Eight Things to Remember about the ’80s

The 1980s were neon-hued and backed by a soundtrack of the “waka waka” effect in Pac-Man, the pop hits of Madonna, and whirrrr-clickity-clack of early personal computers. In Ann Arbor, starting in the film strip in the upper left: Jim Harbaugh (A.B. ’86), who threw for 5,449 yards as Michigan’s quarterback; musician Shakey Jake, who performed around town; the Tally Hall dining and shopping center, which opened on Liberty Street to great fanfare; new and remodeled housing changed the city’s visual landscape; Angie Lennert, Jessica Sussman, and Jamie Plaisted posed with Willy the Wolverine outside of Michigan Stadium; and student Michael Berger posed with basketball star Glen Rice. Photography by the Ann Arbor News/Courtesy of AADL Archives; Bentley Historical Library; and courtesy of Michael Berger (B.S. ’90, M.S. ’92)

Nostalgia just ain’t what it used to be. Now it’s the ’80s invading pop culture. Digital natives born well after 2000 are reminding their parents of the Age of Excess: They wear neon clothes and acid-washed denim; collect music on vinyl; snap Polaroids; and watch TV kids navigate the bizarre subworld of the ’80s in Stranger Things.

Forty years ago, all the major trends of the 1980s swept through Ann Arbor—music videos stealing attention from sit-coms; The Official Preppy Handbook inspiring a backlash against hippie wear; Nintendo’s Mario Brothers soaking up students’ spare time. Meanwhile, HIV-AIDS was rising to become the era’s dominant public-health crisis.

At U-M, the footprint of campus continued to grow, the economics building burned down, and protesters campaigned against nuclear weaponry and in favor of divesting from Apartheid-era South Africa. Michigan Stadium regularly drew massive crowds, and the “Big House” nickname took hold.

We consulted memories and archives to round up a grab-bag of ’80s nostalgia, from the national scene to the hyper-local—because it was totally tubular.

From left: A fire ravages the historic economics building (formerly the chemical laboratory) on Christmas Eve 1981; several people visit a lab during a Women in Science and Engineering program in 1983; people line up outside Schoolkids' Records; students, including Alyson (Bitner) Ryan (BGS ’87), attend the 1985 Greek Week variety show; and Deb Eig-Fienberg (B.B.A. ’89) and Francie (Brudner) Kaplan (BGS ’89) attend a game at the Big House in September 1988. Photography by the Ann Arbor News/Courtesy of AADL Archives; Bentley Historical Library; and courtesy of Alyson (Bitner) Ryan (BGS ’87) and Deb Eig-Fienberg (B.B.A. ’89)

For many in Ann Arbor, the decade got off to a rough start. On November 4, 1980, the conservative hero Ronald Reagan, heir to the Goldwater wing of the Republican Party, trounced incumbent President Jimmy Carter to win the presidency. Thirty-four days later, John Lennon, founder of the Beatles and archdeacon of the counterculture, was assassinated by a deranged fan outside his New York City apartment building. On East William Street in Ann Arbor, someone nailed up a sign bearing a Lennon-Ono lyric in mournful script: “And so this is Christmas…” At Schoolkids’ Records downtown, Lennon’s Double Fantasy album instantly sold out.

In 1980, the mere idea of a “personal computer” seemed astonishing. By decade’s end, they were popping up in dorm rooms across campus. Science majors and engineers led the way, buying models like the Apple II and IIe (1983, 64K RAM, $1,395). Competing at the low end were the Commodore 64 ($595) and Radio Shack’s TRS-80 (fondly known as the Trash-80, launched in the late ’70s at $599.95). The metallic suitcase called the Kaypro II (“the $1,595 computer that sells for $1,595”) was an offbeat hit. Snazzier acts were the IBM PC; its little cousin, the PC Jr. ($1,269 if you wanted a color monitor); and the Apple MacIntosh—hardly perfect, but the first mass-market computer with a revolutionary “graphical user interface.” In the winter of 1984, U-M cut a deal with Apple to sell its Lisa and MacIntosh models at dramatic discounts, and a thousand orders streamed in. Meanwhile, the Angell Hall Courtyard, or “Fishbowl,” was converted into a computing center in 1989 as part of a plan to grant all students computer access.

A textbook sale in the Michigan Union Ballroom; students register for classes at the CRISP center in the basement of Angell Hall for winter 1985 classes. Photography courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

The ’80s were boom years for Ann Arbor’s book lovers. It was the heyday of the original Borders Book Shop (1971–2011), brainchild of brothers Tom and Louis, who had bought the inventory of the city’s longest-running bookstore—Wahr’s (1887–1975)—and now were drawing crowds of readers to 209 South State. Gigantic success would breed a nationwide chain, but patrons of the store’s early, independent years remember what manager Joe Gable called “a cathedral of books.” Nearby and upstairs, bookseller Karl Pohrt opened Shaman Drum Books (1981–2009), catering to U-M faculty with scholarly tomes. Expanding downstairs, it became a mecca for all stripes of serious readers browsing lovely wooden display shelves. Logos Bookstore (1968–1993) served the Christian market on South University. The rare- and used-book trade flourished at David’s Books (1975–2011), festooned with artist Richard Wolk’s “Book Store Mural” on Liberty at State; the labyrinthine Dawn Treader Book Shop (founded 1976 and still going—LeVar Burton, host of “Reading Rainbow,” once called it the “best bookstore ever”); Wooden Spoon Books (1968–2003), in the west-side building that once housed Joe Parker’s legendary College Saloon); and the reigning longevity champ, West Side Book Shop (founded 1975 and still going strong at 50.) In the days before Amazon and e-books, most students bought their textbooks at Ulrich’s (1932–2015) and the University Cellar (1970–1987). 

How could so many stars play Ann Arbor in 1980 alone? Crisler Arena hosted ZZ Top, John Denver, Jackson Browne, Springsteen, and the Allman Brothers, while at Hill, fans heard Jimmy Buffett, Boz Scaggs, and Ray Charles. As the decade rolled on, aging acts continued to alternate with new ones, from Dylan and Blue Oyster Cult to the Pat Metheny Group and R.E.M. Prince was breaking into superstardom when he brought his 1999 entourage to Crisler on February 27, 1983. The Michigan Daily’s reviewer reported “squeals of delight and roars of adulation for doing things that could easily get one thrown out of the average Catholic school.”

Foreigner rocked Crisler Arena in 1981; Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played the venue in 1980; and Prince performed “Little Red Corvette” during his 1983 set. Photography from the Michiganensian archives at the Bentley Historical Library and the Michigan Daily Digital Archives

Ghosts of go-to eateries of the ’80s haunt the blocks that bracket campus. Looming largest in local legend was the original Pretzel Bell, opened in 1934 just after Prohibition ended and closed for health and tax problems in 1985, home to an estimated 30,000 “Bell parties” for students turning 21. South University had Bicycle Jim’s (classy enough for Greeks’ date nights) and the Wolverine Den, where many students took their first dive into deep-dish Sicilian pizza. (On South U, only the Brown Jug and Good Time Charley’s survive from those days.) To the west, Dooley’s, where Madonna once waitressed, was the jock-ish king of student bars until it succumbed to too many underage-drinking citations and morphed into Scorekeeper’s. At the Whiffletree on West Huron—a warren of wood-paneled rooms that made an easy target for the fire that destroyed the place in 1989—a plate of fresh snapper, pickerel, scrod, bass, salmon or swordfish sold for just $5. At Washington and Ashley, the Del Rio flourished under employee ownership; the menu included a cheeseburger soaked in beer. But enough about dining spots that died. The decade also saw the birth of Ann Arbor’s most enduring gift to the human palate: Zingerman’s Deli. Founded in 1982 by Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw (veterans of Maude’s), the little storefront on Detroit Street would grow into Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, a national symbol of high-quality food. Asked once why they hadn’t sold Zingerman’s franchises all over, Weinzweig said simply: “We like Ann Arbor.” 

Echoes of the ’60s still reverberated, not least in the underground subculture of marijuana. It wouldn’t be legal for decades, but in ’80s Ann Arbor, it may as well have been. The city’s famous $5 fine for pot possession, approved in 1971, persisted until 1990, and that was hardly the only sign the city was still toking. Take Middle Earth, the funky South University emporium named for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings—the books, not the movies. (One of the store’s ads said: “Harming Only the Humorless Since 1967.”) Among the peace-sign medallions, dangling beads, scented candles, and hip greeting cards, it was easy to find bongs, bowls, bubblers, roach clips, and Zig-Zag rolling papers. And thanks to the annual spring Hash Bash—still a faux-outlaw festival long before happy-capitalist “dispensaries” made it all but obsolete—Ann Arbor still symbolized hippie culture to every frowning up-stater, despite the city’s gradual transition toward well-manicured affluence. 

Clockwise from upper left: The Michigan Theater and other retailers on Liberty Street; student move-in, complete with the requisite station wagon; the annual Mud Bowl; and studying in dorm rooms—before personal computers were present on every desk—were all part of students’ lives in the 1980s. Photography courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library

U-M President Harold Shapiro (1980-87), an economist, perceived that in a “post-industrial” Midwest, the university must streamline. He launched a five-year “smaller but better” plan of careful downsizing. Billy Frye, an LSA dean turned vice president for academic affairs, said it would be like pounding a nail into your foot: “It will hurt, but I don’t know what that really means until I drive the nail into my foot.” Units were split up or jettisoned; schools and colleges were reorganized; some faculty were let go. The effort saved $20 million, but it set a sober tone of stringency that hung on for years. The university’s decade closed with a commitment that would shape its history for years to come. This was the Michigan Mandate, a campaign to pursue dramatic increases in the diversity of students, faculty, and staff led by University President James J. Duderstadt, who served following Shapiro, 1988-96. It became a model for institutions embracing the ideal of multiculturalism—and led to the university’s embroilment in a national debate over affirmative action that went all the way to a split decision in the U.S. Supreme Court. “If we do not create a nation that mobilizes the talents of all of our citizens,” he said in his first State of the University address in 1989, “we are destined for a diminished role in the global community [and] increased social turbulence, and we will, most tragically, have failed to fulfill the promise of democracy on which this nation was founded.” 

Of all the things to be nostalgic about, the prices from the 1980s might be at the top of the list. We collected a few examples, the last of which we double- and triple-checked to ensure it is accurate (it is):

• Sunday Italian buffet at Bimbo’s, 1980: $4.95

• Double room (including meals), U-M residence hall, 1980–81: $2,007.05

• Two-bedroom furnished apartment, 406 Packard, 1982: $540/month

• Tuition for the 1984–85 academic year, first-year students: $1,086 for Michigan residents; $3,366 for non-Michigan residents

• Eyebrow waxing, Hair & Company, 1985: $7

• Quarter-barrel of Coors, Campus Corner, 1987: $19.95 (plus deposit)

• Compact disc, AC-DC’s “Blow Up Your Video” album, 1988: $6.99 at Discount Records

• Ticket, Michigan-Ohio State football, November 21, 1981: $12

   

LSA Magazine would like to thank the following for generously providing photos: Michael Berger (B.S. ’90, M.S. ’92); Liz Chamberlain (A.B. ’91); Deb Eig-Fienberg (B.B.A. ’89); Alyson (Bitner) Ryan (BGS ‘87); the Ann Arbor District Library; and the Bentley Historical Library/Bentley Image Bank.