The 60s had mods, rockers, hippies.etc, what were the main sub-cultures/groups of the 70s? The only ones I really know of were the 'Jesus-freaks' of the early 70s, the Skinheads, Punks/Junglists, 'Sharpies.' What others did you belong to/have experience with?

Thats a tough one to answer cause when I got high school in Medford Mass, it was a brand new school. But you had your social classes, your jocks. But in our case that was pretty much where the terms  burnouts and space caddets everyone assumed we where all dope smoking addicts then.  If you listened to that hard music on fm which was a new thing back then, that too made you either a burnout or just a outcast. All the so called popular kids where the ones lsitening to am. I remember the first time some of us played Aerosmiths ten inch. Got bounced out of school for a week. They would not believe it was just a song about a record. sheash. LOl. But durring our time in school it was bad cause we had some of the first teacher strikes in the nation. We had the bussing issue going on in Boston which some of the racial wars spilled over to the surrounding cities and towns. I never understood why bus kids period from one end of the city to the other just to make sure the schools had racial balance.

Ok sue me on that last one way too many typo's.

Thats a tough one to answer cause when I got high school in Medford Mass, it was a brand new school. But you had your social classes, your jocks. But in our case that was pretty much where the terms  burnouts and space caddets everyone assumed we where all dope smoking addicts then.  If you listened to that hard music on fm which was a new thing back then, that too made you either a burnout or just a outcast. All the so called popular kids where the ones lsitening to am. I remember the first time some of us played Aerosmiths ten inch. Got bounced out of school for a week. They would not believe it was just a song about a record. sheash. LOl. But durring our time in school it was bad cause we had some of the first teacher strikes in the nation. We had the bussing issue going on in Boston which some of the racial wars spilled over to the surrounding cities and towns. I never understood why bus kids period from one end of the city to the other just to make sure the schools had racial balance.


Really? Funny to think FM Radio is now what everyone listens to, while AM is mainly for oldies. Do you think Heavy metal like Sabbath.etc was considered less socially acceptable in the 70s than today? Was it more 'hard-core' in a sense?

You didn't have as many preppies in the 70's.

There were definitely jocks, they pretty much sit on top of the food chain in every era. Jocks back then played baseball more than they do now. Today football is the national pastime, in the 70's it was still baseball.

Nerds back then were more science geeks, the stereotypical computer nerd of the 80's and 90's did not exist yet. Though I guess there were some who were getting into early computer stuff. Nerds didn't seem to be as badly persecuted back then.

"Car guys" existed as well, not sure if they were called "greasers" though, that terms seems reserved for the 50's.

You didn't have as many preppies in the 70's.

There were definitely jocks, they pretty much sit on top of the food chain in every era. Jocks back then played baseball more than they do now. Today football is the national pastime, in the 70's it was still baseball.

Nerds back then were more science geeks, the stereotypical computer nerd of the 80's and 90's did not exist yet. Though I guess there were some who were getting into early computer stuff. Nerds didn't seem to be as badly persecuted back then.

"Car guys" existed as well, not sure if they were called "greasers" though, that terms seems reserved for the 50's.


At my mom's school in the early '70s, there were definitely greasers. The subcultures at her school were the druggies, jocks, greasers, artsy/post-hippie types, JAPs, metalheads, and so on.

In 1977-78, I went to school in Oklahoma and they were still using the terms that you read about in  The Outsiders and That was Then, This is Now both by S.E. Hinton (who was from Oklahoma). You had your "socs" and your "hoods/greasers". While I believe that "socs" was the proper term for one group, I never agreed in the term "hood" because most of people who was deemed "hood", I would put them into a category of "druggy".




Cat

A list of social groups from my mom:

-Intelligentsia/brains (smart but also thought they were too good for school...a real clique, stuck-up as hell)
-Kids who were smart but were more involved with looks and popularity (status symbols downplayed, because everyone was wearing grungey hippie stuff.)
-Italian greasers.
-Rah-rahs (cheerleaders/football crowd.)
-Potheads/outcasts.
-The thespians.
-Average joes and josephines having a good clean teenage time, who still wore their hair like the '60s and '50s and such.
-The "bathroom smokers"/pregnant teenager crowd.

However, she says that things like this were downplayed because of the grungey fashion standards of the time.

I guess the whole theme depended on what area of the country you lived in, for us they didn't call us druggies as much. Mostly space cadets and burnouts. Druggie term came more in the early 80's. Oh those kids are druggies was a common phrase. In the 70's our long hair, bell bottoms and leather jackets made us look more like thugs according to my mom.  We had gangs but not as organized as today standards. And bopping was a way of life it you had to prove yourself.  Mostly for us it was a race thing. Which I hated. I am 50% MIc-Mac. So I got the breed treament a lot.

  This could just be me, but couldn't the whole "Andy Warhol/David Bowie/Lou Reed/Pop Art/Glitter Rock" be classified as a 70's subculture (pick your own label)..?

  Some may confuse this with disco, but disco is clearly pop-culture, as opposed to sub-...

   This could just be me, but couldn't the whole "Andy Warhol/David Bowie/Lou Reed/Pop Art/Glitter Rock" be classified as a 70's subculture (pick your own label)..?

   Some may confuse this with disco, but disco is clearly pop-culture, as opposed to sub-...


Yeah, that was an adult subculture...the whole 1971ish "Andy Warhol/David Bowie/Lou Reed" sort of "queer subculture", which was effectively the first "gay subculture." "Walk on the Wild Side" pretty much sums it up, the end of the '60s love era for the glitter, grit, and death of the '70s. Some other things I'd say are a part of it were Midnight Cowboy from 1969 (which is a '70s movie), John Waters' Pink Flamingos, the rise of drag queens in the post stonewall era, and all the Andy Warhol movies with Joe D'Alessandro like Flesh, Trash, Heat. Basically, the first somewhat overground version of a "queer subculture", which later metamorphosed into the new wave and disco subcultures.

I was in Jr. High in the late '70's and the terms we used were

Stoners (anybody who smoked)
Jocks  (every generation had them)
Band/Drama Geeks (aka - the kids who marched to a different beat)
Cholos/Cholas  (hispanic gang members)

we called those Car enthusiasts..
Gearheads.  They were the ones always souping up the Nova's

But durring our time in school it was bad cause we had some of the first teacher strikes in the nation. We had the bussing issue going on in Boston which some of the racial wars spilled over to the surrounding cities and towns. I never understood why bus kids period from one end of the city to the other just to make sure the schools had racial balance.


This is something to heat up the Politics thread.