Lisa's Nostalgia Cafe--1980s Travel, Nightlife & Around Town


more 1980s topics Nostalgia Cafe main page Nostalgia Cafe site map	Travel, Nightlife & Around Town in the 1980s ====================================================================== ======================================================================

Travel

Upscale vacation destinations became very popular in the 1980s. We flew to Walt Disney World, relaxed at all-inclusive resorts like Club Med and partied the night away on cruise lines like Carnival and Norwegian.

hot weather fun
*For college students, Spring Break meant an annual trek to Ft. Lauderdale or Daytona Beach.

*To beat the summer heat, we headed for the nearest water park, where we enjoyed wave pools and water slides.

Club Med
Carnival Cruise Lines
Spring Break At Daytona Beach
History Of Spring Break
Magic Waters
Wet & Wild

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amusement parks
*Disney's Epcot Center opened in 1982.

*Remember Boardwalk & Baseball? ...it was one of Florida's shortest-lived amusement parks.

*Heritage USA was owned by televangelist Jim Bakker and his PTL Network. It opened in 1978 and was the third-most successful theme park in America. It closed in 1987 when scandal destroyed Bakker's empire.

A Virtual Guide To Epcot
Walt Disney World
Boardwalk & Baseball
Worlds Of Fun
Theme Park Brochures
Heritage USA

motels & hotels
The cost of staying in a motel was rising, and this resulted in the creation of economy motels like Motel 6 and Super 8. No upscale trends here...just a clean room, a pool, a phone and cable TV.

The more expensive motels were beginning to resemble resorts, with indoor pools, tanning beds, hot tubs and saunas. In your room, you'd find a mini-fridge and pay-per-view movies.

In the "corporate culture" of the 1980s, more people were traveling on business than ever before. Some hotel chains catered to them by providing free coffee, unlimited local phone calls, meeting rooms, conference calling and increased desk space.

Motel 6
Holiday Inn

At the new Holiday Inn Holidomes, the guest rooms overlooked a central domed atrium where the pool and recreation areas were located.

Nightlife

city style

yuppie bars
tropical drinks
sports bars
dance clubs
imported beer
singles bars
video screens
electronic darts

house music
In the early 1980s, disco was dead. For clubs, this created a shortage of dance music. DJs created their own dance mixes by "reconstructing" records to make them danceable. They did this by extending them, splicing them together, changing the tempo and layering different bits of percussion over them. This became known as house music, and by the mid 1980s it was a sensation. In the late 1980s, house music made the transition to radio where it was regarded as an art form in its own right.

karaoke
In the late 1970s, bar patrons in Kobe, Japan enjoyed singing along with prerecorded accompaniment tapes. This was karaoke, a combination of the words kara ("empty") and oke ("orchestra"). In the mid 1980s, it became a fun activity for really brave (or really drunk!) people to do in American bars.

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The L.A. Punk & New Wave Scene
Clubs Of The 70s & 80s
The History Of Karaoke
Clubs Of The 80s

the hot spots

New York City:
------- The Saint
------- The Funhouse
Houston:
------- Gilley's
San Francisco:
------- Trocadero Transfer
-------The Endup
Los Angeles:
-------The Roxy
-------The Odyssey
Chicago:
-------The Snuggery
-------The Power Plant
-------The Warehouse
-------Coconuts
-------Baja Beach Club

country
style

country music
line dancing
mechanical bulls
denim prairie skirts
cowboy hats & big belt buckles

The 1980 movie Urban Cowboy made Gilley's
and its mechanical bull famous

dining out


fast food Wendy's McDonalds Burger King Popeye's Chicken Subway Hardee's Taco Bell TCBY Brown's Chicken Pepe's Tacos ultra-trendy Spago	pizza Chuck E. Cheese Showbiz Pizza Rocky Rococo Little Caesar's Domino's Celebration Station trendy Bennigan's Houlihan's Lettuce Entertain You Chili's

family restaurants
Denny's
Perkins
Wag's
Poppin' Fresh--Baker's Square
Cracker Barrel

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At trendy restaurants, the appetizers were as good as the meals.....beer nuggets, pizza puffs, buffalo wings, mozzarella sticks, breaded mushrooms, onion loaf.....yummy!
	In the 1980s, family dining shed its suburban coffeeshop image and became quite trendy and upscale. Restaurants like Chili's and Houlihan's were perfect examples of this. The "Irish pub" theme was popular at eateries like Bennigan's.
Another new trend in the 1980s was the kid-friendly pizza place. At these restaurants, the dining experience included pizza, puppet shows, ball pits and video games. Many kids held their birthday parties at places like Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz Pizza.

shopping

new shopping trends
*Getting designer names for less at retail outlets.
*Hanging with your friends at the mall food court.
*Saving money by bagging your own groceries at stores like Omni, Aldi and Cub Foods.
*Renting movies at the video rental shop for home VCR viewing.

Like omigawd!
It's, like,
the Galleria...

California's Sherman Oaks Galleria opened in 1980. This trendy mall was the center of Valley Girl life during its heyday in the 1980s. The mall scenes in Fast Times At Ridgemont High were filmed there, and Moon Unit Zappa's 1982 song Valley Girl mentions going shopping there, too.

The Sherman Oaks Galleria
History Of Home Video
The Rise & Fall Of Video Rental

video rental

When VCRs were introduced in the late 1970s, prerecorded movies on videocassette were sold by mail order. Before too long, stores specializing in video rentals were springing up all over the place. In 1977, Video Cassette Rentals in Los Angeles was the first video rental shop. The chain was renamed Video Station and grew to over 400 locations by 1982. Blockbuster Video opened its first store in 1985, and the first Hollywood Video opened in 1988.

In addition to the regular movie rental fees, a membership fee was usually required. If you didn't rewind the tape before returning it, you were charged an extra 50 cents. In the early 1980s, many video stores also rented VCRs.


specialty Silo Fretter Video Station Toys R' Us Rose Records Arcadia Blockbuster Video (1985) Highland Superstores Musicland Radio Shack Hollywood Video (1988) fashion Marshalls Designer Depot T.J. Maxx Stuarts Casual Corner Brooks Just Pants Foot Locker	discount Kmart Wal-mart Venture Alco Zayre home decor Pier 1 Imports World Bazaar Crate & Barrel The Great Frame-Up Pepper's Waterbeds Builder's Square grocery & drugs Cub Foods Jewel Omni Dominick's Aldi Phar-mor F&M Osco Pick n' Save

Travel, Nightlife& Around Town in the 1980s

Travel, Nightlife
& Around Town in the 1980s