1970s redux, or sort of

[shapinglight]

What with the election and grimness all around, I'm getting distinct 1970s vibes from everything at the moment. Before we know it, we'll be wearing brown maxi-skirts, there'll be power cuts every five minutes and no daytime telly (which, let's face it, would be an improvement).

One thing has changed, though, after a fashion...



In the 1970s, every other shop on the UK high street was a shoe shop (so much so, that it even gets mentioned in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, remember the Foot Warriors?). There was Clarks, Saxone, Barratt, Ravel, Dolcis, some other chain I can't remember the name of, and - holy-of-holies - Russell and Bromley. The shoes they sold were uniformly hideous, I remember, and they gave you blisters (see Hitchhiker again).

All those shoe shops are gone now except for Clarks and Russell and Bromley, but their place on the high street has been taken by hairdressers. Wherever you look, hairdressers, more hairdressers and yet more hairdressers. Today, on the walk back from work, I lost count of how many I passed. At one point, there were two 'old-fashioned men's barbers' shops' right next to each other.

You can't move for hairdressers. What is it with people and hair?

though of course my icon is an object lesson in what happens if you leave well alone.

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

Wow, that's just astonishing to imagine. We used to have station signoffs in the wee hours of the morning (I think it was only in the 80s that they started broadcasting 24 hrs a day) but we had multiple channels running programming from about 5 AM to 2 AM.

[shapinglight]

I think there might have been daytime TV at weekends - sport, old movies. But certainly not during the week. And there were only 3 TV channels until the early 80s anyway.