Poll results show that “America’s best decade” isn’t the 80s or the 50s…it’s “whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals…”
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Discussion 4 comments
90s for me when I was already in my 20s. I think it might be because I grew up in a tiny town and then spent my 20s in LA.
As a middle-aged GenXer, I wax nostalgic about my ~20s, 1989-2001, literally between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11. Like the Sartorialist note on your previous post, I moved to NYC and the world was my oyster. It wasn't necessarily idyllic, but I felt hopeful, and had opportunities.
It's interesting that "best cuisine" is an exception to the nostalgia - most people think it's the best now. I wonder how this compares to other countries with strong food cultures that have had an influx of fast food in the last 20-something years.
I recognize each decade has a big mix of things that are better or worse than other decades, but my first thought was also that I turned 11 in 1998, after the collapse of the USSR and before 9/11. It’s easy to see why us millennials would be nostalgic for that time, from a sheltered, American point of view (the only POV I had at the time).
I think both things are true about cuisine: the average restaurant meal is way better now than it was when I was 11, and also I was a much less adventurous eater and much less concerned with nutrition. So I’m less nostalgic about bowling alley mozzarella sticks than about the Pixies.
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