Some of my photos from the late 1980s…
So young and innocent…with no clue of what the next sixteen years in The City would bring.
The Island of Misfit Toys
Or, as I like to call it, “Tech of Yesteryear: Stuff I’ve Owned.”
My first calculator, a Texas Instruments SR-10. Four functions plus square root, square and inverse!—$89 in 1974. I needed it for Chem/Physics.
My first 10-speed bike, a Schwinn Continental—$105 in 1972
My first (and only) typewriter, an Olympia Report Electric SKE—price and date forgotten (1974?). Sold in a fit of perceived poverty in 1990.
My first hi-fi turntable, a Philips GA-212—$200 in 1973. I had to have this particular one because it was touch control! Little did I know that when the bulbs under the touch controls burnt out, the controls stopped working altogether, necessitating a costly trip to a repair shop. It wasn’t like you could just go online and order replacements.
My first awesome, truly high-tech hi-fi turntable, a Technics SL-1300Mk2—$500 in 1978. I took out a personal loan for this one. Of course it died within months of being paid for and then sat in a repair facility for months because the particular integrated circuit that had failed was on indefinite backorder. (Such is the life of an early adopter.) I finally retrieved it from the shop and shipped it back to Panasonic for repair. It was returned, and UPS left it with the neighbors’ unattended children, where they proceeded to destroy it. UPS and Panasonic wrote it off as “destroyed in shipment” and sent me refurbished unit. But it was never the same, so I sold it in 1980.
I replaced it in 2000 or thereabouts with a near-mint unit that came in the original packaging. The arm lift mechanism on this model was a notoriously bad design that self-destructed after about 5 years of use, so I had it professionally repaired by a friend back east (now, sadly deceased) and it’s worked beautifully ever since.
My first digital watch, a Novus—price unknown (but it wasn’t cheap) in 1976. It was a high school graduation present from my parents. Like all digital watches of the time, you had to hold down the button to make it illuminate and show you the time. It died sometime in the early 80s.
My first hi-fi amplifier, a Sony TA-5650—$550 in 1976. I bought it for myself with money I received for my high school graduation. Another piece of cutting edge tech that wasn’t quite ready for prime time, the 5650 had the very annoying habit of self-destructing every six months or so, necessitating a visit to the repair shop to have some diodes replaced (to the tune of $75 a trip—quite a bit of money for the time). After the second or third time it happened, I decided to replace it, but nothing came close to the sweet, sweet sound the V-FETs produced, so I kept getting it fixed.
The last time it died, sometime in 1986, I replaced it with a rock-solid Yamaha amp and kissed it goodbye, leaving it in the laundry room of the apartment complex I was living in at the time. I did that because I just couldn’t bear to toss it in the dumpster.
My first computer, a Commodore VIC-20—$200 in 1981. It hooked up to a television, and since Dennis (my first partner) and I couldn’t afford to buy the external cassette drive to save the programs we spent hours meticulously typing in BASIC, it was an ongoing lesson in frustration. But it did light a spark that eventually culminated in my current career.
My first hi-fi cassette deck, a Sony TCK-555—$370 in 1984. I waited a long, long time to finally get a good cassette deck for my system. Little did I know that in only two short years they would start marching toward the graveyard of history. It was a good—not great—deck, but it served me for several years before being replaced.
My first new car, a 1984 Toyota Corolla SR-5—$11,000 in 1984. Damn, I loved this car. I sold Dorothy in 1989 after deciding that owning a car in San Francisco was more trouble that it was worth. It was also reaching the point that it was needing some expensive repairs and I had no way of paying for them, so I had to say goodbye. It’s the one vehicle that still shows up regularly in my dreams, never having been sold, but merely put into storage all these years…
My first CD player, a Yamaha D-400—$360 in 1985. As I recall I blew my whole tax refund on this. I had wanted to get a Technics SL-P2 but it had been discontinued and I didn’t like anything in the Technics lineup that replaced it. I should’ve done more shopping before jumping on this one, however. It sounded fantastic, but it could only display the track number or the time, but not both. Seriously, Yamaha? I replaced it in 1990.
My first portable CD player, a Sony D100 Discman—$400 in 1987. This was Sony’s second-generation portable, and I loved this bit of tech. The only reason I eventually got rid of it was the headphone jack kept coming unsoldered from the main circuit board (one day after the warranty expired, typical of Sony products). It was an easy-enough fix to do myself, but I finally just got tired of dealing with it.
My first 35mm camera, the Pentax ME Super. I got this from my second partner in exchange for some money he owed me. I adored this camera. I won’t say my ratio of good photos to bad was excellent, but I remember it being decidedly better than all my subsequent years of digital. In my rush to go digital, I sold it to buy a new camera. WORST. DECISION. EVER.
My first digital camera, the Canon A10—$125 (steeply discounted) in 2003. It ate batteries which severely limited its usefulness, picture quality was so-so, and it was a pain in the ass to actually get the photos off of it. I was so relieved when I finally got the funds together to replace it.
This was the camera I replaced the A10 with, a Panasonic DMC-FZ7. This camera went everywhere with me (including a road trip to Yellowstone), and together we got some stunning shots. After a couple years, however, I tired of the all purple fringing showing up around bright areas in the photos and after replacing it with a Sony, sold it on eBay.
TGIF
Blast From the Past
The CD Record Rack
San Francisco, CA
August, 1998
Kit Building
As a kid growing up in the 60s, I was an avid plastic model kit builder. I honestly don’t remember what the first one was that I built, but I have memories of a maroon car from the 30s or 40s that had a rumble seat. I thought that seat was so cool. As I grew up I went through several phases of kit building as my main focus of interest changed: cars, monsters from classic movies, dinosaur skeletons, anatomical models, and lastly, spacecraft and airplanes. In fact, I associate the smell of plastic model cement with Christmas as much as the smell of turkey, dressing, and fresh-baked cookies.
I have two especially great model memories. The first was on my 9th birthday. My dad was late getting home from work that day. Knowing how time passes for a child, he probably wasn’t more than half hour or so, but it seemed like an eternity. And the reason? He had gone to several hobby stores trying to find a particular model kit I wanted. I was deep in the throes of my “I want to be a doctor” phase, and while he was able to find Renwal’s Visible Man, the Visible Woman kit was nowhere to be found. So instead, he bought me the Visible Dog, which was equally cool. (I acquired the Visible Woman while visiting relatives in Green Bay about a year later.) The second memory was the Christmas that I received the 4′ tall kit of the Saturn V moon rocket. I know I’d been clamoring for this model for weeks—if not months—and at $30, it was extremely expensive for the time, but my parents being who they were, came through.
At the time, model kits were available of just about anything the United States had put into the air or into space, and I swear I must’ve had just about every one of them at one time or another. The summer after I got the Saturn V, I was deep into commercial airliners. My first was a Boeing 727, followed up by a 737, a 707, and one of the then brand-new 747. I remember how excited I was to see one in person the following summer as we flew to Massachusetts to visit the grandparents. I bought the 747 (Pam Am livery!) kit when we were back east, and resented the fact that Mom wouldn’t let me build it because there would be no way of getting it home if it were assembled. Ah, the frustration! But surprisingly, my favorite kit of all the airliners was the 737 (United livery). I don’t know why; there was just something about its short, bulldog-like lines that I adored.
To this day I yearn to own one of the professional models of both the 737 and 747, but can’t ever seem to justify the expense, much less purchasing one of those old kits today.
Anyway, last night I dreamt that Ben and I were at a toy or hobby store of some kind in Denver. The selection of kits was nothing short of amazing (the store elicited the kind of wonder I felt whenever walking into the shop I frequented when I was a kid). There were rows and rows of shelves stacked to over our heads with just about every kit you could think of. I remember there were even kits available of the Apollo Lunar Module as it evolved in design.
I found a couple kits that I liked, but put them back because I don’t build models any more. The last time I did was in 1999 or thereabouts, when I wrangled an original 1969 model kit of the Apollo spacecraft off eBay for cheap. Can’t tell you how many times I nearly gave up on it; to this day I don’t understand how kids have the patience to put one of these things together, much less properly paint them. About five years prior to that I built a Visible Woman kit to give to a friend of mine who was an elementary school teacher in San Francisco; an exercise that sent me to the ER with an X-acto blade lanced thumb.
Anyhow, in the dream, as we were getting ready to leave the store, I wanted to go back to see if they had the 737 model, because that was one kit I wanted. And then it ended.
As I lay there in that sort of half-asleep, half-awake state, the meaning of this dream was very clear: it had been about my job search. Those kits represented all the opportunities available to me, yet I felt most comfortable going back to something I was familiar with. This tells me that while that may be the easiest route, maybe it’s time to branch out a little and build something new…
And While We're On the Subject…
Those Were the Days
In 1980…
This is what approximately $2000 worth of stereo equipment looked like:
Sure, it doesn’t look like much now, but at the time (with the exception of the speakers) it was state-of-the-art stuff.
- Stax SR-40 electrostatic headphones ($120)
- Technics SE-C01 power amp ($360)
- Technics SU-C01 control amp ($260)
- Technics ST-C01 tuner ($260)
- Technics SL-1300Mk2 turntable ($490)
- ADC ZLM phono cartridge ($135)
- Infinity 1001A Loudspeakers (not shown) ($149 ea.)
The only items I still have are—amazingly—the speakers (woofers refoamed and cabinets resurfaced several years ago), although I did pick up another 1300Mk2 off eBay about a decade ago and still use it to spin my vinyl. I’ve also had several sets of the Micro Series components over the years, but always end up selling them because their general lack of inputs and outputs make them impractical for use as a main setup in this age of DVRs, DVDs, and the multitude of other tech that you might want to attach to your stereo.