If you didn’t actually live during the ‘80s, you would think that everything back then was neon, and geometric, and full of bright colors. Absolutely that was true in lots of fashion, and in more commercial and fancy interior design, but in reality we were up to our eyeballs in BROWN! Weird brown sculpted carpet, dark brown wood cabinets, brown kitchen appliances, brown paneled walls, and then on top of it everyone smoked, so not only did everything look brown, it smelled brown, too!
Well, growing up in L.A. we had the smog to contend with in addition to the cigarette smoke! Back then there would be smog alerts on tv telling you to not go outside because the air was thick and brown and horrific. To be honest, I was not immune to the allure of Joe Camel, though. Talk about top notch marketing, and the most heinous example of capitalism imaginable! But alas, I was a teenaged punk girl who had to smoke to be cool, and I just had to collect those Camel Bucks so that I could get a Camel t-shirt and a Camel zippo lighter. My punk friends and I used to hang out (and smoke) at the Burger King on Highland Ave, and/or the McDonalds on Hollywood Blvd. You bet your ass these were found on every table:
But I digress…. There was so much brown it’s almost challenging to fit it all into one blog post!
What I wouldn’t give for a gigantic brown wood paneled station wagon, though! Man, they seriously kick so much ass. V8 engines, enough room to fit an army, and the seats were like driving a damn recliner, but also a tank (and yes, there were plenty of ashtrays inside of them). You couldn’t pay me a million dollars to buy some new computerized piece of crap touchscreen car right now, but hot damn would I love one of these:
Speaking of recliners…
And lest we not forgot the infamous brown velour floral couch that had an absolute chokehold on everyone! Not gonna lie, I have been pining for one of these for years. It’s like, they were all the same, yet somehow each one was slightly different??? They each had a floral print, but many had windmills too, or birds, or barns, or wagons, or whatever.
And don’t forget these:
Or these:
Or these:
Or these:
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking shit about brown (no pun intended). What this brown blog is about is remembering the shared experiences that we all had back then. Watching the same tv shows on the same giant wood tvs, sitting on the same brown velour couches, and getting up to make a sandwich grabbing the bread out of the same wood breadbox. Waking up to the same sound from the same alarm clock that your neighbors and friends had. It wasn’t about conformity; it was about the comfort of community and connection.