Nostalgic for the Nineties
I’ve been on a nineties kick lately. It started when I read this piece by Freddie deBoer, in which he deftly captures the spirit of the “just before cellphones” era. He argues definitely that the 90s were the best time to be alive.
I just finished reading The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman. Many of the cultural markers I didn’t experience while they were happening. I didn’t watch the sitcom Seinfeld or the movie Pulp Fiction until the following decade, when I was in college. Nor do I have detailed memories of the news events of the time. I was five years old when the Gulf War happened. I wasn’t paying attention when Newt Gingrich led a political crusade against Bill Clinton.
But Klosterman’s book is a smart and fun glimpse back in time. He dives into the nineties from all angles — politics, sports, music, movies, television, events — in thematic sequences of vignettes and essays. The book allows readers to experience the nineties as they were on their own terms, apart from the biases of the present age. I recommend it.
It’s hard to think about the nineties without appreciating the analog functionality of the times compared to today’s digital age. I remember plugging blank cassette tapes into a boom box to record songs from the radio. Most of the songs I liked were from the radio station The Edge. After a few weeks of recording, you had a mixtape of your favorite songs.
A lot of my memories of the nineties are sports memories. In the 1994 NBA Western Conference Finals, Suns point guard Kevin Johnson dunked over Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwan. I remember imitating the move on a swimming pool basketball hoop at a friend's house. After John Paxson hit a three-pointer to clinch the Bulls victory over the Suns in 1993 NBA Finals, I remember going outside to shoot hoops, vowing to avenge the loss when I played for the Suns one day.
In Arizona, the nineties started out hot. Literally. The hottest day ever in Phoenix was recorded on July 26, 1990. The thermometer hit 122 degrees.
An early political clash of the decade surrounded the late adoption of MLK Day as a state holiday. Because voters rejected the creation of the holiday in 1990, the NFL revoked a Super Bowl that had been scheduled for Arizona in 1993. In 1992, the state legislature referred the holiday again for a popular vote, which this time passed overwhelmingly. The Super Bowl was played in Tempe, Arizona in 1996.
The nineties were a heyday of cultural construction in Phoenix.
Jerry Colangelo, at the time majority owner of the Phoenix Suns, helped spearhead the construction of an arena in downtown Phoenix. America West Arena (now the Footprint Center) was completed in 1992 with a combination of public and private dollars. The new arena hosted not just the Suns but a variety of concerts and events.
In 1995, a different ownership group organized by Colangelo was awarded a franchise to create a major league baseball team. Bank One Ballpark (now Chase Field) was the first baseball stadium to use a retractable roof with a natural grass field (and to include a swimming pool). The Arizona Diamondbacks started playing ball in downtown Phoenix in 1998.
You wouldn’t think an ice hockey team would fit in the desert, but in 1997 the Phoenix Coyotes (now the Arizona Coyotes) arrived. Once again, Jerry Colangelo was a player in the acquisition. After testing the market with some neutral NHL games at America West Arena, a local ownership group purchased the original Winnipeg Jets, bringing them to Phoenix and making the Valley a bit cooler.
By the end of the nineties, Arizona had professional teams in four major sports: football, basketball, baseball, and hockey.
The other major project of cultural construction was the Burton Barr Central Library, located on Central Ave and McDowell. Opening in 1995, the five-story library building features a transparent glass elevator and magnificent Valley views from the upper reading room.
Biosphere 2 happened in Arizona in 1991. This was the only Arizona-specific event covered in The Nineties. Klosterman describes it as “an endeavor that placed eight people inside a three-acre simulation of reality to see if they could survive.” Biosphere 2 was named after Biosphere 1, which is Earth. The stated scientific mission was to construct a self-contained ecosystem — maybe for avoiding nuclear annihilation, maybe for living on the Moon or Mars. Overall, Klosterman depicts the project as a strange combination of scientific optimism, reality-show ethos, and new-age environmentalism. This depiction is reinforced by a quote from a 2018 essay written by a Biosphere 2 participant reflecting on his experience: “We were happy to be stars in our new-age zoo.”
Biosphere 2 still stands as a science exhibit north of Tucson near Oracle.
In the nineties, our state saw UFOs. We also saw tax cuts and political scandals.
One of the most impactful state laws passed during this decade was legislation allowing the creation of charter schools. Before 1995, Arizona public school students were required to attend their geographically assigned district school. Today there are more than 700 public charter schools in Arizona enrolling over 20% of the public school student population.
The Arizona Cardinals had exactly one winning season during the nineties.
The nineties are remembered as an era of relative peace and prosperity. It was the end of a tumultuous century. It was before the technological and political convulsions of the current century. Klosterman:
Many of the polarizing issues that dominate contemporary discourse were already at play, but ensconced as thought experiments in academic circles … There were still nuclear weapons, but there was never going to be a nuclear war. The internet was coming, but reluctantly, and there was no reason to believe it would be anything other than awesome. The United States experienced a prolonged period of economic growth without the protracted complications of a hot or cold war, making it possible to focus on one’s own subsistence as if the rest of society were barely there.
Of course there were existential dilemmas living in such an era. Of course there were still violent events and cultural clashings and political fights. Klosterman doesn’t hide from the ugly side of the nineties, but he paints a picture of a hopeful decade. A decade where people tried to enjoy life while waiting for the dawn of a new century.
In hindsight, this attitude seems naive. The last couple decades have been chaotic and destabilizing. The 2000s began with a historically close presidential election that was finalized on a 5-4 Supreme Court decision. Quickly followed by the terror attacks of 9/11.
Our tech optimism has become jaded as we experience the intellectual, moral, and emotional hazards of social media. The internet age also crushed the newspaper industry; our medium of shared facts has been replaced by partisan info-bubbles.
Today there’s a hot war in Europe and fresh concerns about a civilizational conflict between East and West. There’s an increasingly urgent concern about the rise of authoritarianism here in the United States.
Not everything is doom and gloom, but we’re living in more complicated, more perilous times.
“Nostalgia” is sometimes used to describe fond reminiscing about old times. But it can be a form of escapism: A longing for what was, in the face of what now seems out of control or unacceptable. The dictionary definition: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.
We can’t go back in time. We will never rewind the digital age. We can’t reverse the tragedies of history. We can’t change the past. We can only live in the present. We can only move forward, day after day.
I would describe Klosterman’s book as a cultural history. It’s not a nostalgic book, although it might read that way to those who remember the nineties.