When I start to feel nostalgic for the 1980s, I remember things like this.

I'm old and I remember people smoking on airplanes and in hospitals. An older nurse has told me she remembers staff smoking in the nurse's station, and another older nurse told me she used to follow the pediatrician she worked with around the hospital trying to catch his ashes in an ashtray while he rounded on sick children. My own parents used to make us ride in the car with the windows rolled up smoking like fiends.

In my town, there are mostly electric vehicles nowadays. I was out walking along a larger road in my neighborhood when I noticed a bus and two cars passing each other, and it suddenly hit me that earlier in my life, that would have been a very noisy affair, but it wasn't. I also realized how much the world used to smell like gas. And does anyone else remember the rainbow colored gas puddles you used to see and smell in parking lots? I don't remember the last time I saw any of those.

Then I realized there is a world where my kids can grow up outside of noise pollution, cigarette smoke and car fumes, and it made me a little more hopeful about the future.

My first job as a waiter had a smoking section. Was banned just a year later but imagine being forced to work in that condition.

All my pals being 'caught' smoking cigs bc their parents had the sense of 'smell'.

it made for really great sports photography though

My flight was overbooked and the airline was giving 500$ to stay one more day. The only available seat on the next day flight was in the smoking section. It was one of the most uncomfortable flights I have ever had. I don’t know if the 500$ was worth all the second hand smoke I inhaled. The corridor was cloudy.

Not old enough for this, but growing up I had a friend with parents who were heavy smokers. It made a weird relationship in my brain that cigarette smell is related to friends, so for years everytime I smelled a cigarette it would give me some weird nostalgia.

Eventually I tried 1 cigarette and it made me sick lol

AIDS. So much AIDS. There's a famous photo from 2018 with the men in black representing the original members of the San Fransisco Gay Men's Choir lost to AIDS and men in white representing those who did not die to AIDS.

As a kid in the '80s, it was just the way some things smelled. Neither of my parents smoked by the time I was born, but lots of neighbors and others did. I later became a smoker and couldn't smell it anymore. When they finally banned smoking in Ohio, I quit and we learned what bars really smelled like (as I mentioned in a related thread: body odor, mold, and piss).

Edit 2: I worked at a fast food place in '95 or '96 and we had a smoking section, but also all the employees smoked in the tiny break area as well so it came from both sides. I would start smoking not long after this.

51yo here, can confirm. Can also confirm smoking flights.

Cigarettes and lead fumes.

Not just cigarettes. Old, stale cigarette smoke smell that seeped into every piece of fabric and carpet, staining everything. I think its one of the reasons brown and grey shades were so popular.

Most restaurants would have smoking sections right next to the none smoking sections, as if the smoke knew the rules.

This is why I get nauseous when I am around smokers.

I remember living in a big city when the law was passed. The city hall hired cleaners to remove the smell. I can't confirm the whole building as it's absolutely massive but I do remember seeing the smallest areas being scrubbed. Out of every building in the area it turned out the absolute best. 1 mcdonalds ended up remodeling the whole place but the smell was still a little faint.

And most people were nose blind to the smell.

Lies. Some of it smelled like leaded car exhaust.

In the food court in the mall, the blue tables were non smoking and the gray were smoking. The thing is, they were all mixed in so essentially the whole food court was the smoking section. Don't get caught smoking at a blue table though, you'll get kicked out.

And now it smells like weed.

I was in Vegas recently and made the mistake of cutting through the casino as a shortcut, the 80s came roaring back to my nose holes... so gross!

Now the world smells like watermelon cotton candy.

I just had an involuntary flashback of a host at a restaurant asking if we would like smoking or non smoking. It didn't really matter since the whole place smelled like smoke...

Also, way fewer murders per dude nowadays. Tubular.

Yeah I never noticed the smell of smoke until myn parents quit when I was a teenager. And then stopped noticing it again when I started smoking. And then started noticing it again when I stopped.

Go to a German Bundesliga match if you want to relive this part of the past.

my dad and my grandparents used to smoke so pretty much every time i used to go to their house the world smelled like smoke :(

The little gold colored metal ashtrays with the M imprinted on the bottom inside McDonalds.

Oh no. This topic is going to bring out all the people who can't tell the difference between "breath" and "breathe"!

The '80s? Is my memory fucked? There was no smoking in schools, libraries, cafeterias, doctor's offices, hospitals, courts, by the '80s. At least the later eighties. This dude is talking about like 50's and 60's maybe. When literally everyone smoked everywhere all the time. Nicotine must have seemed amazing if you conceal and deny its side effects. I probably would have smoked all the time too.