25 photos that show what life looked like in 1983
There was a version of 1983 that had nothing to do with the Cold War or the headlines or the things people argue about now when they talk about that decade. It was the version that lived in shopping mall food courts, backyard pools, and basement rec rooms with the stereo turned up. A year that smelled like Sun-In and new sneakers and the plastic of a just-opened video game cartridge. These aren't the photographs that made the history books, just the ones that made the family albums. No front pages, no famous faces (well, almost none). Just life, going about its business, loud and bright and completely sure of itself.
What strikes you first is how much color there was. Not the warm amber tones of the seventies but something harder and more deliberate: neon, primary, unapologetic. The clothes were bigger, the hair was bigger, the ambitions were bigger. But underneath all of it were the same ordinary things: kids on bikes, couples at diners, friends crowded into the frame of a photograph that nobody knew would matter fifty years later. This is what the world looked like before anyone thought to call it the eighties.
