Sale into the 90s--a 1980s/1990s history Tumblr

82. The little red car that flew off the top of the Bay Bridge after the 1989 San Francisco Earthquake (October 17, 1989)

I don’t remember how many years ago it was, but we’ve all been there. You’re on the internet late at night, and one google search, and one wikipedia search leads to another, and you’re watching news clips from the 1980s until 3am. One clip from all the San Francisco earthquake coverage I watched that morning that still resonates with me today is of the little red car that drove off the broken opening of the Bay Bridge. 

Due to a misunderstanding with the way the cars were being turned around on the bridge, a red car drove off of the opening of the bridge, and crashed into the lower level of the bridge.

There’s raw news footage of the red car being pulled up from the bottom of the bridge.

At around :30, you can hear a rescuer get smart with the news reporter if she asked if they were taken out of the car:  ”UH YEAH, THEY’RE STILL IN THERE.”

Hearing the screetch of the car being dragged up by its rims back onto the flat road, and then hearing the tiny “pop” sound the door made when it was pried open is almost heartbreaking.

It’s upsetting though to see this reporter prim to get ready to shoot a report in front of the mangled car. 

The driver of the car, Anamafi Moala, died, and the passenger, Lesisita Halangahu was extremely injured:

The fatal bridge accident occurred about half an hour after the massive quake, which registered magnitude 7.1, struck at 5:04 p.m. on Oct. 17, 1989, causing a 50-foot opening in a section of the top deck of the bridge.

Moala and her brother, headed for Oakland on the lower deck of the bridge, were among the hundreds of motorists who were stopped and rerouted by state personnel to the top deck at Treasure Island so they could return safely to San Francisco.

But Moala and some other motorists proceeded back toward Oakland, unaware of the danger that lay in going in that direction. While other cars managed to avoid the collapsed section, Moala’s auto plunged into the opening, resulting in the only fatality from the bridge’s collapse. Meanwhile, across the bay in Oakland, 42 people died in the collapse of a one-mile section of the freeway.

Baum said California Highway Patrol officers and Caltrans employees at the scene “failed to properly control traffic” on the bridge, resulting in cars driven by Moala and others to be sent toward the collapsed section. 1

…

The day death came knocking, Lesisita had just flown into San Francisco International Airport from Australia, where he had gone for a funeral. Anamafi, a nurse’s aide just off from her shift, picked him up and they were on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge at 5:04 p.m.

Anamafi followed the near-panicked herd of cars onto the top deck of the bridge, where everyone thought they would be safe, and then an emergency worker waved her toward Oakland. About 50 cars rolled east nearly at once — none of them knowing a section of the top deck had collapsed just ahead of them, creating a yawning, 50-foot gap in the road.

Everyone else managed to stop just in time, including a tourist couple who started videotaping the hole. Their camera was still rolling — capturing images broadcast worldwide in the days to come — when Anamafi’s car hit the breach at 40 mph, bounced off the fallen section of roadway and slammed into the opposite side of the hole, hanging there by its front end.

It took emergency crews a half-hour to drag the car back up to the road. The paramedics knew just by looking at Anamafi that the bridge had claimed what turned out to be its only fatality. 2

//edit May, 24//

I found the background information about the tourists who videotaped that moment:

Ryckman, Larry. “What Some Californians, Visitors Were Doing at 5:04p.m. Tuesday.” Schenectady Gazette, October 19, 1989. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=PnkhAAAAIBAJ&sjid=0IkFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4602,4727174 (accessed May 24, 2013).

Related Links:

THE FREEWAY DEAD: Portraits From Oakland - A special report.; 11 WHOSE LIVES ENDED AS QUAKE CRUSHED I-880 - New York Times profile of some of the people who died in the Nimitz Freeway collapse that killed 39 people that same day. 

81. Ice Cube’s documentary on the Los Angeles Raiders, “Straight Outta L.A.”

link

Nobody other than Ice Cube could put together such an eloquent tribute about the Oakland Raiders’ short lived ten year move to Los Angeles. The move also intertwines with his emerging rap career, and the impact the Raiders had on hiphop music and culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

78. Bryant Gumbel’s memo (1988)

 ¹

The recent New York article about the decline in ratings over at the Today show due to Matt Lauer reminds me of another Today scandal. Bryant Gumbel’s memo.

The memo (that was supposed to stay confidential) that Gumbel wrote to his producer, Marty Ryan was about “issues” he had with the show—and I use the airquotes on the word “issues”, because they just seem like ranty complaints, and not constructive criticism. 

Highlights of the two page memo:

Bryant tears legendary weather man/national treasure/the first Ronald McDonald/ he was even in a Diet Coke commercial, Willard Scott a new butthole in the memo:

Bryant wasn’t in a Diet Coke commercial.  Jealous, Mr. Gumbel?

In closing (keep in mind, he’s saying this to his producer): 

 ²

The only person to not be reprimanded in Gumbel’s memo was his co-anchor, Jane Pauley. Yeah, smoke that cigar in celebration, Jane. Bryant likes you. 

In late February of 1989, the memo was leaked to the press via Newsday. Gumbel stupidly kept the memo as a file on his computer, and it was stolen by a NBC employee, and given to Newsday. Gumbel was on vacation the week the memo was leaked. How convenient. ³

I love this quote from New York Times Walter Goodman about the fiasco:

 Owing to the cozy format, Mr. Gumbel and Mr. Scott are often found cheek by jowl, as the weatherman, who has raised boosterism to the grotesque, burbles on about his hats and his T-shirts and delivers his plugs (”I’ve got to tell you they love us in Columbus, Ohio”) and rhapsodizing over photographs of 100-year-olds: ”There are plenty of good-looking women out there. Go get them.” The anchor becomes, so to speak, a second banana. Is it only this viewer’s imagination that at moments Mr. Gumbel is considering jumping into his coffee cup? ⁴

^1.NBC Today Show 1987: 7/6/87 Willard Scott Microphone Blooper   

^2.89-JANE PAULEY’S LAST DAY on “TODAY” 3of4   

^3.Jay Sharbutt, “The Gumbel Rumble: His Memo Irks Cast, Crew of ‘Today’ Show,” Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1989, http://articles.latimes.com/1989-03-01/entertainment/ca-730_1_gumbel-memo. 

^4. Walter Goodman, “TV VIEW; ‘Today,’ After That Infamous Memo,” The New York Times, April 2, 1989, http://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/02/arts/tv-view-today-after-that-infamous-memo.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm. 

77. Horrors from Seventeen Magazines from 1982

I only have a few Seventeen issues from 1982, from the big collection I got from the thrift store that I brought up earlier. 

There are two categories I want to put these pages in:

What?

Exactly what age is their target demographic

Who has time for that?

What?

(September 1982)

(September, 1982)

What’s up with those giant makeup applicators (#5)? Were you supposed to throw them at your face, theatrically like giant powder puffs? :

 1

(September, 1982)

When I was reading ‘Teen and Seventeen in the mid 90s, I never saw ads for diets for teens, instead, there were always articles about the dangers of eating disorders.  I didn’t see any of those articles in the 1982 issues, just this diet ad.

//edit, March 22//

I just finished flipping through the September, 1984 issue, and this ad was still running.

i

(September 1982)

Tampons and gold…they go together like wood and soup. 2

(May 1982)

This is the most stick up your butt party I’ve ever seen. 

(November, 1982)
I know it was the early 1980s, but … Chevy Chase being a teenage girls heartthrob? 

Exactly what age was their target demographic?

(September 1982)

I can’t believe that Seventeen was still publishing a wedding guide in 1982. For the discerning woman who gets engaged right out of high school.

(May, 1982)

My, how much we’ve advanced.

(September, 1982)

You can pick our your silverware pattern while also picking our your homecoming dress.

(May 1982)

(September 1982)

(October 1982)

October, 1982

(November, 1982)

When I was reading Seventeen in the mid 1990s, I don’t remember seeing any underwear ads. Also, what’s the deal with matronly ads being in teenage girl magazine ads, as seen in this JCPenney ad:

(December, 1982)

(December 1982)

Along with ads for engagement rings, lingerie, and an a on how to cook a pork roast, there was also an ad for a Ziggy Christmas special? I guess for all the little sisters out there who sneaky read their older sister’s Seventeen magazines. 

(September, 1982)

This was on the back cover. Can’t see that flying today in a teen magazine.

(November 1982) 

Hi, mom. 

Who has time for that?

(May, 1982)

(October, 1982)

I guess in the early 1980s, our private parts were not bothered by colored toilet paper, and we could waste toilet paper higgely piggedly.

(September 1982)

I highly doubt that even in 1982, relatives had the time to do a “how are you doing?” questionnaire. 

(December 1982)

Who has two toothpaste caps sitting around?

76. Whitney Houston in Seventeen Magazine (December 1982)

Last year, at the Village Thrift store in Hampton, Virginia, I bought a huge set of 1980s Seventeen Magazines. It’s beeen over a year, and I’m still going through them. I was scanning the December 1982 issue tonight, when I thought I saw someone familiar: 

75. Look how amazing Taco Bell food looked back then:

I mean: 

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74. Laurie Dann (May 20, 1988)

Probably one of the most interesting female criminals to come out the 1980s is Laurie Dann. A mentally disturbed woman who grew up in the affluent neighborhood of Glencoe, transferred to the University of Arizona as a young adult, a sorority girl, with aspirations of becoming a teacher, and married a wealthy insurance executive.  

However, her marriage to Russell Dann was a storm of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, possession, and odd behavior. Laurie didn’t need to work due to Dann’s salary, which was appropriate, considering Laurie lied on her resumes, stating that she was a graduate of Arizona State, despite never finishing. Laurie spent her days sleeping all day, wearing old “bag lady” clothes, even if her father gave her new clothes,  and her car was hoarded with junk. By 1986, Laurie agreed to divorce, but she warned Russel that she hoped to drag out the proceedings for two to three years.  Laurie’s obsession with Russell leaving her was a snowball of constant false accusations of abuse for several years afterward.  In September of 1986, she broke into Russell’s apartment, and stabbed him with an ice pick, then the annoying phone calls at all hours to Russell and his family began and stretched into 1987, even following the final divorce proceedings. 

A year before Laurie’s day of violence, she lived in an apartment at the Kellogg Learning Center at Northwestern University. She made others who lived in the building lives a living hell:

• She stole items from people
• She left rotting meat in couch cushions
• She would ride the elevator in the building for hours, at all hours

Around this time, Laruie decided to become a babysitter. Yeah … she also made some of her clients lives a living hell too:

• Stole frozen steaks from clients’ freezers
• Defaced property
• She stunk
• Used pots and pans, then put them away, unwashed. 

Some families though, said that Laurie was an excellent babysitter despite these faults.  

When Laurie was kicked out of her university apartment, workers found urine stains on the carpet, and rotting meat on the kitchen counters. At night, she did not sleep in her apartment, but down the street in her car. 

In the Spring of 1988, Laurie moved to yet another off campus apartment building popular with Northwestern students. Laurie continued her harassing phone calls to former family members, and former babysitting clients. On March 12th, someone spotted Laurie in a University of Wisconsin Hospital lab—-three days later, arsenic was found missing (I still don’t know how she was able to get into the lab). Two days later, she was arrested at a JC Penney for shoplifting wigs. On May 15th, when most students were gone for the summer, maintenance workers found Laurie … wrapped up in a garbage bag in a maintenance room, sweating buckets. 

On May 20th, Laurie took off in her Toyota with packages to give to people — packages of Rice Krispies Treats and juice boxes…with t hat arsenic she stole mixed in. She snail mailed two packages of juice and treats — one to Russell and one to her psychiatrist. Now, who would even take treats from someone who was as dirty as Laurie? Laurie was so stupid, so messed up, that she couldn’t even make the treats look harmless, it was reported that the juice boxes were leaking. 

Laurie drove her car to a babysitting client’s home, the Rushes, who had told Laurie a few days prior that the family was moving away. The kids mother let Laurie take them on an outing. Laurie took the kids on a tour of arson and poison. Laurie tried catching a school on fire, and left poison at a Jewish day care center — mistakenly thinking that her former sister-in-law’s kids attended these schools. After their trip, Laurie brought the kids back home, locked them and their mother in the basement, and caught the home on fire. ² 

Laurie sped to Hubbard Woods School in Winnetka, Illinois, barged in a classroom, and shot at six students, killing one, 8 year old Nicholas Corwin.  After her school shooting, she abandoned her car, ran through the woods, and went to a complete strangers house, and knocked on their door, claiming that she was raped. While one of the residents of the house was gathering some clothing for Laurie to change into, the adult son of the home quietly took one of Laurie’s guns. After a long altercation, the mother and father left the home after Laurie wouldn’t give up her other gun (still under the belief that Laurie shot her rapist in self defense), and alerted the police.³ Laurie kept the adult son under hostage, and when she saw the police car lights in the distance, she shot him in the chest (he escaped through the back door and survived), and locked herself up in an upstairs bedroom. By that evening, an assault team had broke into the house to get Laurie. However, Laurie was found dead in a bedroom, from a self inflected gun wound. 

Related Links:

Eric Zorn, “Laurie Dann Video Is A Haunting Look At A Tragic Story,” Chicago Tribune, February 24, 1989,  http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-02-24/news/8903080254_1_hubbard-woods-elementary-school-video-abuse#sthash.ELsUoCDz.dpuf.

Eric Zorn,  ”Chapter 2: The Selling Of Laurie Dann,” Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1988, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-06-26/news/8801100583_1_story-rights-producer. 

Eric Zorn,”Case Is Closing On Laurie Dann,” Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1991, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-05-21/news/9102150460_1_mental-hospital-hubbard-woods-elementary-school-safe-deposit-box.

Other Chicago Tribune collection on articles about Dann.

1988 - Commercial - People Magazine - Laurie Dann.

“Mad Enough to Kill,” People, June 6, 1988, http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0„20099121,00.html. 

Day of Fury: The Story of the Tragic Shootings That Forever Changed the Village of Winnetka by Joyce Egginton

Murder of Innocence: The Tragic Life and Final Rampage of Laurie Dann by Joel Kaplan

72. How newspapers handled Budd Dwyer blowing his brains out on live tv (January 22, 1987)

Harsh title, but that’s what he did!

It seems like everybody that has been on the internet long enough knows about Budd Dwyer, the man who shot himself to death during a televised speech in which he was resigning his post as State Treasurer of Pennsylvania. Those who dare have seen the gory video, or those who are squeamish have at least seen the countless press photos of him waving his gun around at the meeting, or just watched the animated .gif of his death (even if its just a gif and shows no blood, I guess it could shock some people, so warning). 

Dwyer was resigning because he was caught taking bribes from a California company that was trying to gain a contract to compensate state workers who overpaid federal taxes. Dwyer claimed that he was framed, but nevertheless he was convicted and forced to step down as treasurer. 

The day before his sentencing, he scheduled a news conference in which the local media came. After a long speech that some described as “rambling”, Dwyer handed envelopes to his closest co workers, and then took out one final envelope. A gun filled envelope. We all know the rest, how he lay in a puddle of his own blood, it gushing out of his nose, looking more like a bloodied, disheveled, David Crosby than the man who was speaking just seconds earlier. 

I wanted to know how the newspapers across America handled the coverage of Dwyer’s action. What pictures did they decide to publish, if any? Did their local news that evening show the entire video of him shooting himself? 

Reading Eagle, Reading, Pennsylvania: 

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The Dispatch, Lexington, North Carolina: 

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This is the photo most newspapers on Google Newspapers went with. 

Observer-Reporter, Washington Monongahela, Pennsylvania:

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The Junction City Daily Union, Geary County, Kansas: 

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Lewiston Morning Tribune, Lewiston, Idaho/Clarkston, Washington: 

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These two papers went with the final moment. 

Lodi News-Sentinel, Lodi, California: 

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The Miami News, Miami, Florida: 

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Ocala Star-Banner, Ocala, Florida: 

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The Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee, Wisconsin: 

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The Mount Airy News, Mount Airy, North Carolina: 

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh, PA 

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This paper was the first paper I saw that actually showed a pic of Dwyer dead. The microfilm copy was in horrible shape though.

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Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA: 

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Sarasota News Herald, Sarasota, Florida:

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This was the first paper I saw that showed the pic of him immediately after shooting himself, but before he hit the floor.

The Nashua Telegraph, Nashua, New Hampshire:

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Out of all the 1980s newspapers in Google Newspapers, this was the only one I found with a clear picture of Dwyer dead. 

Telegraph Herald, Dubuque, Iowa:

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Related Links:

Budd Dwyer at Encyclopedia Dramatica (NSFW!!) ED calls Dwyer “the greatest man to ever live”. 

“An Honest Man” Documentary about Dwyer. 

Filter’s “Hey Man NIce Shot” video - Filter’s song they wrote about Dwyer. 

///edit, June 7 2013//

Hustler covered it too, and used seldom seen color shots of the incident.

64. The “Mike Tyson with pigeons” picture (1985)

So I’ve been on Tumblr for years, and I always run across this photo of Mike Tyson with pigeons. Seriously, the whole time I’ve been on Tumblr I thought this was a photoshop. I had to look it up today to find the origins of the photo. 

This photo has its origins from a 1985 Sports Illustrated shoot. Mike Tyson has apparently loved pigeons his entire life! He had his own pigeon coop at his adoptive mother’s home in the 1980s. 

He was still taking care of pigeons even when he hit the big time in the late 1980s.

Mike’s began to be interested in pigeons as a teenager when he used money from a robbery to buy pigeons, and one of his earliest fights was against a man who stole one of his pigeons and decapitated it. 

63. Scans from a 1983 Civics Textbook (part 1)

Civics Government and Citizenship by Jack Fraenkel and Frank T. Kaine, published in 1983.

This is the book we had in 7th grade history class in 1996 (yes, we were old as the books we were using in class, thanks Hampton City Schools), and I chose it because of that cover. This cover is so amazing, that I’ve been using it for backgrounds on the stuff I’ve been selling on my etsy recently:

 
*ahem*

…that carpet.