Thank God ItΒ΄s #NinetiesFriday!
Last week I made you visit that Pinkpop 1994 Festival, strowling down those muddy fields looking for lost memories.
π»πππππ π»π πΉπππππππ π»ππ 90π - Hi MOM I Created an Earthquake
It was not a bad trip, and it got me in the mood to do a bit more traveling. Well, I kinda had to anyway.
This week I will try and time travel Back To The Nineties.
All the way back to the place I was living till 1995.
1995 Changed My Life
For me, the Β΄90s really have two chapters.
Pre & Post 1995.
It might help me remember some things if I would look at each chapter separately.
To go back to that first chapter means going back to the time when I still lived at my moms house and went to high school.
And as it happened I went back to the scene of that crime this week.
Did It Help?
Did it juggle my memory in such a way things came floating back? Not as much as I expected it would, to be honest.
Those early Β΄90s years are sort of a blur, or a compressed series of events.
They were the years I had one goal in mind:I Gotta Get Out Of This Place
Out of school, out of my mom's house, and even out of the city of Haarlem where I grew up. Or at least in one of its suburbs.
I hated wasting my time in the classroom and dreaded being at home.
So where do you go to thatΒ΄s lovely when you are alone and not old enough for the bars?
Yup, that wonderful Dutch invention called a Coffeeshop. I think I was 14 years old when I first set foot inside one of those places.
The place was called the "Willie Wortel", itΒ΄s the inventor in those Donald Duck stories and indeed the place was filled with funny creative stuff that didnΒ΄t have to make sense, and my friends & me.
We would go there after school, and later even during school to play a game of pool and yes buy Marijuana because that was allowed at that age.
That did not even change till I was 17, then the minimum age became 16, and when I was 19 it became 18 which it still is.
Life was so not regulated by then, no safety belts on the back seats.
No pack of fags told you they were bad for you. Bike helmets did not even exist in a country with more bikes than peeps.
And it also was not that hard to get your hands on some hard liquor or some other crazy stuff. But I was not big on alcohol at least not back then so I preferred anything other than the stuff that leaves you hungover.
Hanging with the cool kids
For years I have been trying to classify where I fit into. For sure it was not the jocks, nor the nerds.
We were stoners, skaters, but not in the way those Β΄90s movies portray them.
I think I will stick to the Dutch label we got... AltoΒ΄s
The Alternatives
AltoΒ΄s were the alternatives the ones that did not go mainstream, they were buying their clothes in army dump stores and grew their hair. But we were not just hippies, skaters, stoners, punkers, we were a bit of a lot.
What I do remember is I never dressed the part, no army pants or raffled jeans jackets for me.
Simple blue jeans, with my Dads San Francisco 49ers from the early Β΄70s.
But I did wear the black Doc Martens, we were so alternative we all were Docs.
And to be honest I still love wearing army boots but the weather in the south of Spain just doesnΒ΄t seem to agree with that type of shoewear most of the year.
Making Money
I was already broke after my second year in high school, and that being broke lasted for about 30 years. Because if you are not at home a lot, if you are hanging in the city, smoking bud, having a tea to go with it, you are spending more than you are making.
I had my paper route twice a week and worked in my grandmaΒ΄s garden on the weekends. I made quite a bit of money and I was a hard worker but it was never enough to keep up with the Alto lifestyle.
Smoking, concerts, buying CDs, and broke again. Somehow we always found a way to have something to smoke and another party to go to. I went to places and spent nights I could hardly remember all I see is one blurry image reminding me I again ended up somewhere I had never been before.
That is basically how I remember those 90s best and then there are some clearer images as the one of my 50CC Honda MT.
Or some girlfriends, Marjolein, Esther, and Bella Bionda.
But other than that the major memories are about crazy nights doing crazy stuff.
Spending a night in old German Bunkers in the Dunes of Zandvoort with seven guys all on LSD and sitting together the next morning in the coffeeshop trying to figure out if we were normal again.
Or talking to police people while sitting high on a bridge in Haarlem. We climbed up there around 4 in the morning waiting to see the sunrise and just before the sun came the pigs showed up asking us "What are you doing up there?"
As we had no clue the only reply we could come up with was "What are you doing down there?"
I think they asked us very kindly to come down, and we replied very kindly we did not think that was the best idea at that moment.
After some minutes they decided that it was probably best to leave us be and they left, we saw the sunrise, went back to IndyΒ΄s place, and listened to Tori Amos till we fell asleep.
I think it was falling asleep with Tori on LSD that made me fall in love with her forever.
We did not do LSD that often but those few nights we did I still remember as highlights of that first chapter.
Bikini Bottom Line
Being back here now did not really spark any big new memories. The thing I noticed most is how I lived here for so many years, how I knew some places like the back of my hand, and did not visit other places while they were like 5 minutes away.
One of the reasons I did not visit those places probably was that I was to broke to pay for a drink and they did not allow you to light them up.
Looking back, that enriched my Β΄90s but it also really limited my scene. Back then, I did not see it and I cared even less.
All I cared about was making enough money to buy my next bag of weed and how to impress the next pretty girl with wide hips.
Thank goodness you made it till the end Pees, Love and I am out of here!
#NinetiesFriday was brought to you by
WTF do I do on #NinetiesFriday?
Well, don't do what I do because I just stole the below as it is good enough for copy/pasta!
But some ideas are music, movies, television, sports, or really anything Nineties related.
I assume movie, tv, or music topic reviews or talk will be most common, but you could also talk about a sports memory or something else.
Think the Pop Culture of the times, but it would be great to hear about little known and interesting bands or entertainment items. Donβt forget to use tag #NinetiesFriday
@geneeverett will give 3 basic income units to a winning random post every week that uses the #NinetiesFriday tag. Also @thebighigg has jumped in to match for 6 total weekly prizes! If anyone else wants to sponsor with 1 unit let me know or just send if you donβt wanna commit to weekly π
All images by MyI and AI except for the stolen #NinetiesFriday image of course.
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