When I Was Your Age...

Sporatical_Distractions · Post by **Sporatical_Distractions** » 08 Jan 2009 22:30

Things to tell your grandkids:

When I was your age...

-people listened to audio cassettes
-you had to use keys to get into/start your car
-video games were 2d
-no one had the internet
-cellphones were the size of toasters
-America had it's first black president
-Michael Jackson was black
-Baywatch was as sexy as television got

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 09 Jan 2009 06:41

As an 11 year vet of the sport, I often catch myself thinking "when I was new to the sport..."

Here are some things which were the case in 1997 when I started:

1. Only a handful of BAP were retired/inactive. I'm talking like, 3 people total
2. The only footbag shoe was the Rod Laver
3. No quad dexes had been hit
4. All the best freestylers lived in North America, and only one was Canadian (Noah Dubreuil)
5. Nuclear and furious set didn't exist
6. Most shred video was disseminated by VHS. The only video online was all on footbag.org, and it took an entire evening to download a 2 minute clip
7. The 4 panel Revolution sandbag hadn't been invented, so beginners had to shell out $15 for even a basic bag.
8. There were only 2 stitchers who made bags that were universally deemed good: Abshire and Carol Wedemeyer
9. Shred 45 was a new event, and the score was calculated based on raw adds
10. 10 contacts was a good run, 20 was great, 30+ was video worthy even if it was all basic links
11. Foursquare didn't exist
12. Bags were bigger, lighter, and floppier

ted · Post by **ted** » 09 Jan 2009 08:19

6. Most shred video was disseminated by VHS.

Western Automotive jam! The Iceman! linked eclipses! I have some old footage of Daryl where Sunil can be seen dropping smears in the background.

12. Bags were bigger, lighter, and floppier

The first bag I bought, from Carol in 2000, was seriously the size of a large, hollow orange. I remember when some guy in TX (Mike?) started making tiny bags because that was when triple dexes became possible for me.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 09 Jan 2009 08:44

I believe that was Mike Wilson. Sunil used to swear by that guy's bags. They were heavy and small, and I remember thinking that the small size almost made it feel like cheating for high dex tricks.

FlexThis · Post by **FlexThis** » 09 Jan 2009 09:30

C-Fan wrote: 5. Nuclear and furious set didn't exist

Partly true - the term nuclear did not exist, but paradox legbeater WAS hit in 1997 - by Daryl.

I remember it because I was working on hitting it based off the rumor that it had been hit. After I hit it I checked the net and Daryl had already posted a video of it repeated x 5.

When I first started in '96 the top videos to watch were Raw Shred, and any tourney footage you took yourself. On the net was a Tam Tam clip, and a video of Rippin' bailing to clippers. lol

Guiltless didn't exist yet and 2 5s in a routine won you the title.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 09 Jan 2009 09:38

Hmm, I'm not sure if your dates are quite right, but our memories are ballparkish anyway.

Guiltless definitely did exist in 96 and 97. Guiltless became a BAP mandate around 94, which is why Raw Shred was almost entirely guiltless.

Daryl may have been hitting pdx legbeater in 1997, but the whole matador x5 I'm pretty sure was in 1998. I remember him hitting it x2 midstring in a 98 worlds video.

As for two 5s in a routine...I think it was 96 worlds where Rippin was the first to hit two fives in a row (symp ws to psw) in a routine.

The other big difference between now and 1997 is the average age of the players. I seem to remember that in 1997 the average age of a freestyle player was early 20s, and the mean was maybe mid 20s. The average age now is a good bit lower I'd wager.

Zeke · Post by **Zeke** » 09 Jan 2009 09:42

this reminds me of Bob's 'Old players unite!' thread. Some funny stuff there.

It's also funny to think how intermediates are hitting tricks that I never would have imagined possible for open players to hit back in the day. It's so amazing to see how far freestyle has come in such a short amount of time.

Back on track:
We used to have tv's with no remote. It used to have 2 knobs with the channel numbers on it. You would actually have to get up and walk to the tv to watch something else. Don't get me started on bunny ears. One of our first VCR's had a remote that was wired to the deck. Videos rental stores had both Beta and VHS cassettes.

We played football with an actual fucking football, not a game pad and a plasma

FlexThis · Post by **FlexThis** » 09 Jan 2009 10:48

I think you are right ken. I remember how bummed I was to see that PDX legbeater was already taken.

I started kicking footbag at age 22 I think and the top pros were several years older.

shredzilla · Post by **shredzilla** » 09 Jan 2009 12:43

Call waiting blew my mind when it came out. As did caller ID. It was funny too, you pretty much called people at home, and tried not to keep the line busy if you were expecting a call. Now you would never call someone at home unless it's like an older relative or something. It's interesting just how different things are these days. How different will they be in another 15 or so years?

Zeke · Post by **Zeke** » 09 Jan 2009 20:28

One day in first grade, my mom was extremely late in picking me after school. I waited about 15-20 minutes and decided to just walk home, about a mile away. I had barely lived in Chicago a year but I knew how to get home. I hadn't thought of how to get in though. Fortunately my mom spotted me while she was on the bus heading towards school. I was 2 blocks from the house (scared and crying).

I have a teenage cousin, who up until recently, did not know how to get home on his own from his dad's office (where he gets dropped off after school) which is only 3 blocks away. I shit you not, once, he called 3 times on his cell phone after getting lost on the way. That's not even a 5 minute walk! Now he's bitching and moaning about getting a brand new Scion after he gets his drivers license.

Unfuckingbelievable

mc · Post by mc » 09 Jan 2009 21:03

Zeke wrote:I waited about 15-20 minutes and decided to just walk home, about a mile away.

in the snow with no shoes, uphill both ways, right?

9-10 years ago, I was dreaming of live footbag streaming on the internet... So glad that finally came around.

I remember seeing an infomercial for the internet / e-mail, before AOL was even a thing at all... macs used to have something called e-world, that's what we used in my fam.

Zeke · Post by **Zeke** » 09 Jan 2009 21:30

Matt Cross wrote:in the snow with no shoes, uphill both ways, right

And it was dark. They hadn't invented sun yet. Damn kids these days have it so easy...

I remember taking a typing class in grade school where we had to boot up the computer with 2 different 5 inch floppy disks.

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 10 Jan 2009 00:11

Matt Cross wrote:
Zeke wrote:I waited about 15-20 minutes and decided to just walk home, about a mile away.
in the snow with no shoes, uphill both ways, right?

I had a hearty laugh.

habitat · Post by **habitat** » 19 Jan 2009 13:41

I remember when people actually valued real human to human communication. A roommate of mine will just stop mid-sentence, whip out his qwerty keyboard cellphone and start texting away instead of having a conversation with someone in front of him. He won't continue his thoughts afterward either because he was so focused on sending that "Oh yeah cool" text that he forgot completely that we were even talking in the first place. I mean, you can't even convey emotion. It's terrible.

Blue_turnip · Post by **Blue_turnip** » 19 Jan 2009 14:03

habitat wrote:I remember when people actually valued real human to human communication. A roommate of mine will just stop mid-sentence, whip out his qwerty keyboard cellphone and start texting away instead of having a conversation with someone in front of him. He won't continue his thoughts afterward either because he was so focused on sending that "Oh yeah cool" text that he forgot completely that we were even talking in the first place. I mean, you can't even convey emotion. It's terrible.

lol l2 be human kthx.

Pinkus · Post by **Pinkus** » 30 Jan 2009 15:10

When I was your age, we didn't have robot to do all our house chores.

When I was your age, we went to school to learn how to do things rather than installing data chips into our heads.

When I was your age, there was no such thing as deep space vacations.

Drew · Post by **Drew** » 30 Jan 2009 16:17

When I was your age we went out of our way to kick things for fun.

When I was your age there was such a thing as 56k modems.

When I was your age cell phones were the size of bricks.

ted · Post by **ted** » 30 Jan 2009 19:36

Is that you Chris?

God, you look terrible...