I miss the 1990's

[edwardtoronto]

1990s eh

Well I am older than (perhaps) all who have replied here. There was a huge recession in 1990-91. The real estate market collapsed. Remember the "stub" at the Bay Adelaide Centre? The war of against city and suburb kicked off in commercial real estate (though it was not diagnosed as such till much later) which led to almost no new commercial development in the core, while new offices got built in the suburbs as the 1990s "jobless recovery" slowly, slowly began to transform into a real recovery in 1993 - 1997. The mid-90s to the fn de siecle Y2K years of 1999 - 2001 were robust. Ontario and Toronto missed to small dot-com recession. From the mid-90s one, despite the wailing around amalgamation, Toronto prospered, sowing the seeds of the condo and commercial office boom of the second half of the Aughts and "Teens.' On a darker note the seeds of Toronto's rising income disparity were set then. Also governments either abandoned or retreated from funding or incenting the development and delivery of affordable housing exacerbating conditions for poor, lower and lower-middle income groups.

And yes though I was "too old for it" there was a big thriving club scene in the "Entertainment District" (prior to condo development) that had been building in that area since the mid-80s in the wake of the "Last Days of Disco." [Note my "clubbing," in Toronto was done between 1981 - 1991).

I suppose if one were nostalgic for the 90s it's most likely the 1994 - 2001 years (up to 9/11) that one would be celebrating through rose-coloured glasses. Though considering the focus on this site almost nothing happened in the 90s.

 

[edwardtoronto]

Simcoe Place 1995 Commercial
The 250 1992 Commercial Atop the Toronto Eaton Centre
Bay Wellington Tower 1991 Commercial
TD Canada Trust Tower 1990 Commercial Tallest building completed in Toronto in the 1990s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Toronto

 

[AndreaPalladio]

I not only remember the Bay Adelaide Stub I remember sitting in a boardroom on a Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1993 watching them take the cranes out of it. I remember the Rae Days and the empty stores on Yonge street and going to Go Go which was where Chum is now on Richmond and CFNY still being a good station and was ALREADY having 80s night on Sundays...

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Not only did the commercial office market collapse - the core are was practically denuded of long-standing industries as well (e.g. Inglis) by the last 80s/early 90s. Toronto is supposedly one of the black holes of the recession in the 90s (other being LA). I recall the early 90s were pretty grim times, even out in the burbs (skyrocketing mall vacancies, it sowed the seeds of the "dead malls" in the GTA which they never recovered from). Condo developments from that period (ie. towards the mid-late 90s) are almost invariably bad, and would have been laughed out of town now. The Clewsian revolution was just getting started, and limited to select mid-rises like 20 Niagara and District Lofts (and Context were the only ones using aA).

Re: Simcoe Place - the only reason why the project went ahead was that it was driven by WSIB.

AoD

 

[Videodrome]

Being a student at the time, I remember all of the Mike Harris cuts after the Rae government. We had a teachers strike and janitors strike. The latter was worse because our school was filthy. One bathroom had to be locked because of the "mad crapper." My now-wife went to a different school and some idiots sprayed ketchup and mustard all over one stairwell.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Being a student at the time, I remember all of the Mike Harris cuts after the Rae government. We had a teachers strike and janitors strike. The latter was worse because our school was filthy. One bathroom had to be locked because of the "mad crapper." My now-wife went to a different school and some idiots sprayed ketchup and mustard all over one stairwell.

I was at university during the Rae reign and remember thinking at the time that tuition was rising rapidly and that the province was poorly governed, so I rushed to get my Canadian citizenship so I could vote him out. Funnily, I met Rae last year at a conference in Mississauga and told him that story. He laughed that while he won a majority, no one admits to have voted for him.

 

[nfitz]

He laughed that while he won a majority, no one admits to have voted for him.

I did vote for Rae - in the 1987 election - because I felt that it was Rae who had been pulling the strings to get change in the Peterson minority government from 1985 to 1987 - the Liberals won a majority.

But in 1990 when Rae won, I voted for Peterson, because I felt he'd been doing a good job.

 

[Johnny Au]

During the 1990s, I was in elementary school.

My school had Acorn Archimedes computers (they were the British counterpart of the Commodore Amiga) during the mid-1990s, and later on, there were Windows computers with Netscape Navigator (and a computer lab was installed).

 

[Admiral Beez]

My school had Acorn Archimedes computers (they were the British counterpart of the Commodore Amiga) during the mid-1990s, and later on, there were Windows computers with Netscape Navigator (and a computer lab was installed).

My high school (1987-1991) used these things in their computer lab. I remember the roller ball.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisys_ICON

 

[Admiral Beez]

One thing I don't miss about the late 1980s through to the early 2000s was the constant need to upgrade personal computers. I started high school in 1987 with a used Commodore 128, then bought a 286 desktop in 1989, then a 486 IBM Think Pad (black and white screen - but colour if external monitor) in 1992, then a Pentium III mini tower in 1998 (MDG, POS), followed by iMac G5 in 2004.

Over the span of those 17 years I bought five different systems, costing me likely thousands of dollars, all for the need to type papers, run databases and spreadsheets, play some games and later on surf the interweb. Meanwhile my 42 year old motorcycle continues to purr no worries.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Over the span of those 17 years I bought five different systems, costing me likely thousands of dollars, all for the need to type papers, run databases and spreadsheets, play some games and later on surf the interweb. Meanwhile my 42 year old motorcycle continues to purr no worries.

Underlined is where your problems potentially lies. In any case, going from telnet to even rudimentary WWW (with dithered gifs on Mosaic) and the early days of social media was truly exhilarating. Pretty lucky to have come of age during that time.

AoD

 

[Admiral Beez]

Underlined is where your problems potentially lies.

True enough. It seems the video drivers and processor needed for gaming grew in capability and resource demands at exponential rates from the late 1980s until the end of the 1990s when most gaming moved to consoles.

Interestingly, the growth in processor speed has pretty much plateaued this last decade. The iMac G5 I bought in 2004 only became obsolete in 2014 due to discontinuation of OSX support. Otherwise it would keep running today. I expect to keep its replacement, a Dell mini tower until at least 2020.

My very first pc was bought at Radio Shack in the late 1970s. The Timex Sinclair 1000.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Interestingly, the growth in processor speed has pretty much plateaued this last decade. The iMac G5 I bought in 2004 only became obsolete in 2014 due to discontinuation of OSX support. Otherwise it would keep running today. I expect to keep its replacement, a Dell mini tower until at least 2020.

That's a little misleading though - given the speed at which the processor runs at is not necessarily a great indication of performance differences across processor generations. Also keep in mind the shift towards multicore architecture (as indicated in the graph) during that period as well. It's also arguable that it's the graphics processor that handles a lot of the serious heavylifting that will be defining the new interface formats (e.g. VR) - and in fact the massive parallelism inherit in graphics processors has resulted in their use in certain types of computation.

Console games? Pfffttt!

Anyways, re: 90s - this is the event that demonstrated the power of the then nascent net to me (in 94):

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/07/16/shoemaker_levy_9_20_years_later.html
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/

AoD

 

[Videodrome]

I remember getting my first cell phone when I was 16 years old. It was a Nokia 5110 and I could change the face plates!

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I remember getting my first cell phone when I was 16 years old. It was a Nokia 5110 and I could change the face plates!

Oh gawd it was a classic - I remember everyone had one at the time. I still have a weak spot for my last pre-smart phone Nokia 6300

AoD