1991

{or, research for the fire story}

Ir's fun reliving the past, in some ways...

The Giants played at Candlestick Park.
Yes, crystal meth was in wide use as a recreational drug with a large percentage of meth usage in San Diego. That said I still might have them switch to crack...
The sky was totally black.
The NES was 4 years old. The Super Nintendo was in the states the month before the fire.
CNN was launched in 1980.
My character may have been able to have a pager, but I am not sure if it would be feasible.
European carousels tend to go clockwise; American counterclockwise.

Communication breaks down. What did we do before we were not always in touch? What did we do in case of emergency? I don't remember hearing anything at all about the Oakland firestorm, and so my memory of it, like so many of my memories, is textual, in this case, from Maxine Hong Kingston's The Fifth Book of Peace.

I am not sure if we are more fragile now, or if we were then. Connections are so tenuous these days {or out here, in the west}. We used to commit all our words to paper. Our phone calls were once tethered by a cord {and I have a really funny story about an ex-roommate who got trapped inside an oven, and was able to reach the phone cord with her toe to call for help, but if that happened now...} We journaled and we typed on typewriters, and we had really amazing cartoons and the other Bush in the White House.

I am not the only one wondering about these things tonight.