Question:

Does 1964 fall into the 'early 1960s' in terms of pop culture or "the 60s" as we generally more know them?

In 1964, JFK had been slain but there were no ground troops in Vietnam as yet, so no major protest movements to that war, as yet. The Beatles had arrived, but Doo Wop was still on the charts.

You had in NYC the NYC World's Fair which is like the late 1950s - early 60s Jetsons/Googie vision of the future in real life.

Keith Richards said that when the Rolling Stones toured here in 1964, it was all maltshops and Disneyland, still; That compared with when they toured here in 1969, it was another world.

So, am curious as to what 1964 was like, as such, since it falls in between the pre-Vietnam era, and the Vietnam period which we know as "the 60s"

From the point of view of a happy 2nd grader, the mid 60s were a great time to be a kid, the cartoons and TV shows were great, the music was out of this world.  My parents would talk about WW2 a lot but also mentioned they weren't worried too much about anything since that war ended 20 years earlier. 
Despite the Kennedy assassination a year earlier, mom often said "we are living in the good times now" (talking about the early to mid 60s). We took some family vacations every summer. Everything felt safe.

The world felt very safe...there wasn't CNN or any 24 hour news or the internet to tell us otherwise. Bad things were still happening in places around the world, but they seemed isolated and not near where we were. As a 2nd grader, I played outside a lot, often we'd go out after lunchtime and wouldnt return until dinner. There were absolutely no worries that any child would get abducted, it wasnt even on the radar. We traded baseball cards, played with marbles, Lionel train sets (I still have black and white photos of me playing with the trains,)  matchbox cars and later hot wheels, and those little green army men. They rocked!

So ends the point of view of a 2nd grader in 1964.  ;D

From the point of view of a happy 2nd grader, the mid 60s were a great time to be a kid, the cartoons and TV shows were great, the music was out of this world.  My parents would talk about WW2 a lot but also mentioned they weren't worried too much about anything since that war ended 20 years earlier. 
Despite the Kennedy assassination a year earlier, mom often said "we are living in the good times now" (talking about the early to mid 60s). We took some family vacations every summer. Everything felt safe.

The world felt very safe...there wasn't CNN or any 24 hour news or the internet to tell us otherwise. Bad things were still happening in places around the world, but they seemed isolated and not near where we were. As a 2nd grader, I played outside a lot, often we'd go out after lunchtime and wouldnt return until dinner. There were absolutely no worries that any child would get abducted, it wasnt even on the radar. We traded baseball cards, played with marbles, Lionel train sets (I still have black and white photos of me playing with the trains,)  matchbox cars and later hot wheels, and those little green army men. They rocked!

So ends the point of view of a 2nd grader in 1964.  ;D


I was preschool age in '64, not a 2nd grader; however I concur about the great cartoons, TV shows and music (although I paid very little attention to music as a preschooler even as I was aware then of the Beatles; it was later that I discovered the overall greatness of mid-60s music).  I also concur about the world feeling safe and that playing outside was the norm for us.  And our toys, even those that seem old-fashioned today, they were everything to us then.

1964 was absolutely, unequivocally part of the cultural 60s. Post-JFK and The Beatles were here. Vietnam was not in full force yet, nor the protest movement that would come in it's wake, but "The Sixties" were not al one thing. They ramped up exponentially. But the youth culture was most definitely a force in 1964. And the Keith Richards quote answers your question in itself. The very fact that the Stones were touring here in 1964 indicates it as the cultural 60s. Oh yes indeedy, 1964 was part of the cultural 60s. Oh yes.  :)