Jim Copacino, advertising executive
This decade has given those of us in advertising the unique and historic opportunity to annoy more people more often and in more ways than ever.
Mike Siegel, former KVI talk show host
The ’90s are more of a responsible self-indulgence. . . . There’s more of an awareness of “What about poor people?”
Megan Jasper, general manager at Sub Pop records
The ’90s are like a huge, massive, bulbous whitehead that’s dangling off of someone’s face. It builds and it builds and it builds from, like, Big Macs and McVeggie burgers and Happy Meals, and everything else, but really it’s waiting for the millennium to burst and spill its celebration all over the place.
Dee Dee the Rainbow Lady
As I talk with people, I am aware of great expansions in consciousness and awareness. Remember: Love is not the answer. Love is the question and “yes!” is the answer.
David Nicandry, director of the Washington State Historical Society
Like the 1890s, the early 1990s were rocky in terms of economic matters, but at the end, a boom mentality returns. At all ends of centuries or millenniums, there are certain catastrophe scenarios building.
Laura Hirschfield, development consultant for Richard Hugo House
The thing that strikes me the most is the lack of thoughtfulness that comes from speedy technologies. On-the-spot news, war, confession, exposure—as if there’s nothing deeper than what you see at a first instant. Makes me sad, really.
Kate Starbird, shooting guard for the exSeattle Reign
For me it’s hard to characterize a decade while we are still living it. I, for instance, enjoy a lot of things from the ’70s, but that isn’t to say I don’t enjoy things from the ’90s or that it is a non-decade.
Peter Adkison, CEO of Wizards of the Coast
My hope is that technology makes life so convenient that we are able to deal with social issues through playing games.
Jason Hall, CEO of game-maker Monolith Productions
People have made strides in the overall realization that knowledge becomes power only when it is usefully applied.
Sam Samson, assistant manager, and Dan Bugge, fish thrower, Pike Place Fish
The Internet, Desert Storm, alternative rock, the death of Kurt Cobain, gang warfare, and disappointment with the Mariners.
John Gilbert, owner of The Old Actor’s Used Books
Corporate sponsorship, corporate names on venues, corporate organization of theater companies—we’re living in a corporate state working for large corporations. Happy New Year.
Barry Mitzman, host of Serious Money on KCTS
Obviously . . . growth of computing power . . . that’s premature . . . market economies and . . . former Soviet . . . freedom? . . . 401(k) . . . most aptly framed . . . Clarence Thomas . . . over sex . . . employer-sponsored sexual harassment training . . . fraternization . . . child sexual . . . erotic anxiety . . . Lowry, Wenatchee . . . feminist scholar Daphne Patai . . . disturbing term for . . . heterophobia.
Alan Goldman, owner of Central Gun Exchange
I see a basic lack of civility in society.
Michael Dougan, artist
I will remember the ’90s as the last decade that humans were qualified to manage human affairs. I’m not sure when aliens and robots began to achieve leadership status, but I think it was around 1985. Robots that had been in low-level civil service jobs acquired money and influence, then got elected to state and federal jobs. Aliens that doodled around with crop circles and experimented on cows were replaced by a more entrepreneurial breed. I’m pretty sure Bill Gates is an alien. Most Microsoft employees are robots, except for the temp workers. The alien species credited with manufacturing the most successful government robot comes from the planet Erogla (“Al Gore” spelled backwards, the name of their most advanced model). Much like our space program, where competing nations raced to put the first man on the moon, these aliens have been competing to see who could get a robot in the White House before the end of the century. Bill Clinton will be remembered as our last human president. How do I know all this? That’s another thing I’ll remember about the ’90s: I had a lot of free time.
Lauren McCausland, age 8
Seattle Weekly: What did the ’90s mean to you?
Lauren: What are the ’90s?
Seattle Weekly: Well, you were born in 1990 and all the years since have been the ’90s.
Lauren: Then they were good, right?
Seattle Weekly: Right. What was the best thing about the ’90s?
Lauren: Do the Spice Girls count?
Seattle Weekly: Yeah, they count.
Lauren: Then the Spice Girls are the best thing about the ’90s.
Jean Godden, Seattle Times columnist
It’s the time to have people who are younger in charge.
Kevin Kent, improvisational actor, a.k.a. Sister Windy
The ’90s are about the compression of time. After all, we’re working under a deadline: 2000.
Allan Thorne, owner of Seattle Bagel Bakery
The belief that society should provide support and protection to those unable to participate fully in the American economy seems to have been eclipsed in the ’90s. In general, the voice of social reform that held out the promise of a better, more just, more equitable world has been silenced. At the end of the ’90s I feel that America is becoming a harsher, less merciful, less compassionate place with no parking.
