Classic Mr NYC

In 2008, I did a couple blog posts about the year 1994. One concerned a movie called "The Wackness" that was a piece of nostalgia about 1994 New York. The other was a "cultural nostalgia" trip to that year -- a year when everything changed.

You think I kid. But I kid you not.
 

A lot happened in 1994. A lot that we're still living with today.

 

Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan. The OJ Simpson case. Kurt Cobain's suicide. The Rwandan genocide. The Major League Baseball Strike. Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa. My So-Called Life, Friends, ER, Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction and all the big careers that were launched (and re-launched).

 

And the world we live in today was largely created that year.

 

The Republicans took over Congress and George W. Bush became governor of Texas -- which lead to President Bush, the Iraq War, and eventually President Obama.

 

And 1994 was also the first year when this thing called the Internet began to penetrate the popular consciousness. As this clip from the Today show proves, before then, no one really knew what "Internet" was. People still had yet to grasp the concept of this rootless world of information. It would take years before things like Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter would consolidate control over the Internet -- back then, it was an electronic Wild West. But 1994 was the year it broke through -- and changed our world forever.