#24
View attachment 426639
December 1981
While this episode of Three’s Company where Jack tries to get out of a date with a mob boss’s daughter is pretty solid, it’s time for a commercial:
Overhead shot of a closed race track. Pretty simple design, but it’s got a few curves. Cue the voiceover.
“Is asking for more from the best…”
Pause for pictures of a little car zooming around the track.
“...Asking too much?”
Overhead shot of the track again, but this time it’s chock-a-block with twists and turns.
“At Ford we don’t think so.”
More shots of the car handling a series of curves that might not be quite as twisty as the overhead shot implied, but which still look impressive with the right editing.
“The 1982 Ford Fiesta. The handling you expect; the comfort you deserve; and the fuel economy you need. Now 48 miles per gallon on the highway; 36 in the city. See your local Ford dealer today!”
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June 1982
Forbes Magazine
Hot Handlebars: The Rise and Rise of the Bicycle
Article is accompanied by a picture of the new Schwinn 10-speed “Rambler” model, a more-or-less direct copy of the 1977 Nishiki “International”
The bicycle boom: here to stay? Ever since sales of multi-speed bikes for adults passed eight million in 1972, economists have predicted the bubble would pop on the two-wheeled phenomenon. While purchases did flatten in the late 1970s, the turn of the decade has seen an even sharper rise in sales than ten years ago.
Many industry experts predicting a fall in sales were factoring in a return to stable, low oil prices that failed to materialize. Now, with the arrival of the Federal Emergency Gas Tax- set at 35%, currently about $.52 a gallon- those predictions are dissipating, and many market-watchers are changing their tune.
Helping along this change in attitude to the humble 10-speed are the recent spate of actions by hundreds of municipal and county governments across the country, who have pledged the creation of bicycle-only paths or road lanes. In the past such projects were formulated as small-scale recreational endeavors, whereas these days projects are being approved with an eye towards making the bicycle a viable tool for commuting.
Most readers will have heard of some of the more ambitious projects on the list: New York City’s “10 For 10” campaign (adding 100 miles of bikeways by 1992), or Los Angeles’ “Cycling Viability Study,” predicted to add as much as 150 miles of bikeways by 1990.
But even smaller cities are getting in on the act. Downtown Dayton, OH recently saw Huffy Corporation (a new addition to the Fortune 500 this year) break ground on its new corporate headquarters, along with a promise to partially finance a network of 50 miles of bikeways in the city center. And small towns across the country are releasing their own plans, from the timid (a 150-foot painted strip in Holland, MI) to the ambitious (protected bikeways on every commercial street in San Luis Obispo, CA).
But what do the numbers really say? Are people cycling for more than just pleasure? Data-keeping on this phenomenon is a new endeavor, and there's not much to go on beyond the evidence of our eyes. To those of us who live in big cities, there has been an undeniable increase in the number of cyclists one encounters on the streets over the last few years. Perhaps the best indicator we have comes from a pair of surveys conducted by the Denver Post in 1977 and again this year. In the first survey, .7% of respondents identified themselves as regular bike commuters. Five years later, that number has grown to just under 3%, a more than 400% increase. Over 70% of those in the second survey indicated that they had only begun cycling to work within the last year.
Meanwhile in New York City, an estimated 300,000 trips are made via bicycle every day. Over 50% of residents own a bicycle or have owned one in the last three years.
While still a minor player in terms of the overall picture of transportation in America, it is clear that the growing popularity of the bicycle is not likely to slow down anytime soon.
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March 1982
A meeting of the McKinley High School PTA is just getting started. The principle stands in front of a bird’s eye photo of the school parking lot.
“Okay everybody thanks for coming, as always. This should be a short one today as we really just have two items to go over. We’ve got the Spanish Gala coming up and Marci will be giving you an update on that in just a minute. But first I wanted to run by the proposed changes to the school parking lot with you all, I know lots of parents are concerned about this one.”
A few parents under their breath express sentiments amounting to “Yer darn tootin’ we are.”
“Well just to go over the plan again, we’re going to take this first line of spaces here, minus the five handicapped spaces, and we’re going to turn ten of them into parking for motor scooters and the other five into additional bicycle parking. It’s going to give us space for 80 scooters and at least 60 bikes.”
Rumbles of discontent.
“Well now, you know, I hear ya. Nobody likes coming to the game on Saturday or a concert or a play or what have you and having to park all the way down the road. There’s already not enough room for you as it is and here we are talking about taking away even more. But you know, this is about what we need here at McKinley every day. We’ve got more and more requests every day for scooter parking. You all know what gas is like now. We’ve all got to economize. Yes, Mrs. Nielsen?”
“I just don’t know how you can promote our children riding those dangerous things! They should be banned, you should have to be 21 to ride them. I just know one of the kids is going to get hurt!”
“Kids? Mrs. Nielsen, we’ve had almost 40 requests from teachers for scooter parking. The kids’ll have to wait in line!”
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February, 1982
Flint Michigan. Hank’s barbershop. Only Hank and his regular customer Morty are in the shop. Morty is a devoted detester of sports, a man who will grind his teeth down to the gumline if he has to listen to one more debate about whether the Tigers should pick up that lefty reliever. Finding a barber capable of discussing something other than sports is rare in any town. Morty is currently counting his blessings once again, as Hank turns the conversation to politics.
“I see they passed that bill.”
“What?”
“Congress. The stimulus package.”
“What, again? Didn’t we just have one?”
“That was last year. This is this year.”
“Well if it worked so well last year…”
“You keep spending til you get it right, I guess. But at least this one has some good news for our boys.”
“What, lemme guess, they’re going to make it illegal to walk now so you gotta buy a car?”
“Not quite. We’re getting that sweet, sweet scooter money.”
“Scooter money?”
“Motor scooters, Mortimer. Wave of the future.”
“Nobody wants to ride around in a scooter. Can you imagine me riding around in a scooter? Ridiculous.”
“Eh, maybe people don’t necessarily
want a scooter, like they’d rather have a Caddy. Who wouldn’t? But you can’t beat ‘em for cost.”
“There’s more to life than saving money. You gotta treat yourself. I guess that’s why I go to a barber who charges $2 for a shave. Must be the reason. Otherwise I’m just a sap.”
“Hey. All my best customers are saps.”
“I thought you might say that. So anyway, what’s this stimulus?”
“So you know how it is with these bills, it’s a mammoth. There’s stuff in there I don’t even think the Congress knows is in there. It’s mostly what you’d expect: money to pay the farmers and keep food costs low, money for more subways back east, money for energy and wind farms, like the one they got goin’ up over in Traverse City. Make people build more, buy more, earn more, spend more. So they pump more money into the economy. And while they’re at it, they notice that all the kids these days are off their rockers for these scooters.”
“You know now that you mention it my nephew’s been bugging my sister for one. And that neighbor of mine bought his daughter one when she turned 16.”
“Yeah, all the kids are getting scooters now at 16.”
“It ain’t American if you ask me.”
“What, capitalism ain’t American?”
Morty shoots Hank one of those soft Midwestern glares. Hank continues.
“So anyway, I guess Kawasaki or whoever sold something like a bazillion more scooters this year than last year. The brass in Detroit got spooked. The government got spooked. We got some emergency tariffs and a boatload of cash to retool a few places to build scooters. I hear one of them’s the V8 Engine plant. No one’s buying those muscle cars anymore.”
“I guess that’s something. Can’t complain about jobs staying here. Still, it seems like a shame. There’s just something about a car, you know?”
“Don’t I know it. And don’t you know it. But it doesn’t look like the kids know it.”
“Kids.”
“They ruin everything.”
“And then they get old.”
“And their kids ruin everything again.”
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
Beat
“...I wonder what we ruined?”
They think about it for a minute.
“Hats.”
“That’s true.”
“We never shoulda stopped wearing hats.”