I gotta say, while I do really love the concept, it's still seems so recent to me. I mean, yeah -- twenty years is twenty years, but as I said back in this post about 1992 (a better year, for my money), it still feels like yesterday to me. For some reason, my real line of demarcation of the past remains 1989. Anything prior to that seems like ancient history.
Of course, I'm purely projecting. This city is entirely different now than it was in 1993. The change is everywhere. It's physical. Things don't look the same. Things aren't the same. But, still, I can remember 1993 as if it were just earlier this week.
In 1993, I was 26. I was long out of college, but back living at home with my mom (like a bit of a loser) if only because it was cheaper, and I was able to pursue my dream career as a journalist (then as now, not the most lucrative field). That all said, as 1993 began, I would shortly be laid off from my gig as an editorial assistant at LIFE Magazine. My high school friend Rob lost his job around the same time, so we took our respective severance pays and blew them on airfare to London, where we spent a week or so going to British record shops and pubs (with no great desire to return to reality in New York City). That didn't suck.
I came home to a frustrating game of vocational cat & mouse -- doing odd editorial gigs around Time Inc., doing some pick-up work in an art gallery, a real estate agency and continuing to write for a clutch of music magazines. I'd later land another full-time gig at TIME Magazine before 1993 came to a close, but it was a financially threadbare and stressful year.
I was also on the rebound from a heroically botched office romance that had still left me naively shellshocked for several more months than was realistically warranted.
I'll say this, though. Music was better in 1993. For me, 1993 was all about Suede, Wu-Tang Clan, Cop Shoot Cop, Anthrax, Grant Lee Buffalo, Monster Magnet, A Tribe Called Quest, James, Morphine and, if I'm being honest, that first LIz Phair record. All good stuff. Of course, back in 1993, there were many, many more record and disc shops still around, and just as many live music venues still in operation.
Anyway, if you pine for 1993, pick up one of those phones before it's too late and you're stuck here in the present.
Meanwhile, here's me in 1993:
...and here's me in 2013 (in roughly the same spot). Yeah, I guess 1993 was a long time ago.
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