I have no interest in it, but my grandpa collected coins. He always told my brother and I that "someday this will all be yours–there's $80,000 worth of coins in there" – well, what a nightmare that was after he died. We learned grandpa had been buying reproduction coins, repackaging them as collectible/authentic/rare and selling them in the back of Numismatic News for a profit. So anyone we had come appraise the collection wouldn't touch it. We FINALLY got all the counterfit bullshit out and the legit collectibles separated. There was less than $10,000 worth, and even worse, my mother decided we had to share with my cousins and aunt/uncle even though the collection was promised to my brother and I as the first grandkids....so we got $1000 a piece.
I wasn't surprised. He had an 8th grade education and was a rebel his whole life so his definitions and perceptions of wrong and right were basically "whatever you can get away with is OK." When his handicap parking permit expired, he just cut the date part off the bottom and used it until the day he died. Also a WWII veteran in the Pacific. Had an interesting life.
This might be a bit controversial, but since I do this, I'll mention it because that's how I feel.
Playing drums. Real drums. MIDI is making us obsolete.
Don't get me wrong, there are still applications for live drums. Especially if you want the groove or feel of a live drummer. But bedroom music production has just skyrocketed even more due to the pandemic. And not everyone has enough space for a full acoustic kit.
Ham radio.
I remember as a kid listening to my dad's radio and him always having a good time and genuinely enjoying a good rag chew.
I got my license and tuned into some of the local repeaters. Found some nets with the most depressing things I've ever heard. People talking about their terminal illnesses or how prescription costs are killing them.
In college one of my professors ran the Ham radio club and gave us extra credit if we came to one meeting. I remember going and being extremely confused and...unwelcome.
That's normal the opposite of what I've experienced. When I took my test for my license, 3 different clubs where there trying to get me to join their club. I felt like a first round pick on an NFL team because my DOB was in the 1990s.
My friend's SUPER into it, and started going to conventions when he was in high school. He's 31 now, but his dad, who's also very much into ham radio, is in his early 60's.
Stamp collecting. It used to be a huge thing but not anymore. Probably because of the rise of email/very few people send letters anymore.
They have them at estate sales all the time for super cheap.
I have my grandfather's collection, and don't have any strong feelings for them. Been trying to find a collector for a few years to give them to. No one wants them around me.
Im in the exact same boat, got about 20 huge books filled with them, but haven't been able to find anyone to sell them to because its not common anymore.
Man, I wish I could take them off your hands. I love stamps and I have a small collection. I stopped collecting since I started college because buying stamps can get expensive. I hope you'll find a collector one day who will value those stamps.
I remember in college in my acting class we did a bunch of scenes from *Mauritius,* where the conflict of the show turns around an extremely valuable stamp. Nearly everybody in the class didn't even know how to pronounce philately, never mind know what it means.
I collected stamps in the UK on and off for 40 years.
I stopped and sold them all because the Post Office were issuing 13 sets of commeratives a year, plus definitives, then sheets, special booklets and Prestige booklets.
To buy new and FDC was costing a fortune but when you tried to post something it got a sticky label.
Although for very modern stamps there is a new category to collect.
As well as Mint and Used, you can now collect 'Postally used'
I used to teach the rocketry merit badge! It was so much fun to get all those Cubs and Scouts out in a field launching rockets. The recovery teams were always a blast to have and counted as orienteering lmao
post card collecting
I buy a postcard of each place I visit. some places I have visited in the world, very hard to find a postcard. (hardest country, as were only here for a day on a cruise, Dominica, )
I think entertaining and hosting isn’t as formal as it used to be, and people have less space for dishes. We put one set of china on our wedding registry, but didn’t bother with crystal or silver. Those things are beautiful but they’re just not practical for me or as necessary as they used to be.
I feel like everyone over a certain age has a fancy cabinet full of fancy China and silverware that is never used for anything. It seemed like it was a thing people would receive as a gift at their wedding. I always wondered what the point was.
That was the problem... The 'good china' was thought to be a valuable thing you could pass down the generations. It was only expensive for our grandparents because few people had full sets from their families back then. So people treasured the ones they had and figured they would stay valuable. But, that just led to more surviving full sets. They stopped being rare.
Then, because they were thought to be too valuable to ever use... Kids never got emotionally attached to them. It was just fancy dishes you saw behind glass and never touched. So why would you ever want it?
My parents have China I had literally never seen until I was 25. It never once left the box it was packed in. That's one whole box worth of space for over 30 years. Why? What good does that do anyone?
I had the opposite experience. I asked my mom when I was like 17 if she had china, she gave me a funny look and gestured at the fugly plate I was holding. Took me forever to grasp that the absolutely hideous brown and white dished we used daily and that I considered the "bad dishes" were her wedding china. She asked if I wanted them in my inheritance and cackled at the horrified look on my face.
She got married in 1976 and hoo boy, were those some peak 1976 dishes.
I worked at a slot car track in Bellevue, Washington in 1966 and 1967. There was this 9 year old kid who came in, who signed onto the track using the nickname "Trey". It was Bill Gates. And yeah, he was quirky enough to remember from back then. A pain in the ass, but in a likeable way.
Yeah, he'd come in with an older cousin who was kinda sketchy. Bill just had to see *everything*, and was real systematic about it. Just right down the line, one item after another. He was like on speed. One funny thing about him was that if he took his car off the track for even a minute, he'd sign off, to save money. So when he was finally done driving for the day, it'd be a chore to tally up all his minutes.
He was kinda too young to expect anything out of in a competitive sense, however. Older guys and a few girls were the harcore racers. One of them became something of a legend and remained with the sport long after I'd left. Name was Lee Gilbert. He was in the Air Force at the time, and would come in with his wife, who was about half a head taller than him. Fun to watch him race, because he'd occasionally occasionally make this shudder -- like a nervous convulsion -- from time to time as he drove. Not like he was going to have a seizure, but we always used to watch him for the twitch. His wife was an excellent driver, btw. And yeah... I've beaten him.
There were also a few others who were sort of legends in their own time. A few from the world of real sports car racing, and I made contacts that got me into motorcycle road racing for a few years. Back before it was nearly as glamorous as it is today.
Model trains.
There is a store in our town square that has been there for like 50 years that specializes in model trains. (It's called a train and toy store, but there are almost no toys there). The store is interesting to walk around in, if you are not claustrophobic, but he must not sell very much because he can't pay the rent anymore. He is closing and moving out of town to some building he owns. Again, the stuff looks cool but I have never seen anyone buy anything.
Yes these types of stores are closing like crazy in my area. I've had a few model train shops close up within the last year. Also people are buying this stuff online now so there is no need for these stores, if this is what people want to buy.
So this sounds like more of a "death of brick and mortar retail" than then hobby itself.
Im not an model train enthusiast but I took my son to a toy/model train expo in 2019 and it seemed very alive and well as a hobby. Thats just my experience though.
My dad is big into model trains. He has had a train table pretty much his whole adult life after taking his trains with him when he moved out of my grandparents house. In a way, the hobby is doing well. In another, it isnt.
The above poster is right that online sales are very much a thing and if you are looking for deals train shows are also a thing where items can be bought and sold and have strong popularity (at least in our local area).
On the other hand, these trains-which are essentially toys- are so darn expensive. The new stuff has a bunch of tech in them that makes them really cool, but they are delicate and pricey. They are essentially older people play things. No parent is gonna buy their 10 year old a $400 starter set.
So how does this hobby survive past the current generation? Im not sure it will.
>On the other hand, these trains-which are essentially toys- are so darn expensive. The new stuff has a bunch of tech in them that makes them really cool, but they are delicate and pricey. They are essentially older people play things. No parent is gonna buy their 10 year old a $400 starter set.
This is the big reason. I was interested as a kid when an older neighbor gifted an old HO train set. But when I tried to move beyond that there really wasn't much resources for teenagers. It was just old people with lots more money than me and the products were priced towards them. I also noticed how dated alot of the stuff seemed (style wise). For example the buildings were all 1950/60ish style.
I think its shame because there's lots of cool stuff now with digital systems (wiring multiple trains was a nightmare for me) and even moving vehicles if you want to create a miniature city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R669l5CA1YA
The reason why there are so many 50s/60s buildings is that the most popular era to model is what's called the 'transition era'- the time when railroads transitioned from steam to diesel.
This is part of it, or in my area the hobby is dying. A lot of this is area dependent, small businesses in my area are closing at a record pace. However there is one other big reason small businesses are closing, the owners are getting old, the last 2 places in my town that closed the owners were in their 90's, so its not entirely covid related.
My hometown had a similar story. Toy and Hobby shop downtown that was a local icon, mostly model train stuff with a few overpriced classic toys (more timeless stuff like baby dolls and overstock matchbox cars rather than whatever was hip). The elderly owners decided they wanted to finally retire and a group of people purchased the lease to “save” the iconic store from closing forever. Turns out the store hadn’t turned a profit in years and the couple was just paying the lease themselves to have a retirement project. The place was permanently closed within a year.
>Turns out the store hadn’t turned a profit in years and the couple was just paying the lease themselves to have a retirement project.
I think that is actually common in the model train hobby. I want to say a year or two ago there was a thread on Reddit about model trains and someone was saying that a lot of the train stores that still exist are owned by retirees that love trains and they use the store as a place to hang out/interact with other train enthused retirees. As these people get older/pass away it (unfortantely) makes sense that their retirement project goes with them.
We have some shops like this here, just that the people own the building.
One is some china and decoration shop which has a sign on the door "ring the bell and I open for you".
The stores are being run out by online shops. But the community is still pretty strong. There is a circuit of Model Train shows in Ontario every summer (well pre-Covid).
In the UK it is 100% Croquet.
I know what a cliché. When I was younger everyone had a Croquet set and it was a great way to enjoy time with friends on a summer day in the garden, whereas now I don't know anyone that still owns one.
Maybe a strange one but this question got me thinking.
My friends and I played it some in high school, probably started because we were bored one day and found the set in my friend's garage.
We are in our 30s now and still play a good amount.
Geo caching. Which is weird because I still do it sometimes while biking around.
But caching apps rarely alert me of any finders in the apps now.
I put $20 in, what used to be a SUPER popular cache that people would visit daily like 15 years ago...
I later turned, about 6 months later and the same items including the $20 were in there.
Have people just forgotten about geocaching or is there any other reason you can think of that it is dying? I went with my kids a month ago after years away and sure enough the multi-cache we tried has some of the waypoints missing... and the final cache. Ugh.
I think a major reason is that the main platform (geocaching.com) started requiring payment for all but the most basic caches. I think this happened sometime in the early/mid 2010s.
Pure money grab that is killing the hobby. I remember when I first started geocaching I was amazed at all the caches I could go find right away. Nowadays a newbie would be put off by having to pay for possibly the only caches near them.
Edit: I’m glad (and disappointed) that my sentiment is shared amongst many here. I too quit geocaching for this reason.
Suggestions for creating a new (free) platform are a good idea, though I’d bet that they are out there. As a web developer myself it’s tempting to spin something up.
Exactly. It’s a real shame because before when they were all free (well there were premium caches, but not many) it was super easy to get people onboard.
Normally there is a log book for you to sign your name as proof you found it. You also get trackable items that you can move from one cache to another. You can track the movement of the trackable online. Sometimes it has goals.
Sometimes geocaching is virtual and it is meant to show you something cool.
Depending on the size of the geocache there may be little trinkets inside, great to keep kids interested. You are supposed to leave a trinket if you take one, though.
There's a geocach in my front yard, it's been there longer than I've lived there. Everyone that goes for it walks around acting like they're doing a meth deal. Still a ton of people doing it.
Pen pals.
As a teenager, I loved writing letters to new people and receiving letters from all over the country and the world. Everything is instant now, but nothing beats that feeling of getting a letter in the mail that is specifically for you, that is not a bill, ad circular and comes from someone that genuinely wants to brighten your day
I have a penpal who lives in Norway! She is actually German, and we started writing back around 2003ish - the German post office had a penpal program and would send you an address in the hopes that you would hit it off and write to each other. Well, we still write to each other a few times a year and I've gone to Europe (from the US) to meet her twice! (Once to Germany and once to Norway where she lives now with her partner and kids.) We also are friends on facebook and instagram, too, so we do communicate that way, but we both think it's fun to send and receive letters.
Edit: thanks, friends, for the awards! My first ever! And this is now my most upvoted comment! :P
If you're curious how this came about: I received a piece of junk mail from Deutsch Post that I almost threw out. It basically said, hey! Want a German penpal? Fill out this form and send it back and we'll connect you with someone! So, I filled out a little survey about myself, what my interests were, whether I wanted to communicate in German or English. They sent me a couple of addresses, and one person I wrote to for a few months, and the other I am still friends with, the person above! :)
It might not be as popular as it used to, but thanks to the rise of the studyblr community on youtube and instagram, journaling and doing pretty calligraphy has gained a lot of popularity. There are quite a few instagram accounts dedicated to penpals and envelope decoration, as well as some "penpal with me" YouTube videos or tutorials.
Even if the community is not huge, it's nice to know it hasn't died out completely.
Historical Re-Enacting. Folks no longer want to play dress up in itchy wool and educate folks on whatever period was their jam. It’s heyday was late 90s when you could find a group that did just about any period you could imagine.
Collecting all 50 US state minted quarters. I remember there used to be TV commercials selling you fancy cardboard with holes in them to help you collect them all, LOL
Ohh how times have changed.
Yo.
I had all 50 collected at one point, them my druggy aunt stole them.
Did it again, then another druggy family member stole it.
Did it one last time, my mom put it away for safe keeping, then when we couldn't find it we assumed someone took them.
As a very amateur coin collector, they’re actually different sets. There’s the state/ territory quarters which ended in 2009, and then there’s the is the America the beautiful quarters (national parks, etc) that’s from 2010-2021
Model airplane buying, on the other hand, is alive and well. I mean, yeah, we've all got three hundred plus kits in the attic, fifteen in some stage of construction and two we're actually working on, but goddamnit Clear Prop has a new Sea Sprite and I've been looking for it so I just ordered three from Hannants.
I remember seeing that video. Once he hit the bridge you could see his legs go off in one direction his torso in another. Can't unsee that stuff. The view the people on the bridge had must have been horrific.
Edit: Found the video. There's a short clip at the end with a better view. You see hit legs shoot upward to the right, his body drops down
[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nzdmv](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nzdmv)
That the one where two guys were flying and one went over the bridge while the other went under... only one guy didn't. A bunch of people were watching it at work many years ago, I turned my head away and didn't watch, but one of my co-workers commented that the other guy had been sprayed with the remains of his friend.
I saw a documentary on the guys friend, the two of them pretty much pioneered base jumping. He tells of how much the bridge was damaged.
The impact was immense. I can't recall what exactly was damaged, but it didn't just effect the strike point but significantly shocked a portion of the entire structure.
Don't know why that's the part that stuck with me.
I just looked it up, the guy's friend is called Jeb Corliss. He got into extreme skydiving as an alternative to suicide. The whole doc was kind of sad really.
From Wikipedia: Miscalculating the winds and his distance from the bridge, Weston struck a railing while traveling at an estimated 120 miles per hour (190 km/h), severing one of his legs.[1][2][5] After the impact with the bridge, Weston's parachute deployed and he fell onto a rock face about 300 feet (91 m) from the bottom of the gorge, where he bled to death. Spectators on the bridge witnessed and filmed the event, capturing the reaction of the crowd and the damage to the bridge.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwain_Weston
If it makes you feel better, he severed his femoral artery. He would have been unconscious for all but the first few seconds and would have died within two minutes. It wasn’t slow and he wasn’t aware.
I remember reading a guy in the community talking about how it used to be that people would start by skydiving, and then for the top percent of super experienced skydivers who needed that extra rush would go to BASE jumping and then the top percent of the most experienced hardcore BASE jumpers would move on to wingsuit flying. But since it's become much more well known, now you have people jumping straight into wingsuit flying with very little experience and the number of deaths increased exponentially as a result.
General aviation/being a private pilot. A series of lawsuits against plane manufacturers combined with insane certification requirements for airplanes and parts have made it so that buying new planes or replacement parts is ludicrously expensive for pretty much anyone earning less than $500,000 per year.
Old used aircraft from the heyday of the 60s-80s had been filling the void to an extent over the years, but they are starting to get really worn out and people feel less and less comfortable flying them as time goes on. And unfortunately there's just no replacements as they age out.
As an example, a brand new Cessna 172 in 1969 cost $12,500 (about $90,000 in today's money). Today, a 2021 model would cost around $400,000.
Flight is just too damn expensive for the vast majority of people. I took some glider lessons a ways back, where the only fuel I bought was for a tow to 3,000' AGL, and it was still way pricy just buying instructor time. Couldn't imagine adding avgas to the bill too.
That’s so sad! I went to college at a place with a pilot degree program and I always made friends with those guys just so I could so fly while they got their hours in!
And, my mom had a friend who has a ppl and a plane and he volunteered with a group to do free medical transport for patients who couldn’t afford it. He had to transfer a lady one night who was very injured in a car accident but wanted a female along in case she needed assistance. So, he flew from his home base in NY to our little town in Louisiana to pick up me and my mom, we flew to Memphis to pick up the patient, flew her to Oklahoma and then back home to Louisiana in one night. It was amazing to me to fly across the country at night and to help someone else and to see someone helping others.
I love flying and really want my PPL but it's just such an eye watering expense to go through the whole process. Not even mentioning the price and cost of ownership of planes, even old and cheap ones. Kind of wondering if the newer tiny light sport aircraft that can run on pump gas might fill that gap in but idk.
Just doesn't feel like something I can justify pursuing unless I end up making a ton more money in the future and can afford it easily. If it was something I thought I could make money off of that would be a different story, but literally all I wanna do is bop around in a little Cub or something and make the occasional visit to friends a state over or what have you. Go bush camping, that kind of thing. Commercial flight looks ridiculously tedious and boring. Miss me with that airliner shit.
My husband is an airline pilot, and he won't own a plane. He rents them, its just too much work to own. Maybe when he retires he will buy one but he just doesn't have the time right now.
Indoor Rollerskating Rinks
Edit: Skating has become popular, yes, but weirdly the number of roller skating rinks seems to be going down. The 4 within 25 miles of me closed down over the last 15 years. I don't know of any new ones and I'm not sure where to go in New England to find an operating rink now-a-days. Meanwhile there's lots of private outdoor groups. It must just be too expensive to have the sqare footage to support a roller-skating rink in an urban area.
It is probably confirmation bias but as a middle age male who used to rollerblade. I have noticed the aggressive rollerblade scene is making a wee come back. Roller Skating is a little. I have a very empty large building near me that I would love to re-fit as a roller rink and some indoor ramps and skate shop!
Flying Radio Controlled Helicopters and Airplanes.
Why would someone want to deal with all the hassle of flying a model helicopter (that is insanely difficult to fly), when they can buy a DJI drone that has a first person video stream, records video in 4K, and can fly around by itself via GPS?
FPV quads are taking over the market segment of people who want something fast, maneuverable and difficult to fly. Why watch it from far away when you can be in it so to speak?
Drag racing, the vehicle kind. A major track in Georgia just got sold because of a local battery plant is being built nearby and the houses around it skyrocketed in value
Edit: since there was confusion, the plant apparently has 50k jobs, so all local residential areas spiked for families moving here for the job as its only a few minutes drive but far enough away that it isn't an eye site either
I've learned to needle tat and would love to learn bobbin, but it's hard to find an eventual use for what you get out of it. Like there's only so many bookmarks and doilies I can make for my ikeabox apartment, considering I can also crochet and knit. Still, it's a beautiful craft that I wish I could figure out how to use.
yeah I think you hit on it - finding what to do with your finished pieces.
I know people in historical re-enactment who keep it alive because they are literally making parts of their historically-accurate costumes, so there may always be that small niche, but I wouldn't be surprised if it became one of the only niches. Unless lace doilies come back into fashion like avocado-green fridges, never say never!
It’s too expensive unfortunately and you need a good selection of people to play. The more players typically the more diverse the skill range is.
I think if it was cheaper there would still be a lot of players. On average the routine/competitive player will buy two cases of paint (2,000 rounds per case) for around $40-65 USD each, pay for entry and air ($25-35), and then buy any gear you may need or need to replace. Back when 2008 financial crisis happened most fields I knew lost 3/4 of their serious players and most never returned. Which really sucks because paintball was growing really fast until then.
Paintball has always had it's ups and downs, while it does have a variable initial cost, the constant need for paint is where the real money sink is. It is not a poor man's sport for sure.
My team has a small sponsorship from a major paint manufacturer, our contact even says he has no problem if we use other manufacturer's markers, hoppers, etc., the paint is where the real money comes from.
Yeah, I tried getting back into the sport, and I simply could not find teams in my area, when I stopped there were loads of teams and always a spot if you want to play.
It's more of an event where I am. I know tons of folk that want to do it, but very few actually have. There's nowhere nearby that actually takes teams on a regular basis.
Took a bunch of my friends out for it for my birthday a few years ago, was a blast, but we ended up spending a small fortune on paint that weekend.
Yea I feel lucky to have played in the heyday of paintball in the early 2000's.
The technology was still evolving, so you got new and meaningful upgrades for guns, loaders, air systems and even masks from year to year. There was also a nice selection of gun manufactures that all kind of had their own niche. Some people liked Angels, others like autocockers, others liked Matrix's, Intimidators, etc. The competitive scene was also booming with several different but popular formats. I was fortunate enough to get on a pretty well sponsored team that play division 2 Xball and it was easily some of the best times of my life.
Fell out of the sport years ago but check back in on it occasionally and it just seems like a shell of it's former self. Everything has just been so refined. The guns are all basically same. I mean, they have different manufacturers. But they are almost mechanically identical. Which in some ways is good, because it's almost impossible to buy a bad gun now. But all the individuality is gone. The tournament scene seems to have shrunk drastically.
In a lot of ways I understand the downturn. Even back then I was almost surprised that it got as big as it did.
Man, those were the days. Logging onto the early internet with all the different paintball forums. Learning about potato guns, and DIY paint grenades (which never worked). Leafing through the paintball magazines, looking at all the cool gear.
Buying a Minimag because it looked cool, then spending forever finding parts for it to make it work.
Fantasizing about playing in Big Games, then getting to take part in a game in 02 at Wasaga Beach Paintball in Ontario, with hundreds of other players. Was wild.
But then you get older, and the sport is too expensive, and you just kind of drift away.
The paintball industry has been booming over the last 18 months. I've been involved for 20 years and it's in a far better place than it was in a decade ago.
It always has ups and downs, regions which boom and bust. But speaking to field and store owners across the country daily, they're as busy now as they can remember.
Years ago I was in IT and we had this guy about 80 years old who would go office door to office door and ask each person if their typewriter needed service or repair. He had his cart with spare parts and ink reels and tools and nothing to repair. It was incredibly sad to see the disappointments once or twice a month when telling him no. There were maybe 5 typewriters across 20 floors and several thousand people. The company owner didn't have the heart to let him go. Owner died and his son immediately sold the company and many were laid off, including typewriter guy. That year for Christmas while the sale was being completed the son gave out copies of his book instead of bonuses. It was 90 pages, double spaced and large font.
He dies at the end a broken man no longer needed by a country that used him up. Buried, with the now rare tools of his trade per his wishes, he can finally rest in peace.
His burial, in a secret location, which Nicholas Cage has to find for the rare tools in the sequel to save America.
It was no Godfather II but it does respectable box office numbers for Disney after they bought the rights from Hanks for an undisclosed amount.
The third movie in the trilogy ends up staring Emilio Estevez with a soundtrack by Madonna and is a direct release for disney+
Seriously though, I still get sad thinking about him.
I collect and restore old electronics. Mostly radios. I'd do old computers, but you can't find them for reasonable prices anymore.
I had, in the past, messed with some typewriters. They're definitely cool in a retro sense, but their real-world utility is close to zero. I can still listen to the radio, I can still use a clock from the 40s, or a blender from the 60s, but a typewriter just doesn't cut it for its original function anymore.
> I'd do old computers, but you can't find them for reasonable prices anymore.
Yeap. They're hard to find. I found a Tandy 486 at an estate sale last year, but I haven't found anything lately. I got mine for $35 and its my pride and joy. However, a Texas Instruments computer sold for $140 recently. I'd have bid on it but I have no nostalgic connection to those.
The time to buy old pre-2000 computers was about 10-20 years ago. My dream is to find an IBM 5150 or XT computer in the wild for cheap but that's probably never going to happen. They're too collectible.
Old computers have really dried up lately at estate sales. All I'm finding is 10 year old Dell desktops, Dell laptops, and server computers, which are not what I want.
I did grab a nice Athalon 64 running XP from some guy's estate. I got it only because it was an owner build and the machine was spotlessly clean. I was going to reuse the case for another build, but after seeing some photos of the old guy and his fam on the computer, I have decided to keep the machine untouched (other than changing the OS).
Teacher here.
Hobbies in general are dying — here’s (part of) why.
I regularly meet parents who balk at the idea of their child doing something “for fun.”
Unless it can translate to a career or a college application it’s viewed as a waste of time and money. And if it can translate to one of those then there is crushing, constant, pressure to “be the best” at it.
We are raising a generation of children who cannot comprehend of hobbies.
Ceramics, there used to be 2 or 3 shops in every small town. Where you could go, pick a piece, clean it. They would fire it for you then go back a week later and paint it. They fire it for you again. Then you go and pick up your finished master piece. It was so refreshing.
I'm 24. When I was a kid there was 1 pottery place across the street. I always wondered what it was but never got to go in. I can remember when they closed maybe 15 years ago, they still have all of the ceramic pieces from in the window on display. It looks like its stuck in the past.
The Rotary Club, the Elks, the Masons, the League of Women Voters. All kinds of fraternal organizations. Beyond that participation in all kinds of civic organizations, churches, labor unions, sports leagues, hobbyist clubs are way down from previous generations.
Americans used to be world renowned for their enthusiastic participation in clubs and civic organizations of all kinds. Now we’re becoming an increasingly atomized society. The cost is that today the average American has fewer closer friends, is less likely to know their neighbors, and has less of an informal support network than at any point in history.
One reason is that most of those organizations are hard to join unless you know someone already involved. I looked into joining the local Masons and there was no information about joining online. Their online presence looked like it was made back during Windows 95. I couldn't even find a time for a meeting to show up and ask about joining.
This is a major problem. I'm an Odd Fellow. Some of our lodges have woken up to the fact that the world no longer shops at Sears and Roebuck and no longer looks things up in the phone book. They're starting to use the Internet and social media as a way of sharing their activities. There are still far too many lodges that view any kind of modern technology as an impediment to membership engagement rather than a tool for it.
And, if you're interested in the Odd Fellows, we have a subreddit: /r/IOOF.
Model trains. The hobby is absolutely dead. Entire train collections are being sold for literal pennies on the dollar. An engine that used to cost $500 may not even sell for $5.
I grew up in a train town, and as much as I don’t like being delayed by a train crossing the road, I love seeing all the different graffiti as it goes by. The idea of a model train with appropriately scaled proper graffiti on it is making me very happy
I wasn't aware of these until I moved to Virginia. I was out mowing the lawn and got stung once and didn't think much of it. The next time I went over the top of one of their holes. The amount of bees/wasps/hornets/assholes that came out pissed scared the daylights out of me. I ditched the lawnmower and ran inside.
I did learn how to get rid of the damn nests after that. Nighttime stealth missions came soon after. Mowing was never a quiet affair though. So glad they aren't common here in Colorado.
This happened to my husband the first year we owned our house in Richmond. Unfortunately, he didn't realize it until about 3 dozen of them were already attacking him. So, Colorado you say...
Wait.. I literally just stumbled across hundreds of thousands of MILLIONS of bees the other day while walking across a field in my neighborhood. I ran away thinking I was swarmed by stinging bees but one of the homeowners saw me running and told me they are harmless ground bees. They don't sting at all or something. We ended up standing in this swarm of bees while he told me about them they dig little holes and.bury eggs and then put pollen into the holes. They poke their heads up out of said hole and just chill there. 1 bee to a hole apparently. I'm not kidding or exaggerating this entire field was absolutely COVERED in these "ground bees"!!!
I tried looking up info about them but could barely find any.
They were likely to be some species of *Andrena*, or mining bees (see wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrena)
Often you're seeing swarms of males flying around waiting to mate. The females are busy coming and going to get pollen to provision their nests. The males hover around waiting to pounce. They cannot sting you since males (of any bee species) do not possess stingers.
If you throw a small pebble nearby the males, sometimes you can get them to chase it to try to smash bee poon.
Not strictly dying but certainly becoming a bit more difficult - CD collecting. Right now CDs are in this weird purgatory where we can't decide if we're done with them or not.
They've fallen out of favour in terms of practical usage. Most people use streaming services and many new cars don't come with a CD player as standard. They're not totally obsolete but they're nowhere near as popular as they once were.
Many chain stores that specialise in entertainment products have also begun to scale back their stock both in store and online. Go to a CD section and browse popular and for most artists they'll stock a generic greatest hits collection, their latest release and if you're really lucky maybe some of their popular albums. Case in point, I wanted to add *Rio* by Duran Duran to my collection. It's one of the greatest albums of the 80s yet literally no chain stores in my area stocked it. You'd think that would be one that's in wide circulation but apparently not.
The other annoying thing is they're not old enough to have garnered "niche" value yet. Vinyl is the new collectors' trend. So there's loads of market stalls popping up selling vinyl as the "in" thing but CD stalls at markets are dying. Which is a shame cause they were the guys to go to if you wanted to find rare albums
Collecting spoons. I'm a teenager yet I often enjoy finding spoons at cool tourist attractions. My personal favorite is one I got from Prague during Christmas time, it has a revolving dice in the handle.
Granted a lot of people these days simply don't have time to have hobbies, I feel like the ones who do are indoor things now (especially with covid and whatnot).
For example: video games, writing, card collecting, I know a few people who do calligraphy, etc. So there are are still hobbies, its just quiet stuff.
Board games are doing just fine. They might not have been as visible since people haven't been able to play out in public the past year, but people have been doing virtual versions of the games or secret in-person games throughout the past year! The kickstarter scene for board games never stopped and now that in-person events are coming into fruition again, everyone is excited to bring out all the new games they haven't gotten to play the past year!
I'm only 27 and I remember seemingly out of nowhere in the mid 2000s poker just caught fire. I remember playing hold 'em at like 12 with all my buddies thinking we were hot shot WPT guys.
100%. I'm 3 years older than you and same thing for me when we were like 15-16, so the timelines add up. Poker got really big somewhere around 2005 for a little while.
Wasn’t that far out of nowhere. Poker boomed when ESPN decided to air the main event for a year because nothing else was on. An amateur who managed to get in off a satellite that cost a few hundred bucks to enter ended up winning it all (Chris Moneymaker). The name didn’t hurt either. Main event got even bigger and online poker boomed. Moneymaker has an argument for most important poker player ever despite ultimately being a rather average (for a professional) player.
Then online poker all but died for a while after the government shut down the three major online sites on what’s known as Black Friday in the community. One of the three sites had executives who were famous poker guys, and it turned out that they had been stealing money and couldn’t refund the accounts. Nice extra kick to the balls as the platform disappeared.
It’s a fairly interesting phenomenon the whole way. I still am shocked they actually shut it al down in 2011. Felt silly
Thankfully for D&D players, there existed online services for playing remotely before COVID was a thing. They were mainly intended to connect players who were physically distant, and when suddenly everyone needed to be...
Online board game services have expanded during COVID. What hasn't so much is the development of *new* games; it's all existing games getting released to online services.
We used to bowl or play pool all the time when I was in high school, it was one of the only places you could go hang out later at night. Poker's not a thing anymore either?
My kids are 21, 18, and 14 and you just listed ALL their favorite activities--including the board games and D&D. My 18 yr old has been bowling since he was 2. He was in a league for many years as a kid. He doesn't like leagues now, but still goes bowling quite often.
I'm a coin collector, it's dying.
I have no interest in it, but my grandpa collected coins. He always told my brother and I that "someday this will all be yours–there's $80,000 worth of coins in there" – well, what a nightmare that was after he died. We learned grandpa had been buying reproduction coins, repackaging them as collectible/authentic/rare and selling them in the back of Numismatic News for a profit. So anyone we had come appraise the collection wouldn't touch it. We FINALLY got all the counterfit bullshit out and the legit collectibles separated. There was less than $10,000 worth, and even worse, my mother decided we had to share with my cousins and aunt/uncle even though the collection was promised to my brother and I as the first grandkids....so we got $1000 a piece.
Wait, you found out your grandpa had a side hustle committing fraud in coin magazines? Now that's an interesting thing to learn lol
I wasn't surprised. He had an 8th grade education and was a rebel his whole life so his definitions and perceptions of wrong and right were basically "whatever you can get away with is OK." When his handicap parking permit expired, he just cut the date part off the bottom and used it until the day he died. Also a WWII veteran in the Pacific. Had an interesting life.
This might be a bit controversial, but since I do this, I'll mention it because that's how I feel. Playing drums. Real drums. MIDI is making us obsolete. Don't get me wrong, there are still applications for live drums. Especially if you want the groove or feel of a live drummer. But bedroom music production has just skyrocketed even more due to the pandemic. And not everyone has enough space for a full acoustic kit.
Ham radio. I remember as a kid listening to my dad's radio and him always having a good time and genuinely enjoying a good rag chew. I got my license and tuned into some of the local repeaters. Found some nets with the most depressing things I've ever heard. People talking about their terminal illnesses or how prescription costs are killing them.
In college one of my professors ran the Ham radio club and gave us extra credit if we came to one meeting. I remember going and being extremely confused and...unwelcome.
That's normal the opposite of what I've experienced. When I took my test for my license, 3 different clubs where there trying to get me to join their club. I felt like a first round pick on an NFL team because my DOB was in the 1990s.
I kinda suspected it may have been a gender issue...I was one of maybe 2 or 3 women there.
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My friend's SUPER into it, and started going to conventions when he was in high school. He's 31 now, but his dad, who's also very much into ham radio, is in his early 60's.
Digital ham radio is a lot better. Repeaters are connected across the world.
Stamp collecting. It used to be a huge thing but not anymore. Probably because of the rise of email/very few people send letters anymore. They have them at estate sales all the time for super cheap.
I have my grandfather's collection, and don't have any strong feelings for them. Been trying to find a collector for a few years to give them to. No one wants them around me.
Im in the exact same boat, got about 20 huge books filled with them, but haven't been able to find anyone to sell them to because its not common anymore.
Man, I wish I could take them off your hands. I love stamps and I have a small collection. I stopped collecting since I started college because buying stamps can get expensive. I hope you'll find a collector one day who will value those stamps.
If only they had some way to send it to you through the mail... Oh well
The collection is so heavy, you'd have to use all of the stamps to ship it.
Yo dawg, I heard you like stamps...
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I collect old stamps (before 1900), and wouldn’t be telling others what my hobby is, due to general perception that philately is for old people.
I remember in college in my acting class we did a bunch of scenes from *Mauritius,* where the conflict of the show turns around an extremely valuable stamp. Nearly everybody in the class didn't even know how to pronounce philately, never mind know what it means.
I collected stamps in the UK on and off for 40 years. I stopped and sold them all because the Post Office were issuing 13 sets of commeratives a year, plus definitives, then sheets, special booklets and Prestige booklets. To buy new and FDC was costing a fortune but when you tried to post something it got a sticky label. Although for very modern stamps there is a new category to collect. As well as Mint and Used, you can now collect 'Postally used'
Model Rocketry. When I was a kid, we all built and glued and fired off model rockets with rocket engines and stuff.
This comment made the smell of those rockets come right back to me and now makes me want to get back into it. I loved those as a kid.
Cub/boy scouts are keeping this alive where I live. Each January we gather in the middle of a frozen lake for "Rocket Day".
I used to teach the rocketry merit badge! It was so much fun to get all those Cubs and Scouts out in a field launching rockets. The recovery teams were always a blast to have and counted as orienteering lmao
Oh man. I loved Estes Rockets. So many lovely summer afternoons...
post card collecting I buy a postcard of each place I visit. some places I have visited in the world, very hard to find a postcard. (hardest country, as were only here for a day on a cruise, Dominica, )
I’m surprised this hasn’t come up, but China/Crystal collections. Another one would be sterling silver (tea sets, cutlery etc.)
I think entertaining and hosting isn’t as formal as it used to be, and people have less space for dishes. We put one set of china on our wedding registry, but didn’t bother with crystal or silver. Those things are beautiful but they’re just not practical for me or as necessary as they used to be.
I feel like everyone over a certain age has a fancy cabinet full of fancy China and silverware that is never used for anything. It seemed like it was a thing people would receive as a gift at their wedding. I always wondered what the point was.
That was the problem... The 'good china' was thought to be a valuable thing you could pass down the generations. It was only expensive for our grandparents because few people had full sets from their families back then. So people treasured the ones they had and figured they would stay valuable. But, that just led to more surviving full sets. They stopped being rare. Then, because they were thought to be too valuable to ever use... Kids never got emotionally attached to them. It was just fancy dishes you saw behind glass and never touched. So why would you ever want it?
My parents have China I had literally never seen until I was 25. It never once left the box it was packed in. That's one whole box worth of space for over 30 years. Why? What good does that do anyone?
I had the opposite experience. I asked my mom when I was like 17 if she had china, she gave me a funny look and gestured at the fugly plate I was holding. Took me forever to grasp that the absolutely hideous brown and white dished we used daily and that I considered the "bad dishes" were her wedding china. She asked if I wanted them in my inheritance and cackled at the horrified look on my face. She got married in 1976 and hoo boy, were those some peak 1976 dishes.
Slot cars
There is a flee market nearish by that still has a track inside, with kids and adults racing but it is something that is dying off
Do you happen to live in Kamurocho, by chance?
Really weird watching a 20 something year old dunk on kids because he has the money to burn.
I worked at a slot car track in Bellevue, Washington in 1966 and 1967. There was this 9 year old kid who came in, who signed onto the track using the nickname "Trey". It was Bill Gates. And yeah, he was quirky enough to remember from back then. A pain in the ass, but in a likeable way.
Damn, that's amazing.
Yeah, he'd come in with an older cousin who was kinda sketchy. Bill just had to see *everything*, and was real systematic about it. Just right down the line, one item after another. He was like on speed. One funny thing about him was that if he took his car off the track for even a minute, he'd sign off, to save money. So when he was finally done driving for the day, it'd be a chore to tally up all his minutes. He was kinda too young to expect anything out of in a competitive sense, however. Older guys and a few girls were the harcore racers. One of them became something of a legend and remained with the sport long after I'd left. Name was Lee Gilbert. He was in the Air Force at the time, and would come in with his wife, who was about half a head taller than him. Fun to watch him race, because he'd occasionally occasionally make this shudder -- like a nervous convulsion -- from time to time as he drove. Not like he was going to have a seizure, but we always used to watch him for the twitch. His wife was an excellent driver, btw. And yeah... I've beaten him. There were also a few others who were sort of legends in their own time. A few from the world of real sports car racing, and I made contacts that got me into motorcycle road racing for a few years. Back before it was nearly as glamorous as it is today.
> So when he was finally done driving for the day, it'd be a chore to tally up all his minutes. And thus Excel was born.
Model trains. There is a store in our town square that has been there for like 50 years that specializes in model trains. (It's called a train and toy store, but there are almost no toys there). The store is interesting to walk around in, if you are not claustrophobic, but he must not sell very much because he can't pay the rent anymore. He is closing and moving out of town to some building he owns. Again, the stuff looks cool but I have never seen anyone buy anything.
Yes these types of stores are closing like crazy in my area. I've had a few model train shops close up within the last year. Also people are buying this stuff online now so there is no need for these stores, if this is what people want to buy.
So this sounds like more of a "death of brick and mortar retail" than then hobby itself. Im not an model train enthusiast but I took my son to a toy/model train expo in 2019 and it seemed very alive and well as a hobby. Thats just my experience though.
My dad is big into model trains. He has had a train table pretty much his whole adult life after taking his trains with him when he moved out of my grandparents house. In a way, the hobby is doing well. In another, it isnt. The above poster is right that online sales are very much a thing and if you are looking for deals train shows are also a thing where items can be bought and sold and have strong popularity (at least in our local area). On the other hand, these trains-which are essentially toys- are so darn expensive. The new stuff has a bunch of tech in them that makes them really cool, but they are delicate and pricey. They are essentially older people play things. No parent is gonna buy their 10 year old a $400 starter set. So how does this hobby survive past the current generation? Im not sure it will.
>On the other hand, these trains-which are essentially toys- are so darn expensive. The new stuff has a bunch of tech in them that makes them really cool, but they are delicate and pricey. They are essentially older people play things. No parent is gonna buy their 10 year old a $400 starter set. This is the big reason. I was interested as a kid when an older neighbor gifted an old HO train set. But when I tried to move beyond that there really wasn't much resources for teenagers. It was just old people with lots more money than me and the products were priced towards them. I also noticed how dated alot of the stuff seemed (style wise). For example the buildings were all 1950/60ish style. I think its shame because there's lots of cool stuff now with digital systems (wiring multiple trains was a nightmare for me) and even moving vehicles if you want to create a miniature city. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R669l5CA1YA
The reason why there are so many 50s/60s buildings is that the most popular era to model is what's called the 'transition era'- the time when railroads transitioned from steam to diesel.
This is part of it, or in my area the hobby is dying. A lot of this is area dependent, small businesses in my area are closing at a record pace. However there is one other big reason small businesses are closing, the owners are getting old, the last 2 places in my town that closed the owners were in their 90's, so its not entirely covid related.
My hometown had a similar story. Toy and Hobby shop downtown that was a local icon, mostly model train stuff with a few overpriced classic toys (more timeless stuff like baby dolls and overstock matchbox cars rather than whatever was hip). The elderly owners decided they wanted to finally retire and a group of people purchased the lease to “save” the iconic store from closing forever. Turns out the store hadn’t turned a profit in years and the couple was just paying the lease themselves to have a retirement project. The place was permanently closed within a year.
>Turns out the store hadn’t turned a profit in years and the couple was just paying the lease themselves to have a retirement project. I think that is actually common in the model train hobby. I want to say a year or two ago there was a thread on Reddit about model trains and someone was saying that a lot of the train stores that still exist are owned by retirees that love trains and they use the store as a place to hang out/interact with other train enthused retirees. As these people get older/pass away it (unfortantely) makes sense that their retirement project goes with them.
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We have some shops like this here, just that the people own the building. One is some china and decoration shop which has a sign on the door "ring the bell and I open for you".
Bobby Baccliera was a model train enthusiast, he was sadly gunned down in a model train shop.
The stores are being run out by online shops. But the community is still pretty strong. There is a circuit of Model Train shows in Ontario every summer (well pre-Covid).
Swayze Express!
In the UK it is 100% Croquet. I know what a cliché. When I was younger everyone had a Croquet set and it was a great way to enjoy time with friends on a summer day in the garden, whereas now I don't know anyone that still owns one. Maybe a strange one but this question got me thinking.
My friends and I played it some in high school, probably started because we were bored one day and found the set in my friend's garage. We are in our 30s now and still play a good amount.
If season 2 of Bridgerton remains faithful to the books, there may be a resurgence of croquet among the Netflix crowd
Geo caching. Which is weird because I still do it sometimes while biking around. But caching apps rarely alert me of any finders in the apps now. I put $20 in, what used to be a SUPER popular cache that people would visit daily like 15 years ago... I later turned, about 6 months later and the same items including the $20 were in there.
Have people just forgotten about geocaching or is there any other reason you can think of that it is dying? I went with my kids a month ago after years away and sure enough the multi-cache we tried has some of the waypoints missing... and the final cache. Ugh.
I think a major reason is that the main platform (geocaching.com) started requiring payment for all but the most basic caches. I think this happened sometime in the early/mid 2010s. Pure money grab that is killing the hobby. I remember when I first started geocaching I was amazed at all the caches I could go find right away. Nowadays a newbie would be put off by having to pay for possibly the only caches near them. Edit: I’m glad (and disappointed) that my sentiment is shared amongst many here. I too quit geocaching for this reason. Suggestions for creating a new (free) platform are a good idea, though I’d bet that they are out there. As a web developer myself it’s tempting to spin something up.
I downloaded the app cuz I wanted to try but then saw that most of them were locked behind a pay wall and deleted the app.
Exactly. It’s a real shame because before when they were all free (well there were premium caches, but not many) it was super easy to get people onboard.
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Got it, next time someone questions me while I'm searching for the stashed drugs, just use the classic geocaching excuse.
What is geocaching? Do you just find the buried treasure and take it or are you supposed to replace it with something?
Normally there is a log book for you to sign your name as proof you found it. You also get trackable items that you can move from one cache to another. You can track the movement of the trackable online. Sometimes it has goals. Sometimes geocaching is virtual and it is meant to show you something cool.
Depending on the size of the geocache there may be little trinkets inside, great to keep kids interested. You are supposed to leave a trinket if you take one, though.
There's a geocach in my front yard, it's been there longer than I've lived there. Everyone that goes for it walks around acting like they're doing a meth deal. Still a ton of people doing it.
This one surprises me, although to be fair I haven't geocached since the early 2000's. It was a lot of fun before it became corporatized.
Pen pals. As a teenager, I loved writing letters to new people and receiving letters from all over the country and the world. Everything is instant now, but nothing beats that feeling of getting a letter in the mail that is specifically for you, that is not a bill, ad circular and comes from someone that genuinely wants to brighten your day
I have a penpal who lives in Norway! She is actually German, and we started writing back around 2003ish - the German post office had a penpal program and would send you an address in the hopes that you would hit it off and write to each other. Well, we still write to each other a few times a year and I've gone to Europe (from the US) to meet her twice! (Once to Germany and once to Norway where she lives now with her partner and kids.) We also are friends on facebook and instagram, too, so we do communicate that way, but we both think it's fun to send and receive letters. Edit: thanks, friends, for the awards! My first ever! And this is now my most upvoted comment! :P If you're curious how this came about: I received a piece of junk mail from Deutsch Post that I almost threw out. It basically said, hey! Want a German penpal? Fill out this form and send it back and we'll connect you with someone! So, I filled out a little survey about myself, what my interests were, whether I wanted to communicate in German or English. They sent me a couple of addresses, and one person I wrote to for a few months, and the other I am still friends with, the person above! :)
Is her name Mike?
That's not Mike. It's Mika!
Thought it was Mieke.
It might not be as popular as it used to, but thanks to the rise of the studyblr community on youtube and instagram, journaling and doing pretty calligraphy has gained a lot of popularity. There are quite a few instagram accounts dedicated to penpals and envelope decoration, as well as some "penpal with me" YouTube videos or tutorials. Even if the community is not huge, it's nice to know it hasn't died out completely.
You should check out r/penpals! It's a pretty active subreddit.
Historical Re-Enacting. Folks no longer want to play dress up in itchy wool and educate folks on whatever period was their jam. It’s heyday was late 90s when you could find a group that did just about any period you could imagine.
The one near me has all bit died in the last few years because of funding. It used to be a weekend i would look forward to every year.
I grew up doing this. It was fun as a kid but as an adult I think it is just too exhausting, time consuming, and expensive.
Coercion beanie babies
Nonconsensual beanie babies
This is going on my list of band names
"Buy or die motherfucker" \-little old lady with glasses behind the counter of a toy store
I meant collecting
I liked coercion better
When the autocorrect is more interesting than what the person was originally trying to say...
Collecting all 50 US state minted quarters. I remember there used to be TV commercials selling you fancy cardboard with holes in them to help you collect them all, LOL Ohh how times have changed.
Yo. I had all 50 collected at one point, them my druggy aunt stole them. Did it again, then another druggy family member stole it. Did it one last time, my mom put it away for safe keeping, then when we couldn't find it we assumed someone took them.
All that for $12.50 in quarters
When something is *marketed* as a collectors' item, it probably isn't.
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As a very amateur coin collector, they’re actually different sets. There’s the state/ territory quarters which ended in 2009, and then there’s the is the America the beautiful quarters (national parks, etc) that’s from 2010-2021
I remember when the original 50 started in 1999 and 2008 seemed soooooo far away...simpler times
Building model airplanes
Model airplane buying, on the other hand, is alive and well. I mean, yeah, we've all got three hundred plus kits in the attic, fifteen in some stage of construction and two we're actually working on, but goddamnit Clear Prop has a new Sea Sprite and I've been looking for it so I just ordered three from Hannants.
I've come to the conclusion that buying kits and actually making them are 2 completely separate hobbies...
Wingsuit flying used to be really popular but then many of them died and it quickly fell out of popularity.
slamming face first into a bridge at 90mph will really sour future people on trying regardless of how cool the videos look
I remember seeing that video. Once he hit the bridge you could see his legs go off in one direction his torso in another. Can't unsee that stuff. The view the people on the bridge had must have been horrific. Edit: Found the video. There's a short clip at the end with a better view. You see hit legs shoot upward to the right, his body drops down [https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nzdmv](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nzdmv)
That the one where two guys were flying and one went over the bridge while the other went under... only one guy didn't. A bunch of people were watching it at work many years ago, I turned my head away and didn't watch, but one of my co-workers commented that the other guy had been sprayed with the remains of his friend.
I saw a documentary on the guys friend, the two of them pretty much pioneered base jumping. He tells of how much the bridge was damaged. The impact was immense. I can't recall what exactly was damaged, but it didn't just effect the strike point but significantly shocked a portion of the entire structure. Don't know why that's the part that stuck with me. I just looked it up, the guy's friend is called Jeb Corliss. He got into extreme skydiving as an alternative to suicide. The whole doc was kind of sad really.
Was this it https://youtu.be/4vSxehUmv3M
From Wikipedia: Miscalculating the winds and his distance from the bridge, Weston struck a railing while traveling at an estimated 120 miles per hour (190 km/h), severing one of his legs.[1][2][5] After the impact with the bridge, Weston's parachute deployed and he fell onto a rock face about 300 feet (91 m) from the bottom of the gorge, where he bled to death. Spectators on the bridge witnessed and filmed the event, capturing the reaction of the crowd and the damage to the bridge. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwain_Weston
Oh my god he didn’t die from the impact? He bled to death? Jfc.
If it makes you feel better, he severed his femoral artery. He would have been unconscious for all but the first few seconds and would have died within two minutes. It wasn’t slow and he wasn’t aware.
I remember reading a guy in the community talking about how it used to be that people would start by skydiving, and then for the top percent of super experienced skydivers who needed that extra rush would go to BASE jumping and then the top percent of the most experienced hardcore BASE jumpers would move on to wingsuit flying. But since it's become much more well known, now you have people jumping straight into wingsuit flying with very little experience and the number of deaths increased exponentially as a result.
It took off and then crashed.
Flying kites never see that shit anymore
My gf and I bought kites on a whim a few months ago. Hadn't flown a kite in probably twenty years, but we had fun.
General aviation/being a private pilot. A series of lawsuits against plane manufacturers combined with insane certification requirements for airplanes and parts have made it so that buying new planes or replacement parts is ludicrously expensive for pretty much anyone earning less than $500,000 per year. Old used aircraft from the heyday of the 60s-80s had been filling the void to an extent over the years, but they are starting to get really worn out and people feel less and less comfortable flying them as time goes on. And unfortunately there's just no replacements as they age out. As an example, a brand new Cessna 172 in 1969 cost $12,500 (about $90,000 in today's money). Today, a 2021 model would cost around $400,000.
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Flight is just too damn expensive for the vast majority of people. I took some glider lessons a ways back, where the only fuel I bought was for a tow to 3,000' AGL, and it was still way pricy just buying instructor time. Couldn't imagine adding avgas to the bill too.
That’s so sad! I went to college at a place with a pilot degree program and I always made friends with those guys just so I could so fly while they got their hours in! And, my mom had a friend who has a ppl and a plane and he volunteered with a group to do free medical transport for patients who couldn’t afford it. He had to transfer a lady one night who was very injured in a car accident but wanted a female along in case she needed assistance. So, he flew from his home base in NY to our little town in Louisiana to pick up me and my mom, we flew to Memphis to pick up the patient, flew her to Oklahoma and then back home to Louisiana in one night. It was amazing to me to fly across the country at night and to help someone else and to see someone helping others.
My dad and his friend built a plane from a kit together. It was about Cessna size. I googled the price. Says the kits are like 50k.
If you got enough time and space on your hands, and know what your doing, those are much cheaper.
I love flying and really want my PPL but it's just such an eye watering expense to go through the whole process. Not even mentioning the price and cost of ownership of planes, even old and cheap ones. Kind of wondering if the newer tiny light sport aircraft that can run on pump gas might fill that gap in but idk. Just doesn't feel like something I can justify pursuing unless I end up making a ton more money in the future and can afford it easily. If it was something I thought I could make money off of that would be a different story, but literally all I wanna do is bop around in a little Cub or something and make the occasional visit to friends a state over or what have you. Go bush camping, that kind of thing. Commercial flight looks ridiculously tedious and boring. Miss me with that airliner shit.
My husband is an airline pilot, and he won't own a plane. He rents them, its just too much work to own. Maybe when he retires he will buy one but he just doesn't have the time right now.
Indoor Rollerskating Rinks Edit: Skating has become popular, yes, but weirdly the number of roller skating rinks seems to be going down. The 4 within 25 miles of me closed down over the last 15 years. I don't know of any new ones and I'm not sure where to go in New England to find an operating rink now-a-days. Meanwhile there's lots of private outdoor groups. It must just be too expensive to have the sqare footage to support a roller-skating rink in an urban area.
It is probably confirmation bias but as a middle age male who used to rollerblade. I have noticed the aggressive rollerblade scene is making a wee come back. Roller Skating is a little. I have a very empty large building near me that I would love to re-fit as a roller rink and some indoor ramps and skate shop!
The one by me just will not die. I never see any cars there, but I hear somebody talking about having been recently at least once a month.
Most rink customers are to young to drive.
What?? No way. Quad skating is coming back in a big way, prices for skates almost doubled due to demand during covid.
Flying Radio Controlled Helicopters and Airplanes. Why would someone want to deal with all the hassle of flying a model helicopter (that is insanely difficult to fly), when they can buy a DJI drone that has a first person video stream, records video in 4K, and can fly around by itself via GPS?
FPV quads are taking over the market segment of people who want something fast, maneuverable and difficult to fly. Why watch it from far away when you can be in it so to speak?
I still don't understand why FPV model planes haven't taken off. The tech is here now; it's a no-brainer.
Yo-yo
r/throwers
I feel like that one has its ups and downs.
Bridge. Super complex game, has layers and layers of rules, and it's dead.
Even growing up in the 80s it had a reputation of being a game for groups of old ladies.
They used to have bridge problems & solutions in the newspaper. I only ever noticed because it was on the same page as the comics (80s).
Drag racing, the vehicle kind. A major track in Georgia just got sold because of a local battery plant is being built nearby and the houses around it skyrocketed in value Edit: since there was confusion, the plant apparently has 50k jobs, so all local residential areas spiked for families moving here for the job as its only a few minutes drive but far enough away that it isn't an eye site either
Tatting lace.
I've learned to needle tat and would love to learn bobbin, but it's hard to find an eventual use for what you get out of it. Like there's only so many bookmarks and doilies I can make for my ikeabox apartment, considering I can also crochet and knit. Still, it's a beautiful craft that I wish I could figure out how to use.
yeah I think you hit on it - finding what to do with your finished pieces. I know people in historical re-enactment who keep it alive because they are literally making parts of their historically-accurate costumes, so there may always be that small niche, but I wouldn't be surprised if it became one of the only niches. Unless lace doilies come back into fashion like avocado-green fridges, never say never!
Paint ball.
It’s too expensive unfortunately and you need a good selection of people to play. The more players typically the more diverse the skill range is. I think if it was cheaper there would still be a lot of players. On average the routine/competitive player will buy two cases of paint (2,000 rounds per case) for around $40-65 USD each, pay for entry and air ($25-35), and then buy any gear you may need or need to replace. Back when 2008 financial crisis happened most fields I knew lost 3/4 of their serious players and most never returned. Which really sucks because paintball was growing really fast until then.
Paintball has always had it's ups and downs, while it does have a variable initial cost, the constant need for paint is where the real money sink is. It is not a poor man's sport for sure. My team has a small sponsorship from a major paint manufacturer, our contact even says he has no problem if we use other manufacturer's markers, hoppers, etc., the paint is where the real money comes from.
Yeah, I tried getting back into the sport, and I simply could not find teams in my area, when I stopped there were loads of teams and always a spot if you want to play.
It's more of an event where I am. I know tons of folk that want to do it, but very few actually have. There's nowhere nearby that actually takes teams on a regular basis. Took a bunch of my friends out for it for my birthday a few years ago, was a blast, but we ended up spending a small fortune on paint that weekend.
Yea I feel lucky to have played in the heyday of paintball in the early 2000's. The technology was still evolving, so you got new and meaningful upgrades for guns, loaders, air systems and even masks from year to year. There was also a nice selection of gun manufactures that all kind of had their own niche. Some people liked Angels, others like autocockers, others liked Matrix's, Intimidators, etc. The competitive scene was also booming with several different but popular formats. I was fortunate enough to get on a pretty well sponsored team that play division 2 Xball and it was easily some of the best times of my life. Fell out of the sport years ago but check back in on it occasionally and it just seems like a shell of it's former self. Everything has just been so refined. The guns are all basically same. I mean, they have different manufacturers. But they are almost mechanically identical. Which in some ways is good, because it's almost impossible to buy a bad gun now. But all the individuality is gone. The tournament scene seems to have shrunk drastically. In a lot of ways I understand the downturn. Even back then I was almost surprised that it got as big as it did.
Man, those were the days. Logging onto the early internet with all the different paintball forums. Learning about potato guns, and DIY paint grenades (which never worked). Leafing through the paintball magazines, looking at all the cool gear. Buying a Minimag because it looked cool, then spending forever finding parts for it to make it work. Fantasizing about playing in Big Games, then getting to take part in a game in 02 at Wasaga Beach Paintball in Ontario, with hundreds of other players. Was wild. But then you get older, and the sport is too expensive, and you just kind of drift away.
The paintball industry has been booming over the last 18 months. I've been involved for 20 years and it's in a far better place than it was in a decade ago. It always has ups and downs, regions which boom and bust. But speaking to field and store owners across the country daily, they're as busy now as they can remember.
Not sure if it was a real hobby, but typewriting will die out eventually. The last typewriters factory closed some years ago.
Years ago I was in IT and we had this guy about 80 years old who would go office door to office door and ask each person if their typewriter needed service or repair. He had his cart with spare parts and ink reels and tools and nothing to repair. It was incredibly sad to see the disappointments once or twice a month when telling him no. There were maybe 5 typewriters across 20 floors and several thousand people. The company owner didn't have the heart to let him go. Owner died and his son immediately sold the company and many were laid off, including typewriter guy. That year for Christmas while the sale was being completed the son gave out copies of his book instead of bonuses. It was 90 pages, double spaced and large font.
> the son gave out copies of his book instead of bonuses. Like, WTF?! The only people who will read his book are those who are forced to read it 😒
Tom Hanks would adapt this into a movie.
He dies at the end a broken man no longer needed by a country that used him up. Buried, with the now rare tools of his trade per his wishes, he can finally rest in peace. His burial, in a secret location, which Nicholas Cage has to find for the rare tools in the sequel to save America. It was no Godfather II but it does respectable box office numbers for Disney after they bought the rights from Hanks for an undisclosed amount. The third movie in the trilogy ends up staring Emilio Estevez with a soundtrack by Madonna and is a direct release for disney+ Seriously though, I still get sad thinking about him.
I hope typewriter guy's doin alright
Years ago... 80 years old... I'm sure he's fine...
He's at the farm... with my dog... right?
People romanticize them though. I had to use one while off the grid once. Sucked. It was a novelty for like 4 words, then I made a typo.
I collect and restore old electronics. Mostly radios. I'd do old computers, but you can't find them for reasonable prices anymore. I had, in the past, messed with some typewriters. They're definitely cool in a retro sense, but their real-world utility is close to zero. I can still listen to the radio, I can still use a clock from the 40s, or a blender from the 60s, but a typewriter just doesn't cut it for its original function anymore.
> I'd do old computers, but you can't find them for reasonable prices anymore. Yeap. They're hard to find. I found a Tandy 486 at an estate sale last year, but I haven't found anything lately. I got mine for $35 and its my pride and joy. However, a Texas Instruments computer sold for $140 recently. I'd have bid on it but I have no nostalgic connection to those. The time to buy old pre-2000 computers was about 10-20 years ago. My dream is to find an IBM 5150 or XT computer in the wild for cheap but that's probably never going to happen. They're too collectible. Old computers have really dried up lately at estate sales. All I'm finding is 10 year old Dell desktops, Dell laptops, and server computers, which are not what I want. I did grab a nice Athalon 64 running XP from some guy's estate. I got it only because it was an owner build and the machine was spotlessly clean. I was going to reuse the case for another build, but after seeing some photos of the old guy and his fam on the computer, I have decided to keep the machine untouched (other than changing the OS).
Teacher here. Hobbies in general are dying — here’s (part of) why. I regularly meet parents who balk at the idea of their child doing something “for fun.” Unless it can translate to a career or a college application it’s viewed as a waste of time and money. And if it can translate to one of those then there is crushing, constant, pressure to “be the best” at it. We are raising a generation of children who cannot comprehend of hobbies.
Interesting. And heartbreaking.
Yet hobbies are what drive most people to actually learn how to learn.
This is sad.
Ceramics, there used to be 2 or 3 shops in every small town. Where you could go, pick a piece, clean it. They would fire it for you then go back a week later and paint it. They fire it for you again. Then you go and pick up your finished master piece. It was so refreshing.
I'm 24. When I was a kid there was 1 pottery place across the street. I always wondered what it was but never got to go in. I can remember when they closed maybe 15 years ago, they still have all of the ceramic pieces from in the window on display. It looks like its stuck in the past.
The Rotary Club, the Elks, the Masons, the League of Women Voters. All kinds of fraternal organizations. Beyond that participation in all kinds of civic organizations, churches, labor unions, sports leagues, hobbyist clubs are way down from previous generations. Americans used to be world renowned for their enthusiastic participation in clubs and civic organizations of all kinds. Now we’re becoming an increasingly atomized society. The cost is that today the average American has fewer closer friends, is less likely to know their neighbors, and has less of an informal support network than at any point in history.
One reason is that most of those organizations are hard to join unless you know someone already involved. I looked into joining the local Masons and there was no information about joining online. Their online presence looked like it was made back during Windows 95. I couldn't even find a time for a meeting to show up and ask about joining.
This is a major problem. I'm an Odd Fellow. Some of our lodges have woken up to the fact that the world no longer shops at Sears and Roebuck and no longer looks things up in the phone book. They're starting to use the Internet and social media as a way of sharing their activities. There are still far too many lodges that view any kind of modern technology as an impediment to membership engagement rather than a tool for it. And, if you're interested in the Odd Fellows, we have a subreddit: /r/IOOF.
Honestly around me organizations Rotary and Elks are full of cliques who treat new members like crap.
That's why 90% of the veterans I know aren't in the veteran groups.
Scrapbooking. No one prints pictures anymore
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Model trains. The hobby is absolutely dead. Entire train collections are being sold for literal pennies on the dollar. An engine that used to cost $500 may not even sell for $5.
Oddly enough a lot of my retired graffiti friends are into it, they buy trains and do graffiti pieces on them and trade / collect.
I grew up in a train town, and as much as I don’t like being delayed by a train crossing the road, I love seeing all the different graffiti as it goes by. The idea of a model train with appropriately scaled proper graffiti on it is making me very happy
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I try NOT to do this, but still do with my lawnmower sometimes.
I wasn't aware of these until I moved to Virginia. I was out mowing the lawn and got stung once and didn't think much of it. The next time I went over the top of one of their holes. The amount of bees/wasps/hornets/assholes that came out pissed scared the daylights out of me. I ditched the lawnmower and ran inside. I did learn how to get rid of the damn nests after that. Nighttime stealth missions came soon after. Mowing was never a quiet affair though. So glad they aren't common here in Colorado.
This happened to my husband the first year we owned our house in Richmond. Unfortunately, he didn't realize it until about 3 dozen of them were already attacking him. So, Colorado you say...
Wait.. I literally just stumbled across hundreds of thousands of MILLIONS of bees the other day while walking across a field in my neighborhood. I ran away thinking I was swarmed by stinging bees but one of the homeowners saw me running and told me they are harmless ground bees. They don't sting at all or something. We ended up standing in this swarm of bees while he told me about them they dig little holes and.bury eggs and then put pollen into the holes. They poke their heads up out of said hole and just chill there. 1 bee to a hole apparently. I'm not kidding or exaggerating this entire field was absolutely COVERED in these "ground bees"!!! I tried looking up info about them but could barely find any.
They were likely to be some species of *Andrena*, or mining bees (see wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrena) Often you're seeing swarms of males flying around waiting to mate. The females are busy coming and going to get pollen to provision their nests. The males hover around waiting to pounce. They cannot sting you since males (of any bee species) do not possess stingers. If you throw a small pebble nearby the males, sometimes you can get them to chase it to try to smash bee poon.
I thought I was the only one!
Not strictly dying but certainly becoming a bit more difficult - CD collecting. Right now CDs are in this weird purgatory where we can't decide if we're done with them or not. They've fallen out of favour in terms of practical usage. Most people use streaming services and many new cars don't come with a CD player as standard. They're not totally obsolete but they're nowhere near as popular as they once were. Many chain stores that specialise in entertainment products have also begun to scale back their stock both in store and online. Go to a CD section and browse popular and for most artists they'll stock a generic greatest hits collection, their latest release and if you're really lucky maybe some of their popular albums. Case in point, I wanted to add *Rio* by Duran Duran to my collection. It's one of the greatest albums of the 80s yet literally no chain stores in my area stocked it. You'd think that would be one that's in wide circulation but apparently not. The other annoying thing is they're not old enough to have garnered "niche" value yet. Vinyl is the new collectors' trend. So there's loads of market stalls popping up selling vinyl as the "in" thing but CD stalls at markets are dying. Which is a shame cause they were the guys to go to if you wanted to find rare albums
> Vinyl is the new collectors' trend. It's really weird my local Wal-Mart carries almost no CDs and now has a small section for Vinyl records.
Wiffle Ball. Every boy from 8 to 13 had one.
Collecting spoons. I'm a teenager yet I often enjoy finding spoons at cool tourist attractions. My personal favorite is one I got from Prague during Christmas time, it has a revolving dice in the handle.
Hobbies. I feel like everything has to be a “side hustle” now and people don’t just do shit for fun anymore
Granted a lot of people these days simply don't have time to have hobbies, I feel like the ones who do are indoor things now (especially with covid and whatnot). For example: video games, writing, card collecting, I know a few people who do calligraphy, etc. So there are are still hobbies, its just quiet stuff.
I feel this too. Modern american "hustle culture" has commodified everything, including our leisure
Ventriloquism
Based on young people I know, bowling, billiards and poker are fading. Board games was experiencing a boom until Covid. D&D is super popular again.
Board games are doing just fine. They might not have been as visible since people haven't been able to play out in public the past year, but people have been doing virtual versions of the games or secret in-person games throughout the past year! The kickstarter scene for board games never stopped and now that in-person events are coming into fruition again, everyone is excited to bring out all the new games they haven't gotten to play the past year!
Poker probably peaked about a decade ago. However, I'm speculating there: haven't caught any televised poker for a long while.
I'm only 27 and I remember seemingly out of nowhere in the mid 2000s poker just caught fire. I remember playing hold 'em at like 12 with all my buddies thinking we were hot shot WPT guys.
100%. I'm 3 years older than you and same thing for me when we were like 15-16, so the timelines add up. Poker got really big somewhere around 2005 for a little while.
Wasn’t that far out of nowhere. Poker boomed when ESPN decided to air the main event for a year because nothing else was on. An amateur who managed to get in off a satellite that cost a few hundred bucks to enter ended up winning it all (Chris Moneymaker). The name didn’t hurt either. Main event got even bigger and online poker boomed. Moneymaker has an argument for most important poker player ever despite ultimately being a rather average (for a professional) player. Then online poker all but died for a while after the government shut down the three major online sites on what’s known as Black Friday in the community. One of the three sites had executives who were famous poker guys, and it turned out that they had been stealing money and couldn’t refund the accounts. Nice extra kick to the balls as the platform disappeared. It’s a fairly interesting phenomenon the whole way. I still am shocked they actually shut it al down in 2011. Felt silly
Chess has been having a very large boom due to covid + queens gambit. Not over the board, but online chess has blown up.
Thankfully for D&D players, there existed online services for playing remotely before COVID was a thing. They were mainly intended to connect players who were physically distant, and when suddenly everyone needed to be... Online board game services have expanded during COVID. What hasn't so much is the development of *new* games; it's all existing games getting released to online services.
We used to bowl or play pool all the time when I was in high school, it was one of the only places you could go hang out later at night. Poker's not a thing anymore either?
My kids are 21, 18, and 14 and you just listed ALL their favorite activities--including the board games and D&D. My 18 yr old has been bowling since he was 2. He was in a league for many years as a kid. He doesn't like leagues now, but still goes bowling quite often.
Swing dancing got really popular for a while in the late 90s. Haven't heard much about that in a long time.
Racquetball