33 Throwback Pics Showing What Life Really Looked Like In The 80s
I was born in the 80s, so I don’t actually remember a ton of the decade firsthand. Most of my memories of it come from old family photos, VHS tapes, and hearing adults talk about the “good old days.”
What always trips me out is how old everything in those pictures feels now, even though a lot of the people in them were younger than I am today. The hairstyles, the cars, the wood-paneled living rooms, the cigarette smoke lingering invisibly in every photo somehow.
There’s something really fascinating about seeing what everyday life actually looked like before smartphones, social media, and the internet swallowed the planet.
These throwback 80s pics are like little time capsules from a completely different world.
1. My Mama circa ’83. This explains why I’m the uncoolest person ever, cos she took it all! Oh and that bike? She built it.
2. Punks in 1982
3. LA, ca. 1980
4. Friend of mine told me to post here. Me in the mid 80’s.
5. Friend showed me a picture of her parents in the 80’s…and it is truly PURE 80’s.
6. My dad and friends look like the cast of Stranger Things (1982)
7. My mom coming to see me during her lunch break for my kindergarten graduation in 1988.
8. Me and the homies before going to see Straight Outta Compton. The tour, not the movie. Circa 1989
9. My Pops finally beating Super Mario Bros. on Christmas night, 1988. The Nintendo was a present for “me and my sister”.
10. My Uncle Billy just turned 90, so here’s him on his boat during the early 80’s
11. Mother helping her son through a tough level in Super Mario Land on Gameboy from 1989.
12. My dad vs me. 1984 vs 2018. Chichen Itza.
13. My dad when he first immigrated to NYC in 1986.
14. Susan Kare, famous Apple artist who designed many of the fonts, icons, and images for Apple, NeXT, Microsoft, and IBM. (1980s)
15. The inventor of the super soaker c. early 1980s
16. My dad’s self-portrait, circa 1980
17. My uncle R (left) and his partner M in the mid-80s
18. A man painting the Twin Towers. My grandparents had this in an envelope full of old pictures, I think it deserves to be shared with the world. (1980s)
19. Burlington Mayor Bernie Sanders picks up trash on his own in a public park after being elected in 1981, his first electoral victory
20. Christmas 1981 – I had been begging for an Atari for months but was sure my mum couldn’t afford it. Was I ever surprised!
21. My dad at his first job at NASA 1986
22. Before he was Morpheus, he was Cowboy Curtis on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. 1986.
23. How we brought the newborns out to their moms on Christmas Day when I was a Labor & Delivery nurse in 1980
24. My dad showing Mr. Rogers the process of designing toys on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood (1986)
25. My father and I carrying the 1984 Olympic torch.
26. Today I turn 50, but here I am at 18- summer of 1989
27. Kids dressed for Halloween on a school bus. 1980s.
28. My dad disguising himself to get in the yearbook twice (1980s)
29. Pink Floyd plays in Venice 1989
30. My brother looking fly in the early 80s.
31. This is a modeling shoot my Dad did on Mt Fuji, Japan, sometime in the eighties. He said it’s the coolest shoot he ever did.
32. If you look closely you’ll just be able to make out Shaq in his 1989 high school basketball team photo.
33. Stealing a drink of wine at a wedding while my mom (behind me) isn’t looking. (1987)
