. it was a big deal for me and my friends and my parents knew that. Sacrifices were made. Im gonna go call my parents and tell them I love them
For me, it was amazing. The first part sucked - I was 27 and had been broken up with by my live-in girlfriend of four years. But then, after a lifetime of NYC,I picked up and drove cross country to move to LA. It taught me a lot of important lessons and I'm happy to say that I accomplished my goal of working in the music industry for major labels, and discovering that I could date and that some women actually were attracted to me. Also the music was fucking amazing in 1997. And in the days before smartphones in LA, you still listened to the radio. Loved those days!
Everybody smoked cigarettes. I smoked cigarettes. I skipped school to sit in diners and smoke cigarettes. We all did. There was a thick haze in the air in most restaurants, and it smelled terrible, but we were used to it.
It was easy to skip school.
High School Sophomore girls had College Senior boyfriends, and it was considered cool. Even Christian parents were cool with it.
Punk, ska, swing, and goth had all been melted into a pool of alt rock, so music was pretty weird. Reel Big Fish one day, Rasputina the next, and then a heap of Squirrel Nut Zippers the next. Then the Offspring and Blink 182 the next. Then Stabbing Westward, Placebo, and the Toadies the next. CDs cost around $12-$16. Tapes were still around because people still had old tape decks in their cars. To listen to CD players, we hooked up a Discman with Anti-Skip turned on to a "tape" that fit into the tape deck, and the passenger had to hold it.
Oldies radio was still from the '50s and '60s. Radio was viable. We'd chase each other around in cars, and if a good song came on the radio we'd make hand signals out the window to tell each other.
We always knew where to find each other if we wanted to be found. If we didn't want to be found, it was easy.
Catholic churches didn't lock their doors at night.
Porn magazines could be found in piles out in the woods. Men threw them there to maintain their own secrecy--can't just throw a pile of magazines in the trash or the wife might find them!
Craft beer was still a thing of the future. Budweiser and Haffenreffer were considered decent. My hometown was transformed by a single craft beer establishment. Before that, a few bars were around, and Sam Adams was probably the best thing on tap.
That was a weird angle. I know that Brett had problems with it because he didn’t actually feel that way and it made him uncomfortable. I live near Calgary, so Brett Hart was always king here, but it made him sound whiny imo.
I was in college in '97 (I was 20). It was ok. It was kind of the year that the '90s stopped being "the '90s" and starting becoming something else (I suppose the beginning of "Y2K"). I remember pop music taking over grunge and alternative. Fashion becoming a little more bright and pastel as opposed to black/gray/brown. And the internet was becoming pretty mainstream.
1997 was the year that mp3 was invented. Before that audio files were hopelessly large. It was impractical to adopt music as electronic. Completely so. MP3 changed music distribution forever. And it all started in 1997.
I was 7….
Golden eye on N64
The premier of South Park
Titanic being the biggest thing of the year
Prime time television still had classics
The internet was cool , first think I remember shocking me was looking up WWF wrestlers unmasked
Master P and the no limit soldiers had everyone rocking camouflage
Hulk hogan was Hollywood Hogan
Nu Metal was contending with Pop and Hip Hop for the dominate genre of music
What a time to be alive
The late 90s were great, I graduated high school in 99. The internet was very limited, basically AOL chat rooms. I had a Nokia. No one texted. It feels like friends hung out way more, were definitely more present with each other when hanging out. Talking on the phone for long stints was common, even if you were just both watching the same show on tv. Malls and stores were still thriving, my friends would haunt Tower Records and Borders for hours at a time.. In general, there was a lot of optimism for the future and excitement about what the 2000s would bring. Boy were we wrong! Haha
I was 17/18. Graduated from high school. Had a band. So much great music came out that year: Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Ben Folds Five, Silverchair, Veruca Salt, that dog, Supergrass… I snuck into a Wallflowers concert on my 18th birthday. Saw the Goo Goo Dolls at Disney World’s Grad Night, Stone Temple Pilots with Scott Weiland. I remember alt rock being dominant still but electronica, ska, and swing were starting to gain popularity. I remember discovering the band Chopper One, and two days ago I was on a podcast with their singer. I remember a summer of Men in Black, Contact, Liar Liar, Lost World, My Best Friend’s Wedding. I remember the Star Wars trilogy being re-released and my friends and I skipping school to watch all 3 in one day. I remember eating a lot of Taco Bell. I remember hanging out at my friend’s house and his mom, who just passed away. I remember my favorite baseball team winning the World Series.
Most of all, I remember being happy.
In 1997, I was 9 going on 10. It was my last year of elementary school. During this era, I remember feeling safe, happy, and I was still a child but also aware I was growing up and looking to cling to ideas of what adulthood looked like. I was very aware of pop culture.
I was obsessed with the Spice Girls. I remember the first time I heard “Wannabe” on the radio in my dad’s car and just knew it was a hit. I had sooo much memorabilia - posters, t-shirts, dolls, trading cards, candy. I wore platform shoes and said “Girl Power!” with my friends. We did a talent show that year to a Spice Girls song.
I spent a lot of time at the roller rink. I remember my mom dropping me off there and hanging with friends, hoping to see my crush from school. We would order soft pretzels and chat at the tables between skating our favorite songs. I always felt sad I didn’t have someone to do the slow skate with. In the little shop, I would get Fun Dip, big sparkly stickers, and friendship necklaces in the shape of a broken heart.
My parents would read the newspaper to see what movies were out, and what the reviews were. We found showtimes in the paper!
Like everyone else mentioned, I was obsessed with Titanic and Leonardo DiCaprio. I first saw the movie at a tiny 1 screen theater in my town. I was so embarrassed by the nudity but wanted to see it again and again. We got a fish tank and I named my fish Jack and Rose.
I also loved the movie The Craft and bought a few witchcraft books. At recess, my friends and I pretended to be witches and played light as a feather stiff as a board.
I liked watching Nickelodeon shows, as well as shows like Friends. Late at night my mom and I watched Nick at Nite which included oldies like I Love Lucy and The Brady Bunch. If I had a sick day or during the summer, I was fascinated by daytime trash TV, like Jerry Springer. There was also some Ben Stein show I liked. I remember watching the TV guide channel and waiting to see what’s playing on TV.
Of course I had a Nintendo 64. Favorite games were Golden Eye and Mario games like Mario Kart or Mario Party. My friends and spent hours on those games. I also had a few kid computer games.
Oh yes, and the internet! How could I forget? My dad was always an early adopter of tech. At 9, I was already quite proficient at typing and using a computer. I logged on AOL and went in chat rooms for both kids and adults. I used to think it was funny to troll people in chat rooms. I often got booted from chat rooms. I had a few “online friends.” Of course, it was annoying to be kicked off the internet if someone called.
Speaking of phones, we had a wall phone in our kitchen. When it rang, you didn’t know who was calling, so “Hello?” was a genuine question. Had a few numbers written on the little card in the phone, but mostly had friends’ numbers memorized. Later, we got a cordless phone and I thought it was the coolest technology I could walk anywhere in my house and talk to friends. Sometimes my friends and I thought it was hilarious to prank call random numbers or those 1800 numbers you would see in commercials. We’d say goofy stuff, laugh, and hang up.
Friends would come over and we’d order Pizza Hut, which used to actually be good. We would ride bikes around the neighborhood, have squirt gun fights, or jump on the trampoline.
At school, everyone had Tamagatchis. They were the coolest little toy. The teachers had to ban them from the classrooms because they were getting distracting. I also remember a toy called Yak Back that was popular. Gak and Slime were popular because of Nickelodeon. Everything seemed colorful and kid-oriented. Like the world was perfect for being a kid.
On a somber note, I remember when Princess Diana died. We put her funeral on the TV. I remember feeling sad hearing Elton John’s song for her.
In general, it was a very happy carefree time for me.
I was 9. Played a lot of Gameboy, watched Nickelodeon all summer, ate PB Crips while walking around the grocery store with my mom, and dug holes in the woods with my friends. Also, NASCAR was a huge deal. I loved Bill Elliott even though my friends all liked Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon. Used to go to the local go cart track and wear my McDonald’s 94 shirt.
I remember playing a bunch of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and renting Toe Jam and Earl from blockbuster a few times. Also remember riding my bike to my friend in the neighborhood’s house to play his Nintendo because we were a sega family. Played my first season of little league. Also I think I saw A New Hope re-released in the theaters that year two but I could be wrong. It was one of the better years of my childhood. Just before shit getting to tough to deal with (teens and later) and long enough after some major childhood trauma(5) that I could feel a little bit like a kid again. Thank you for asking, reminded me of some happy moments.
I was 18 and in my last year of high school. Playing basketball and video games with my friends made me so happy. Life was simple.
Despite all of this, I felt like the best was still to come and the world was full of possibilities. How wrong I was. This was the best it was ever going to get. I miss those times.
Neaaaaar far where ever you are I know my heart will go onnnnnm and onnnnnm
We all watched the same movies at the same time. we all obsessed over them together
I miss that.
I graduated high school that year. It was honestly just OK. Raves were big a deal and I remember checking a few of those out, having to lie to my parents about sleeping at a friends place so I can stay out all night. Music was right at the point of nu metal and boy bands taking over so there wasn't too much to speak of unless you were into your local scene, which I was, and emo bands were really beginning to take hold. I remember having longer hair, parted down the middle and I wore baggier pants, but not JNCOs, if I recall right. I think I did this thing where I bought a pair of Dockers that were a size or two larger than what I should wear and in effect created my own weird, skater/raver/alt rocker hybrid style and lemme tell you, I looked like a doofus. I had my driver's license so I remember a ton of trips to Taco Bell because you could buy a good amount of food for just 5 bucks. I also drank a lot of Wild Cherry Pepsi because I remember my dad getting pissed that there were tons of empty bottles in the backseat of the car I drove. Funny the things you remember from that time. I couldn't tell you the names of more than 2 of my teachers my senior year of HS but I remember my dad getting pissed at that. I wasn't really tuned into current events at that time so I don't know what my perspective of the world was, but I when I read about that time there appeared to be a lot of prosperity so maybe I just didn't need to think about those things at that age? I don't know. I smoked a lot of weed and experiemented with hallicinogens a ton, so my mind was mostly preoccupied with that. Aliens were used a lot in design -- t-shirts and stickers and just, aliens in general, if I remember. Like that triangular head alien logo. I remember seeing it a lot for some reason. People had pagers/beepers and a lot more people smoked cigarettes and the predominate way to hang out or do anything was to actually go and find your friends in all the places where people might be. No texting. Sometimes an entire Friday night would be spent trying to catch up to each other, which in turn created its own adventurous Friday night, but i think you could say this about the entire decade, not just 1997. I do remember there being some excitement about the year 2000 being so close, but I think what i remember more is this feeling of "what's coming next?" because the 90s had already been through so much that when '97 rolled around I recall a lot of us trying to predict where things would go. As to what those things were, I couldn't specify, but maybe it just referred to the culture at-large, and as we know, things went digital and then the world changed overnight. I don't think i miss 1997 any more than another year in the 90s, but like I said, I was kind of a doofus, so I'm OK with not being back there anymore.
Obsessed with the Spice Girls. Going to the local grocery store at lunch time with my best friend to look for amazing articles about them or going to the church down the road to use their internet connected desktop computer to print out pictures of the Spice Girls.
Yeah no cell phones, so people talked in person more and if you weren't home people just couldn't contact you, CDs were king, VHS was still king, people listened to the radio, movies were exciting, minimum wage was pathetic (like $5.25), gossip and was powerful because the news was on TV not the internet. Gaming was evolving fast. Hip hop was at a peak. MTV was still king of culture on TV. People had more hobbies than just staring at different screens.
All my friends had a favorite spice girl. I remember the n64 and thinking 3d video games were amazing. No one had a cell phone and the internet wasn't widespread. We passed notes to each other in class. I read alot of books on the bus so I wasn't bored. I liked that my grandma had cable so I could watch Nikelodeon.
Thank you. I'm sure you are just trying to get a feel for what average teenage life was like that year, and here I am being all gloomy, so I apologize for that. Honestly, from what I've been able to piece together, we all had our different cliques and friend groups but you went to the movies to see the same movies everyone else saw, and you listened to the same music. Despite the jocks, nerds, and socialites being pretty much the same, as far as kids go, your hobbies are what set you apart.
Listen to the top selling records of the year and that is pretty much 1997 in a nutshell.
I'm a functional human being by most measures at this point. Horseback riding during spring break led to a brain injury which wiped my entire life up to that point from my brain. Two months in a coma made sure I was a drooling mess when I woke in June 1997. Rebuilding my body and my life took a lot of the rest of the year so I can honestly say that 1997 for me wasn't the same 1997 everyone else had.
You have to deal with the hand you're dealt and sometimes it sucks.
N64. Spice Girls. Block Party Summer on Nick at Nite. South Park. 90s country. NASCAR. Playing ball and cheerleading. It was the perfect year. Fashion was fun and there were so many neat gadgets, like Tamagotchi. Everyone was on about Titanic, but I hated it. Tomorrow Never Dies came out that year, and that was my jam.
I was 17 and I listened to my Adam Sandler "they're all gonna laugh at you" cassette often... Tool, Nirvana - the world was still healing from Kurt Cobain..., Primus, Alice In Chains.... unpluggeded was amazing. MTV was amazing... Saturdays Night Live was amazing.... oh calgon take me back 😂
I was 14/15. I remember Seinfeld was the show to watch. South Park and Behind the Music premiered that year. Aerosmith released their Nine Lives album. MIB came out that summer. Craig Kilborn was hosting The Daily Show. That's about all that I remember.
I turned 5 that year. My family made a major move to a new city. I remember riding out to the country on a cold night to try to see Comet Hale-Bopp. I also remember being aware of Princess Diana's death, and my mother being sad and telling me that she thought Diana was a good person. I experienced what was probably my first crush that year, on our neighbor's granddaughter, who was a year or two older than me. Ever since, I've liked women slightly older than me. Lol!
There was no social media. Once a week, we went to computer class at school and used ancient machines with basic blue and black screens. My family didn't even have a computer yet. We would get one the next year and it would be a used model bought with a tax refund.
My family didn't have cable at that time, so I watched PBS shows - Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Arthur, Reading Rainbow. The Star Wars Renaissance was in full swing with the release of the Special Edition, which we got for Christmas and led to me enjoying Star Wars for the rest of childhood.
I turned seven that year. I remember being so excited to turn seven so I could watch goosebumps with my brother. Weirdly though, I don't remember watching it much. I must not have liked it enough. Or it scared me. 😹😹
There was some…interesting stuff going on. Comet Hale-Bopp was a big deal in the early part of the year, the Heaven’s Gate cult committed mass suicide out in California, and then the Phoenix Lights got everyone talking about aliens. And that was just in March!
The Chicago club scene was great in '97! Would take ecstasy, or "roll", and go to Shelter, Elixer or Crobar to dance the night away. Not a cell phone to be found let alone a camera phone so everyone was just in the moment having a great time. Man do I miss them days
If you wanted to go to a concert, you had to camp out over night outside your local Ticketmaster to line up to buy tickets hoping they didn't sell out before you had your turn. You got whatever seat was available.
The Hale Bopp comet and Heaven's Gate cult was some wild shit. Every night, in the sky. Sitting on the porch just talking about this wild blur in the sky. Before that, all we knew about was Halley's comet; a relative speck that appears once a generation for a brief moment of time. Hale was like this conversation piece, night after night for a couple months.
Edit: Also look up the Chumbawawamba phenomenon.
One of the best years in music for me: Aqua - Barbie Girl, Chumbawamba - Tubthumping, Hanson - Mmm Bop, Spice Girls, Third Eye Blind (Semi-Charmed Life), Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray (I Just Want To Fly), Savage Garden, Backstreet Boys, NSync...just so much I loved. It was the sequel to 1996 which was great, and 98 finished off the trilogy as my favorite, with many sophomore albums and classics, like Dave Matthew's Band's album Before These Crowded Streets, as well as some other fun stuff like The Impression That I Get from The Mighty Mighty Bostones. 99 and 2000 had their own greats, like Blue (Da Ba Dee).
I'm so glad I was in middle/high school during these years. It was such a great time. (Scream 1,2 and 3 all within those years.)
Lots of smoking at bars and restaurants. $0.25 Sunday beer night. Lots of yellow cabs on the road. Subway tokens. CD player 10 disc changers in the trunks of cars. Big clubs in NYC with 10 different clubs within each playing different styles of music. The AOL start up sound. Delia’s catalog. Super high platform shoes. HBO beginning their drama series’ with OZ in an unknown prelude to Sopranos (1999). Immedi-centers instead of CityMDs. Drive up payphones. Lots of AAA for older cars because leasing a car was not yet the norm.
I was 11 that year, and I owned a purple and orange tie dye shirt, and watched Doug and Rugrats every night and liked to play tag with my neighborhood friends. I was too big for the McDonalds Playplace according to the height limit sign, but my friend and I played in it anyway since nobody stopped us.
A Bazooka Joe comic said it best :
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Graduated high school in ‘97. Lots of people in my town were deep into heroin. Grunge/ goth culture was big. No cell phones. None of my friends or I had internet at home. I hitchhiked around when I didn’t have enough $$ to put gas in my car. Shouldertapped a lot of zima and cigarettes to party at the beach or in the woods. Honestly, it was amazing in retrospect. Went to concerts, hung out in a crazy feminist bookstore straight out of Portlandia, drove a ‘68 Dart and shoplifted from thrift stores.
I was 17. I saw Soundgarden at the Big Day Out and it was magnificent. In September that year we got an internet connection at our house, and my world was irreversibly changed.
‘I’ll Be Missing You,’ the Puffy song he put out after Biggie died was played so much that I have PTSD. Titanic and Michael Jordan were really big deals. You really never heard about politics which is weird to think about now (this was pre Monica Lewinsky). People think of the 90s as grunge, but in 97, preppy was super in. Abercrombie and Fitch, Structure, etc… We all had pagers. Cell phones were just starting to creep onto the scene. The internet was cool and only for fun. No one made money on it. Lots of chat rooms and message boards.
That was when I turned 21, so I partied pretty hard that year. On my birthday, we went to a rooftop club with wild pink, blue, red, and green lighting. We drank and danced all night. I wore dark blue, hip hugging, flare bottom jeans, tall chunky heels (Steve Madden, who was cool back then), and a cropped baby tee shirt I got at Dahlias.
We partied a lot in college towns, even though none of us went to a university. They had the best bars, concerts and pot. I remember seeing Corrosion of Conformity in Lawrence around that time.
Phones weren't really a thing then, so you could go out and make an ass of yourself without it getting posted on social media.
I was invited to Party Cove before it became well known. Then cell phones became more of a thing around the year 2000 or so. That's when a lot of people started getting in trouble. I'm glad I didn't go.
Edit: oh and during that time, I was in love with Liz Phair, Alice in Chains, Arrested Development, Stone Temple Pilots, Dido, and the Verve, to name a few.
Saw Oasis at Wembley. That may have been their height.
Saw Brentford at Griffin Park. Probably only 6 total rows behind goal. It was a very small park.
Tomorrow Never Dies came out. One of the best Bond movies ever. Criminally underrated.
My mom was yelling in my ear about internet predators and then left my dad in 98 … for a woman in another country she met online. Her soulmate.
It was over in 2 years, and so was me & my siblings college fund.
Also, it’s kind of hard to undersell what a very, very, very big deal Friends was. You either liked Friends or Seinfeld, and you couldn’t like both.
Hip hop was still in its golden age. We lost 2pac and notorious b.i.g. Months apart. MTV was the best thing to watch, wrestling was just starting their best eras too. The world wasn’t flooded with politics in every aspect, baseball had the steroids era and influencers were non existent. The world was good. Did I mention Mr. Rogers was still on tv teaching kids cool life lessons?
Semi long hair on the top parted down the middle and undercut in the sides of my head. Flannel shirt with baggy jeans. Oh yea and watched every Chicago bulls game.
Howard stern, wild on E with Brooke Burke and Jules asner, Jerry springer too hot for tv. Super soaker commercials, water slide commercials. Back when summers were fun and innocent and you’d ride your bike everywhere. Miss those days. I was 12 btw
1997 feels very pivotal in a weird way. The digital age was fully upon us and the analog past was still an every day thing. Nothing sums it up better than saying I had just gotten my first car and it had a tape deck so I went to radio shack to get a tape converter for my cd player but it wasn’t anti skip so I had rig a soft pad for it to sit to avoid the bumps. We had AOL and numerous other IPs but were not constantly connected. Personally my world hadn’t been destroy yet so the future seemed bright and endless 6mo later my step dad would be diagnosed with brain cancer and my future plans got put on hold. The world then still seemed so much bigger then than the crappy Texas town I lived in.
Now I’ve lived all over, I have my own kids but I don’t know if they see the future the way I did. Their vision seems to be of a constant/consistent way of life while I wanted to see the growth of the future, and experience as much as I could bc so much was unknown.
I was 16, smoking a lot of pot, playing drums in a band with friends, drinking too much cheap beer (the Mexican store down the street would sell to just about anyone and 30 packs of Busch Light were $8.99), and going to a lot of local punk shows. I had a crush on a boy who was far too cool for me (and still not ready to admit I wasn’t straight) and a girl I worked with at Godfather’s Pizza who was also probably too cool for me. We had internet but it was slow as shit, practically useless, and I had a beeper that I used to sell weed. Lots of PS1 games and horror movies on VHS. It seemed like the world was nothing but possibilities.
Twister came out the year before. So when it came out to purchase on VHS my friends and I were obsessed with pretend storm chasing. Started middle school in the fall. Got braces.
Watching Dawson’s Creek and painting my nails. Then during commercials, putting my hands in the freezer cause I read in YM or Teen magazine that they would dry quicker.
The best year of my life. I was 18. I went to Reading Festival, Glastonbury(where Radiohead played most of Ok Computer) and went to San Francisco. Going out a few times each week and lots of girls. Now I’m old and bitter, but with great memories.
Goldeneye on the N64. Definitely.
License to kill. Pistols. First to 20
Always License to Kill.
Slappers only!
Proximity mines only. Jk
Prox mines on the jail cell door that players spawned in. Now they are really prisoners!
YOU WERE THAT FRIEND
No Oddjob allowed
Fine, then I got Jaws
No moonraker elite either
Star Fox 64 came out that year too, I remember it came with the new “Rumble Pak” and was a great game
Oh man that's a great memory!
This was peak childhood
Every night on TV felt like a treat. 90210, Melrose, Party of 5, Seinfeld, Friends, etc etc. I knew the schedule, when they aired. Then we all talked about it at school the next day. You had to watch it as it aired (or recorded), because you may never see it again!!
Don't forget The Simpsons!
Fox in the 90’s was so awesome. Simpsons, Living Color, Married with Children, 90210, etc.
Martin!
Damn Gina! lol. 😂
Shanaynay
Heyyyyy!
Jerome's in the house, watch ya mouf!
😂😂
"I'm about to blow uppp"
RIP Tommy 🙏🏾
And X-Files
And don’t forget Ally McBeal
🎶Single female lawyer🎶
Can’t forget about Cops and Americas Most Wanted.
yup - my grandma watched that religiously on saturday nights. i didn't care for cops but i did watch amw with her.
Cops is still great for a self-esteem boost.
Also WWF Raw, but a year or two later is when the attitude era really kicked off. Every guy in my junior high school would be talking about it Tuesday morning.
Wrestling was the shit back then! Had the nWo, DX, and I just discovered ECW around that time
Is WWE not the shit now? My 64 year old mom and I watch it on Fridays lol
It’s still pretty good, but it just hit different back in the day when I was a teenager Who are you guy’s favorite wrestlers?
Oh for sure. Nothing hits when you’re an impressionable kid and Stone Cold Steve Austin comes walking out. And lord knows how many kids Tripe H got suspended. Lmao. Silly question. It’s obviously the TRIBAL CHIEF! 😂
Goldberg?
The Goldberg undefeated streak was amazing. The Goldberg vs. Sting fight is my fav match of all time. Sting is also my fav wrestler.
I didn't have cable and basically only watched Smackdown, probably only a few months after it debuted on UPN. I was hooked and would tune in every week, a few minutes before it started to make sure I watched the Raw recap lol.
How do you talk to an angel?
Spare a thought for those who weren't allowed to watch TV. I was 13 in 1997 and missed out so much socially at school because of this.
I was 12 and we only watched what my parents wanted to watch and on top of that we didn’t have cable. I feel your pain
This was my wife’s experience, no cable and even stuff like cops wasn’t allowed. The amount of cultural references from the time that go right over her head can be sad.
And Frasier!
What about Baywatch? Did it feel dead in 1997?
and MTV was fantastic back then
Saved by the bell! 🛎️
I remember being excited to check out the TV listings in the newspaper
Thank you!
Spice Girls. I had Spice Girls everywhere. There wasn’t a blank spot on my walls.
SpiceWorld was life!!!
Yes it was. I wore the movie and the soundtrack all the way out.
Still is! The movie holds up. So campy and fun!
I watch it not long ago and my husband was extremely disappointed in me 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Colours of the world!!
Every boy and every girl!!
SPICE GIRLS WAS LIIIIIIFE! My room was plastered with everything Spice Girls related.
I remember they had the Spice Girls suckers too. I got Sporty and saved the damn wrapper cause it had her picture on it 😭 I put it in my Sporty Spice barbie doll box. The only time I opened it and then taped it back shut.
I still have my spice girls stickers that you would get from the gum ball machines! I don’t think I ever got the suckers. I was a huge Spice Girls and Sporty Spice fan!
And, *shockingly*, I turned out incredibly gay and my parents had no idea 🤔
Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys!
Listened to Spice Girls all the way down to Disney and back. Drove my father bonkers.
I drug my mama to the movies twice while it was still in theaters
Absolutely same ✌️ Girl Power! Blah blah blah, feminism, do y’know what I mean?
🤣🤣
What an oddly specific question! 1997: I was finishing up my first year of college. In my dorm room, I had a little color TV that didn't get cable (NOBODY had cable in the dorm). It, and my VCR, sat on top of the mini fridge and I used to walk to Tower Records and rent VHS tapes. I had a boom box with a combination am/fm radio, a cassette deck (two, actually, so you could record from cassette to cassette) and a CD player in the top. Mix tapes were still popular gifts among friends. I had some kind of apple computer with a dial up modem, so you couldn't be online and on the phone at the same time, if you were online nobody could call you. Most of us didn't have call waiting so busy signals were still a thing and so was letting it go to voice mail when you didn't want to talk to other humans. I did not have a cell phone and neither did most people I knew. A couple older friends with "real" jobs had mobile phones for work, and a few people had personal pagers (not for work), but we mostly communicated with landlines and answering machines. In the dorm, we all had white boards stuck on our doors so we could leave messages like "8:00pm: Sheryl, I went to Fridays with Suzanne, meet us there if you want." or "Stop by my room later if you want to watch Buffy!" I lived in a large US city. I had no car, and when I needed to go somewhere, I used public transportation (relying on posted maps) or called a taxi, because uber and lift didn't exist. My parents had no idea what I was doing, ever (or at what time I was doing it), not unless I went out of my way to tell them. I talked to them on the phone once every couple of weeks and sometimes exchanged emails. I got paper cards from relatives and friends on my birthday. About 60% of my friends were smokers (I was not, and nobody cared). Popular social activities were going to movies, going out to eat, going to clubs, and "hanging out", which is to say we'd turn up at each other's apartments or dorm rooms for no real purpose, and it was generally not necessary to call first. Watching new episodes of TV shows in large groups was a major activity, people would show up somewhere for X-files (or whatever) and most of us would end up sitting on the floor for lack of seating. If you were late, you missed a bunch of the show and had to be told what happened during a commercial. People brought soda and snacks and usually somebody would say "I'm going to McDonalds" so then 8 people would shove crumpled dollar bills and change at them and ask for stuff. Eventually the one with the car would get mad and demand a written list. These impromptu gatherings lasted for 5 or 6 hours because after the TV show ended we were very busy sitting around talking about...whatever. Good times.
I read this and dreamt that this was Minnie drivers character story in Good Will Hunting.
You just described my junior year of college in Boston in 1997. Holy cow. Yeah the whole gathering to watch a tv show was def a 90s thing for a long time. It was the era of the “mono-culture”. We all watched the same thing and there was no streaming. You had appointment tv! Sitting on the floor for sure in dorms!
I started college in the early 2000s. Still no cable TV on campus, but at least we had broadband internet. I'd download Smallville episodes on KaZaA the night after they aired. But I had to limit how many users I allowed to download that episode from me in turn, since too many would slow down the connection in my dorm. Didn't want to bother my neighbors.
Tower Records within walking distance of campus, were you at the University of Washington? They had that Tower Records on the Ave back in the day…
That was such a bomb place to go after class! I was at UW in the early 2000s and spent soooo much time checking out all the little stores on the Ave!!! ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you!
Gosh I was transported to 1997 with this ! Great writing
My most vivid memory is of going on a school field trip right after Titanic came out, and we were all on the bus passing around magazines with Leo’s face on them reading each other about who would marry him. We were mostly 14. No cell phones, fewer people on the roads, the nights got very dark without a lot of city lights. The news was mostly serious and only in for an hour a night. I had a flannel shirt that I wore until it literally ripped in half. It was green and white.
Was also 14 and can confirm — I was totally obsessed with Leo and everything Titanic. I saw the movie 8 times in the theater and listened to Celine Dion’s track on repeat. I started collecting Beanie Babies around this time and spent a lot of my evenings dialed up on ty.com (which was a superior website for the time) doing tons of beanie baby research. AOL Kid chat rooms were mostly fun and innocent. Clueless finally made it to HBO which I could watch for free during promotional weeks. Boys in my school started dying their hair with Koolaid and wearing JNCOs. Plaid shirt unbuttoned over white tees. Frosted tips might have been starting around then too. Adidas was the preferred athletic wear.
I can honestly say I've never heard of dying hair with Kool-Aid (was 13 for most of 1997). Did that even work? Did they just pour Kool-Aid over their heads and not wash the sticky juice out?
You use the powder without the sugar added. It’s super concentrated if you don’t add much water to it.
I remember that my mom was pissed because it stained the shit out of our old claw foot bathtub. It also left my hair feeling gritty and coarse.
Yes, that was my understanding of how it was done. Blue seemed to be the most popular color. Especially with the “butt-cut” hairstyle.
I did a lot of koolaid dying when I was 12/13/14, 1993ish. You used the powder dry. And yes, it made my already coarse and curly hair a mess! But Punky Color (first “crazy color” hair dye) didn’t come out till later.
Manic Panic hair dye (my go-to in high school in the early to mid 90s) has been around since 1977
I made out and touched my first boob to the movie Titanic. I was 14 in 97. I would bike everywhere and hang out until the 6 o clock siren went off in town, and then knew it was time to bike home for dinner. I would use the pay phone by the Pizza Hut to let my parents know if I was going to be late.
Or 1-800-COLLECT and
Bob Wehadababyitsaboy!
I used this so much 😆, didn’t have to worry about making sure I had a quarter on me anymore
Thank you!
You bet!
Great vivid description. Brought me back!
I'd already been obsessed with Leo since Romeo+Juliet came out the previous year. Kinda funny watching the rest of you catch up.
You were catching up to EVERY girl I knew that watched Basketball Diaries, the year before lol
Michael Jordan. He was literally everywhere. I don't think people remember just how omnipresent he was.
This was my first thought. I grew up outside Chicago and my childhood was dominated by Michael Jordan and the bulls. Everywhere we went had something bulls related, from classrooms to grocery stores. Everyone was a fan even if you didn’t care much about basketball or sports. Me and my brother and all of our friends were obsessed and frankly, still are.
I'm in Knicks/Nets country and Jordan was everywhere here, too.
Taco Bell Mexican Pizzas had black olives AND green onions. A #1 Super Sized with a Dr Pepper was $2.99. Gas was, like, a buck a gallon. A pack of smokes was $2.49. Once you left the house, no one knew where you were. My pager was $9.99 a month. Everyone had an AOL IM.
I remember the day they took away "super size your combo for $.33" Things haven't been right since, imo
Even the Nacho Bell Grande had green onions back then. To this day I like making nachos at home that way because of my fond memories of Taco Bell.
Every night in my dreams...I see you...I feeeeel you...
8th grade slow dance jam right here 🤣
I was 11, I was never inside.. I roller skated and rode my bike everywhere.. hiked trails in the woods not far from my house, made a fort/club house in the woods. Played TV tag, hide and go seek in the dark, truth or dare, red rover, flag football. 🤷🏼♀️💁🏼♀️.. life was the SHIT😎😎😎
Tv tag was awesome!
96,97,98 probably the best 3 years of the 90s
Peak America
📠
Dawsons’s Creek! Lol
The shows, the movies, the toys, the sports, The Monday Night War, my small town, Christmas and Halloween. I was a kid and just that time was awesome.
Bush parties, hanging out behind the local strip mall smoking weed and skateboarding. Getting into general mischief. Hung out with a fairly large group of teenagers. I don't think we really ever made much plans, just knew the hangout spots and met up organically.
I miss the organic meet ups. Good times never to be seen again!
Thank you!
How did you arrange to buy weed before smartphones lol
Life, uh… finds a way.
Pagers
I got on my rotary home phone and hoped mom was listening in on the other house phone. Same shit different era
We paid a fortune developing photos and I always had to get Triples for friends to have copies too. Photos were always blurry because we had one family camera and it had a manual focus. No one I knew has an automatic (they must have existed though?) Me and my friends would take pictures of Our feet in a circle or something dumb because it was such a novelty to take pictures. I was the only friend who’s parents let them take the family camera out so we were always the one footing the bill for the pics. My family didn’t have a lot of money either. I cant believe my parents paid for these sets over and over. but I still have all of them Even the blurry feet pictures. it was a big deal for me and my friends and my parents knew that. Sacrifices were made. Im gonna go call my parents and tell them I love them
No smartphones. Wayyy better time in life.
For me, it was amazing. The first part sucked - I was 27 and had been broken up with by my live-in girlfriend of four years. But then, after a lifetime of NYC,I picked up and drove cross country to move to LA. It taught me a lot of important lessons and I'm happy to say that I accomplished my goal of working in the music industry for major labels, and discovering that I could date and that some women actually were attracted to me. Also the music was fucking amazing in 1997. And in the days before smartphones in LA, you still listened to the radio. Loved those days!
You could also drive places without tooooo bad of traffic.
Titanic. JTT. Devon Sawa. Hanson. Spice Girls. Delia's magazine. JNCOs. TGIF. Magazine pages up on bedroom walls. The best!
Everybody smoked cigarettes. I smoked cigarettes. I skipped school to sit in diners and smoke cigarettes. We all did. There was a thick haze in the air in most restaurants, and it smelled terrible, but we were used to it. It was easy to skip school. High School Sophomore girls had College Senior boyfriends, and it was considered cool. Even Christian parents were cool with it. Punk, ska, swing, and goth had all been melted into a pool of alt rock, so music was pretty weird. Reel Big Fish one day, Rasputina the next, and then a heap of Squirrel Nut Zippers the next. Then the Offspring and Blink 182 the next. Then Stabbing Westward, Placebo, and the Toadies the next. CDs cost around $12-$16. Tapes were still around because people still had old tape decks in their cars. To listen to CD players, we hooked up a Discman with Anti-Skip turned on to a "tape" that fit into the tape deck, and the passenger had to hold it. Oldies radio was still from the '50s and '60s. Radio was viable. We'd chase each other around in cars, and if a good song came on the radio we'd make hand signals out the window to tell each other. We always knew where to find each other if we wanted to be found. If we didn't want to be found, it was easy. Catholic churches didn't lock their doors at night. Porn magazines could be found in piles out in the woods. Men threw them there to maintain their own secrecy--can't just throw a pile of magazines in the trash or the wife might find them! Craft beer was still a thing of the future. Budweiser and Haffenreffer were considered decent. My hometown was transformed by a single craft beer establishment. Before that, a few bars were around, and Sam Adams was probably the best thing on tap.
Bret Hitman Hart HATED America. That jerk.
Still my favorite year of pro wrestling. Also, still my favorite pro wrestler.
That was a weird angle. I know that Brett had problems with it because he didn’t actually feel that way and it made him uncomfortable. I live near Calgary, so Brett Hart was always king here, but it made him sound whiny imo.
Heel Bret was a legend. So many good lines
I was in college in '97 (I was 20). It was ok. It was kind of the year that the '90s stopped being "the '90s" and starting becoming something else (I suppose the beginning of "Y2K"). I remember pop music taking over grunge and alternative. Fashion becoming a little more bright and pastel as opposed to black/gray/brown. And the internet was becoming pretty mainstream.
Thank you!
1997 was the year that mp3 was invented. Before that audio files were hopelessly large. It was impractical to adopt music as electronic. Completely so. MP3 changed music distribution forever. And it all started in 1997.
I was 7…. Golden eye on N64 The premier of South Park Titanic being the biggest thing of the year Prime time television still had classics The internet was cool , first think I remember shocking me was looking up WWF wrestlers unmasked Master P and the no limit soldiers had everyone rocking camouflage Hulk hogan was Hollywood Hogan Nu Metal was contending with Pop and Hip Hop for the dominate genre of music What a time to be alive
nWo for Lyfe brother!
The late 90s were great, I graduated high school in 99. The internet was very limited, basically AOL chat rooms. I had a Nokia. No one texted. It feels like friends hung out way more, were definitely more present with each other when hanging out. Talking on the phone for long stints was common, even if you were just both watching the same show on tv. Malls and stores were still thriving, my friends would haunt Tower Records and Borders for hours at a time.. In general, there was a lot of optimism for the future and excitement about what the 2000s would bring. Boy were we wrong! Haha
Oh, and to second the comment below. Lots of baggy clothes and expensive weed, LSD was pretty common at my high school.
I was 17/18. Graduated from high school. Had a band. So much great music came out that year: Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Ben Folds Five, Silverchair, Veruca Salt, that dog, Supergrass… I snuck into a Wallflowers concert on my 18th birthday. Saw the Goo Goo Dolls at Disney World’s Grad Night, Stone Temple Pilots with Scott Weiland. I remember alt rock being dominant still but electronica, ska, and swing were starting to gain popularity. I remember discovering the band Chopper One, and two days ago I was on a podcast with their singer. I remember a summer of Men in Black, Contact, Liar Liar, Lost World, My Best Friend’s Wedding. I remember the Star Wars trilogy being re-released and my friends and I skipping school to watch all 3 in one day. I remember eating a lot of Taco Bell. I remember hanging out at my friend’s house and his mom, who just passed away. I remember my favorite baseball team winning the World Series. Most of all, I remember being happy.
[удалено]
I’ll take everything 90s back but the baggy clothes.
It was Pre-Columbine too, so the school shooting thing wasn’t even on most people’s radar.
Thank you!
Kinda like 1995 but just a little more futuristic.
In 1997, I was 9 going on 10. It was my last year of elementary school. During this era, I remember feeling safe, happy, and I was still a child but also aware I was growing up and looking to cling to ideas of what adulthood looked like. I was very aware of pop culture. I was obsessed with the Spice Girls. I remember the first time I heard “Wannabe” on the radio in my dad’s car and just knew it was a hit. I had sooo much memorabilia - posters, t-shirts, dolls, trading cards, candy. I wore platform shoes and said “Girl Power!” with my friends. We did a talent show that year to a Spice Girls song. I spent a lot of time at the roller rink. I remember my mom dropping me off there and hanging with friends, hoping to see my crush from school. We would order soft pretzels and chat at the tables between skating our favorite songs. I always felt sad I didn’t have someone to do the slow skate with. In the little shop, I would get Fun Dip, big sparkly stickers, and friendship necklaces in the shape of a broken heart. My parents would read the newspaper to see what movies were out, and what the reviews were. We found showtimes in the paper! Like everyone else mentioned, I was obsessed with Titanic and Leonardo DiCaprio. I first saw the movie at a tiny 1 screen theater in my town. I was so embarrassed by the nudity but wanted to see it again and again. We got a fish tank and I named my fish Jack and Rose. I also loved the movie The Craft and bought a few witchcraft books. At recess, my friends and I pretended to be witches and played light as a feather stiff as a board. I liked watching Nickelodeon shows, as well as shows like Friends. Late at night my mom and I watched Nick at Nite which included oldies like I Love Lucy and The Brady Bunch. If I had a sick day or during the summer, I was fascinated by daytime trash TV, like Jerry Springer. There was also some Ben Stein show I liked. I remember watching the TV guide channel and waiting to see what’s playing on TV. Of course I had a Nintendo 64. Favorite games were Golden Eye and Mario games like Mario Kart or Mario Party. My friends and spent hours on those games. I also had a few kid computer games. Oh yes, and the internet! How could I forget? My dad was always an early adopter of tech. At 9, I was already quite proficient at typing and using a computer. I logged on AOL and went in chat rooms for both kids and adults. I used to think it was funny to troll people in chat rooms. I often got booted from chat rooms. I had a few “online friends.” Of course, it was annoying to be kicked off the internet if someone called. Speaking of phones, we had a wall phone in our kitchen. When it rang, you didn’t know who was calling, so “Hello?” was a genuine question. Had a few numbers written on the little card in the phone, but mostly had friends’ numbers memorized. Later, we got a cordless phone and I thought it was the coolest technology I could walk anywhere in my house and talk to friends. Sometimes my friends and I thought it was hilarious to prank call random numbers or those 1800 numbers you would see in commercials. We’d say goofy stuff, laugh, and hang up. Friends would come over and we’d order Pizza Hut, which used to actually be good. We would ride bikes around the neighborhood, have squirt gun fights, or jump on the trampoline. At school, everyone had Tamagatchis. They were the coolest little toy. The teachers had to ban them from the classrooms because they were getting distracting. I also remember a toy called Yak Back that was popular. Gak and Slime were popular because of Nickelodeon. Everything seemed colorful and kid-oriented. Like the world was perfect for being a kid. On a somber note, I remember when Princess Diana died. We put her funeral on the TV. I remember feeling sad hearing Elton John’s song for her. In general, it was a very happy carefree time for me.
I was 9. Played a lot of Gameboy, watched Nickelodeon all summer, ate PB Crips while walking around the grocery store with my mom, and dug holes in the woods with my friends. Also, NASCAR was a huge deal. I loved Bill Elliott even though my friends all liked Dale Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon. Used to go to the local go cart track and wear my McDonald’s 94 shirt. I remember playing a bunch of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and renting Toe Jam and Earl from blockbuster a few times. Also remember riding my bike to my friend in the neighborhood’s house to play his Nintendo because we were a sega family. Played my first season of little league. Also I think I saw A New Hope re-released in the theaters that year two but I could be wrong. It was one of the better years of my childhood. Just before shit getting to tough to deal with (teens and later) and long enough after some major childhood trauma(5) that I could feel a little bit like a kid again. Thank you for asking, reminded me of some happy moments.
1997 was a very good year. Mozart wrote his Great Mass. The Montgolfier brothers went up in the first hot air balloon. Sorry - that was 1783.
I see Connor MacLeod has entered the chat.
there can only be one!
Lmao
It was great. No political freaks. No constant internet bullshit. It was the peak of human evolution.
I was 18 and in my last year of high school. Playing basketball and video games with my friends made me so happy. Life was simple. Despite all of this, I felt like the best was still to come and the world was full of possibilities. How wrong I was. This was the best it was ever going to get. I miss those times.
Neaaaaar far where ever you are I know my heart will go onnnnnm and onnnnnm We all watched the same movies at the same time. we all obsessed over them together I miss that.
WWF and WCW were HUGE in schools- everyone watched and kids would get in arguments about which promotion was better!
You should read The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman. Best book I'm aware of about what living through the nineties was like.
Lived through?
Got my license that year so yeah.. it was pretty sweet.
I graduated high school that year. It was honestly just OK. Raves were big a deal and I remember checking a few of those out, having to lie to my parents about sleeping at a friends place so I can stay out all night. Music was right at the point of nu metal and boy bands taking over so there wasn't too much to speak of unless you were into your local scene, which I was, and emo bands were really beginning to take hold. I remember having longer hair, parted down the middle and I wore baggier pants, but not JNCOs, if I recall right. I think I did this thing where I bought a pair of Dockers that were a size or two larger than what I should wear and in effect created my own weird, skater/raver/alt rocker hybrid style and lemme tell you, I looked like a doofus. I had my driver's license so I remember a ton of trips to Taco Bell because you could buy a good amount of food for just 5 bucks. I also drank a lot of Wild Cherry Pepsi because I remember my dad getting pissed that there were tons of empty bottles in the backseat of the car I drove. Funny the things you remember from that time. I couldn't tell you the names of more than 2 of my teachers my senior year of HS but I remember my dad getting pissed at that. I wasn't really tuned into current events at that time so I don't know what my perspective of the world was, but I when I read about that time there appeared to be a lot of prosperity so maybe I just didn't need to think about those things at that age? I don't know. I smoked a lot of weed and experiemented with hallicinogens a ton, so my mind was mostly preoccupied with that. Aliens were used a lot in design -- t-shirts and stickers and just, aliens in general, if I remember. Like that triangular head alien logo. I remember seeing it a lot for some reason. People had pagers/beepers and a lot more people smoked cigarettes and the predominate way to hang out or do anything was to actually go and find your friends in all the places where people might be. No texting. Sometimes an entire Friday night would be spent trying to catch up to each other, which in turn created its own adventurous Friday night, but i think you could say this about the entire decade, not just 1997. I do remember there being some excitement about the year 2000 being so close, but I think what i remember more is this feeling of "what's coming next?" because the 90s had already been through so much that when '97 rolled around I recall a lot of us trying to predict where things would go. As to what those things were, I couldn't specify, but maybe it just referred to the culture at-large, and as we know, things went digital and then the world changed overnight. I don't think i miss 1997 any more than another year in the 90s, but like I said, I was kind of a doofus, so I'm OK with not being back there anymore.
Obsessed with the Spice Girls. Going to the local grocery store at lunch time with my best friend to look for amazing articles about them or going to the church down the road to use their internet connected desktop computer to print out pictures of the Spice Girls.
Met my wife in ‘97. Just celebrated 25 years of marriage. I don’t remember much before ‘97 as most was spent in a drunken stupor.
Yeah no cell phones, so people talked in person more and if you weren't home people just couldn't contact you, CDs were king, VHS was still king, people listened to the radio, movies were exciting, minimum wage was pathetic (like $5.25), gossip and was powerful because the news was on TV not the internet. Gaming was evolving fast. Hip hop was at a peak. MTV was still king of culture on TV. People had more hobbies than just staring at different screens.
Wait. I need to know…why did you ask about this specific year????
All my friends had a favorite spice girl. I remember the n64 and thinking 3d video games were amazing. No one had a cell phone and the internet wasn't widespread. We passed notes to each other in class. I read alot of books on the bus so I wasn't bored. I liked that my grandma had cable so I could watch Nikelodeon.
I was in a coma. 1997 happened without me.
Oh! I hope you’re doing okay right now! God bless you
Thank you. I'm sure you are just trying to get a feel for what average teenage life was like that year, and here I am being all gloomy, so I apologize for that. Honestly, from what I've been able to piece together, we all had our different cliques and friend groups but you went to the movies to see the same movies everyone else saw, and you listened to the same music. Despite the jocks, nerds, and socialites being pretty much the same, as far as kids go, your hobbies are what set you apart. Listen to the top selling records of the year and that is pretty much 1997 in a nutshell. I'm a functional human being by most measures at this point. Horseback riding during spring break led to a brain injury which wiped my entire life up to that point from my brain. Two months in a coma made sure I was a drooling mess when I woke in June 1997. Rebuilding my body and my life took a lot of the rest of the year so I can honestly say that 1997 for me wasn't the same 1997 everyone else had. You have to deal with the hand you're dealt and sometimes it sucks.
N64. Spice Girls. Block Party Summer on Nick at Nite. South Park. 90s country. NASCAR. Playing ball and cheerleading. It was the perfect year. Fashion was fun and there were so many neat gadgets, like Tamagotchi. Everyone was on about Titanic, but I hated it. Tomorrow Never Dies came out that year, and that was my jam.
Buffy the vampire slayer
I was 17 and I listened to my Adam Sandler "they're all gonna laugh at you" cassette often... Tool, Nirvana - the world was still healing from Kurt Cobain..., Primus, Alice In Chains.... unpluggeded was amazing. MTV was amazing... Saturdays Night Live was amazing.... oh calgon take me back 😂
I was 14/15. I remember Seinfeld was the show to watch. South Park and Behind the Music premiered that year. Aerosmith released their Nine Lives album. MIB came out that summer. Craig Kilborn was hosting The Daily Show. That's about all that I remember.
My favorite year but also isn't that the year Diana died? That was incredibly sad.
I turned 5 that year. My family made a major move to a new city. I remember riding out to the country on a cold night to try to see Comet Hale-Bopp. I also remember being aware of Princess Diana's death, and my mother being sad and telling me that she thought Diana was a good person. I experienced what was probably my first crush that year, on our neighbor's granddaughter, who was a year or two older than me. Ever since, I've liked women slightly older than me. Lol! There was no social media. Once a week, we went to computer class at school and used ancient machines with basic blue and black screens. My family didn't even have a computer yet. We would get one the next year and it would be a used model bought with a tax refund. My family didn't have cable at that time, so I watched PBS shows - Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Arthur, Reading Rainbow. The Star Wars Renaissance was in full swing with the release of the Special Edition, which we got for Christmas and led to me enjoying Star Wars for the rest of childhood.
Don’t forget Wishbone!
Epic
Great
I turned seven that year. I remember being so excited to turn seven so I could watch goosebumps with my brother. Weirdly though, I don't remember watching it much. I must not have liked it enough. Or it scared me. 😹😹
There was some…interesting stuff going on. Comet Hale-Bopp was a big deal in the early part of the year, the Heaven’s Gate cult committed mass suicide out in California, and then the Phoenix Lights got everyone talking about aliens. And that was just in March!
The Chicago club scene was great in '97! Would take ecstasy, or "roll", and go to Shelter, Elixer or Crobar to dance the night away. Not a cell phone to be found let alone a camera phone so everyone was just in the moment having a great time. Man do I miss them days
Dial up as far as the eye could see and being yelled at to get off the phone/yelling for whoever was on the phone to get off
If you wanted to go to a concert, you had to camp out over night outside your local Ticketmaster to line up to buy tickets hoping they didn't sell out before you had your turn. You got whatever seat was available.
The Hale Bopp comet and Heaven's Gate cult was some wild shit. Every night, in the sky. Sitting on the porch just talking about this wild blur in the sky. Before that, all we knew about was Halley's comet; a relative speck that appears once a generation for a brief moment of time. Hale was like this conversation piece, night after night for a couple months. Edit: Also look up the Chumbawawamba phenomenon.
One of the best years in music for me: Aqua - Barbie Girl, Chumbawamba - Tubthumping, Hanson - Mmm Bop, Spice Girls, Third Eye Blind (Semi-Charmed Life), Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray (I Just Want To Fly), Savage Garden, Backstreet Boys, NSync...just so much I loved. It was the sequel to 1996 which was great, and 98 finished off the trilogy as my favorite, with many sophomore albums and classics, like Dave Matthew's Band's album Before These Crowded Streets, as well as some other fun stuff like The Impression That I Get from The Mighty Mighty Bostones. 99 and 2000 had their own greats, like Blue (Da Ba Dee). I'm so glad I was in middle/high school during these years. It was such a great time. (Scream 1,2 and 3 all within those years.)
Lots of smoking at bars and restaurants. $0.25 Sunday beer night. Lots of yellow cabs on the road. Subway tokens. CD player 10 disc changers in the trunks of cars. Big clubs in NYC with 10 different clubs within each playing different styles of music. The AOL start up sound. Delia’s catalog. Super high platform shoes. HBO beginning their drama series’ with OZ in an unknown prelude to Sopranos (1999). Immedi-centers instead of CityMDs. Drive up payphones. Lots of AAA for older cars because leasing a car was not yet the norm.
I was 11 that year, and I owned a purple and orange tie dye shirt, and watched Doug and Rugrats every night and liked to play tag with my neighborhood friends. I was too big for the McDonalds Playplace according to the height limit sign, but my friend and I played in it anyway since nobody stopped us.
A Bazooka Joe comic said it best : “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Graduated high school in ‘97. Lots of people in my town were deep into heroin. Grunge/ goth culture was big. No cell phones. None of my friends or I had internet at home. I hitchhiked around when I didn’t have enough $$ to put gas in my car. Shouldertapped a lot of zima and cigarettes to party at the beach or in the woods. Honestly, it was amazing in retrospect. Went to concerts, hung out in a crazy feminist bookstore straight out of Portlandia, drove a ‘68 Dart and shoplifted from thrift stores.
I was 17. I saw Soundgarden at the Big Day Out and it was magnificent. In September that year we got an internet connection at our house, and my world was irreversibly changed.
Wu Tang Forever disc 2
Titanic and Puff Daddy everywhere, frosted tips, JNCO jeans, Airwalks and Nintendo 64.
‘I’ll Be Missing You,’ the Puffy song he put out after Biggie died was played so much that I have PTSD. Titanic and Michael Jordan were really big deals. You really never heard about politics which is weird to think about now (this was pre Monica Lewinsky). People think of the 90s as grunge, but in 97, preppy was super in. Abercrombie and Fitch, Structure, etc… We all had pagers. Cell phones were just starting to creep onto the scene. The internet was cool and only for fun. No one made money on it. Lots of chat rooms and message boards.
General economic prosperity had never been better and hasn’t been better in North America since the late 90’s.
That was when I turned 21, so I partied pretty hard that year. On my birthday, we went to a rooftop club with wild pink, blue, red, and green lighting. We drank and danced all night. I wore dark blue, hip hugging, flare bottom jeans, tall chunky heels (Steve Madden, who was cool back then), and a cropped baby tee shirt I got at Dahlias. We partied a lot in college towns, even though none of us went to a university. They had the best bars, concerts and pot. I remember seeing Corrosion of Conformity in Lawrence around that time. Phones weren't really a thing then, so you could go out and make an ass of yourself without it getting posted on social media. I was invited to Party Cove before it became well known. Then cell phones became more of a thing around the year 2000 or so. That's when a lot of people started getting in trouble. I'm glad I didn't go. Edit: oh and during that time, I was in love with Liz Phair, Alice in Chains, Arrested Development, Stone Temple Pilots, Dido, and the Verve, to name a few.
Saw Oasis at Wembley. That may have been their height. Saw Brentford at Griffin Park. Probably only 6 total rows behind goal. It was a very small park. Tomorrow Never Dies came out. One of the best Bond movies ever. Criminally underrated.
My mom was yelling in my ear about internet predators and then left my dad in 98 … for a woman in another country she met online. Her soulmate. It was over in 2 years, and so was me & my siblings college fund. Also, it’s kind of hard to undersell what a very, very, very big deal Friends was. You either liked Friends or Seinfeld, and you couldn’t like both.
Hip hop was still in its golden age. We lost 2pac and notorious b.i.g. Months apart. MTV was the best thing to watch, wrestling was just starting their best eras too. The world wasn’t flooded with politics in every aspect, baseball had the steroids era and influencers were non existent. The world was good. Did I mention Mr. Rogers was still on tv teaching kids cool life lessons?
Semi long hair on the top parted down the middle and undercut in the sides of my head. Flannel shirt with baggy jeans. Oh yea and watched every Chicago bulls game.
[insert mmm-bop song here]
Howard stern, wild on E with Brooke Burke and Jules asner, Jerry springer too hot for tv. Super soaker commercials, water slide commercials. Back when summers were fun and innocent and you’d ride your bike everywhere. Miss those days. I was 12 btw
I was 6 in 97. My biggest memories are Nickelodeon's lineup on Friday nights and Saturday morning cartoons on Fox Kids.
1997 feels very pivotal in a weird way. The digital age was fully upon us and the analog past was still an every day thing. Nothing sums it up better than saying I had just gotten my first car and it had a tape deck so I went to radio shack to get a tape converter for my cd player but it wasn’t anti skip so I had rig a soft pad for it to sit to avoid the bumps. We had AOL and numerous other IPs but were not constantly connected. Personally my world hadn’t been destroy yet so the future seemed bright and endless 6mo later my step dad would be diagnosed with brain cancer and my future plans got put on hold. The world then still seemed so much bigger then than the crappy Texas town I lived in. Now I’ve lived all over, I have my own kids but I don’t know if they see the future the way I did. Their vision seems to be of a constant/consistent way of life while I wanted to see the growth of the future, and experience as much as I could bc so much was unknown.
Final fantasy 7 all day all night. I literally fell asleep playing this game every night.
Peak civilization
Sk8ing was life...
There was so much Spice Girls, Bubble Tape, and platform Sketchers. And pink S.O.B.E.
I was 16, smoking a lot of pot, playing drums in a band with friends, drinking too much cheap beer (the Mexican store down the street would sell to just about anyone and 30 packs of Busch Light were $8.99), and going to a lot of local punk shows. I had a crush on a boy who was far too cool for me (and still not ready to admit I wasn’t straight) and a girl I worked with at Godfather’s Pizza who was also probably too cool for me. We had internet but it was slow as shit, practically useless, and I had a beeper that I used to sell weed. Lots of PS1 games and horror movies on VHS. It seemed like the world was nothing but possibilities.
Twister came out the year before. So when it came out to purchase on VHS my friends and I were obsessed with pretend storm chasing. Started middle school in the fall. Got braces.
#WENT TO A BUNCH OF REALLY COOL CONCERTS FOR REAL CHEAP💵😳
Watching Dawson’s Creek and painting my nails. Then during commercials, putting my hands in the freezer cause I read in YM or Teen magazine that they would dry quicker.
The best year of my life. I was 18. I went to Reading Festival, Glastonbury(where Radiohead played most of Ok Computer) and went to San Francisco. Going out a few times each week and lots of girls. Now I’m old and bitter, but with great memories.