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The 1960s (pronounced “nineteen-sixties”, shortened to “the ’60s” or “the Sixties“) was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.[1]
The term “the Sixties” is used by historians, journalists, and other academics in scholarship and popular culture to denote the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends around the globe during this era. Some use the term to describe the decade’s counterculture and revolution in social norms about clothing, music, drugs, dress, sexuality, formalities, and schooling; others use it to denounce the decade as one of irresponsible excess, flamboyance, and decay of social order.
The decade was also labeled the Swinging Sixties because of the fall or relaxation of social taboos that occurred during this time, but also because of the emergence of a wide range of music; from a folk music revival, to the Beatles revolution, to the introspective lyrics of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. Norms of all kinds were broken down, especially in regards to civil rights and precepts of military duty.
By the late 1970s, most major U.S. cities had thriving disco club scenes, and DJs would mix dance records at clubs such as Studio 54 in Manhattan, a venue popular among celebrities. Discothèque-goers often wore expensive, extravagant, and sexy fashions. There was also a thriving drugsubculture in the disco scene, particularly for drugs that would enhance the experience of dancing to the loud music and the flashing lights, such as cocaine and Quaaludes, the latter being so common in disco subculture that they were nicknamed “disco biscuits”. Disco clubs were also associated with promiscuity as a reflection of the sexual revolution of this era in popular history.
Disco was the last popular music movement driven by baby boomers, peaking in popularity during the mid-late 1970s. It declined as a major trend in popular music during the late 1970s to early 1980s, but remained a key influence in the development of electronic dance music, house music, hip-hop, new wave, and post-disco. While no new disco movement has dominated popular music since its decline, the style has had several revivals since the 1990s, and the influence of disco remains strong across American and European pop music.
Transportation songs. Songs about getting from here to there. Let’s spend the weekend playing songs about getting from here to there. Or play songs with a mode of transportation in the band or artists name.
What’s your favorite beverage? Is it Milk, Soda ( Pop ), Seltzer Water, Beer, Wine, Whiskey, or one I’ve missed. You are what you… drink? According to a new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, your daily beverage preference could say a lot about your overall diet and junk food habits.
I have about a dozen favorites. I’m not the person you want to ask. So post your favorite or favorites. I posted a picture of Sodas( Pop ). Also one of the states mostly alcoholic drinks. Yours can even be water.
Jazz guitarists are guitarists who play jazz using an approach to chords, melodies, and improvised solo lines which is called jazz guitar playing. The guitar has fulfilled the roles of accompanist (rhythm guitar) and soloist in small and large ensembles and also as an unaccompanied solo instrument.
Until the 1930s, jazz bands used banjo because the banjo’s metallic twang was easier to hear than the acoustic guitar when competing with trumpets, trombones, and drums. The banjo could be heard more easily, too, on wax cylinders in the early days of audio recording. The invention of the archtop increased the guitar’s volume, and in the hands of Eddie Lang guitar became a solo instrument for the first time. Following the lead of Lang, musicians dropped their banjos for guitars, and by the 1930s the banjo hardly existed as a jazz instrument.
Amplification created possibilities for the guitar. Charlie Christian was the first to explore these possibilities. Although his career was brief, it was influential enough for critics to divide the history of jazz guitar into pre- and post-Christian eras.
Influences from free jazz in the 1960s made its way to the guitar. Sonny Sharrock used dissonance, distortion effects units, and other electronic gear to create sonic “sheets of noise” that drove some listeners away when he performed at festivals. He refused to play chords, calling himself a horn player, which is where he got his inspiration.[19] English guitarist Derek Bailey established his reputation as part of the European free jazz scene. Like Sharrock, he sought liberation for its own sake and the breaking of all conventions in the name of originality. He belonged to the Spontaneous Music Ensemble in the 1970s. Beginning in the 1990s, he formed duos with DJs, Chinese pipa musicians, and Pat Metheny.[16]
We are in the age of robotics and electronics. Almost everything we do is through data, electronics and/or robots. They even have robots designed to comfort the lonely, robots designed for passion, robotic limbs, working robots and robots for our amusement for adults and children. As a child I had an old fashioned robot…
The first robot I saw on TV was on the series Lost In Space…
Now they’ve evolved..
Have you ever owned a robot? If so what was your first robot? Let’s post songs about robots, pictures, gifs, memes of robots we’ve had, seen or find on the internet. Remember to have a blast!
What’s on your fruit menu? For me I’ve always had bananas. Now I’ve added Oranges, Clementines, Raspberries, Apples, and Blueberries. Bananas I believe are Honduras. Oranges and Clementines are from California. And the raspberries and blueberries are from Mexico. So how about you? A big fruit eater? Let us know.
Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate seeds. Edible fruits, in particular, have propagated with the movements of humans and animals in a symbiotic relationship as a means for seed dispersal and nutrition; in fact, humans and many animals have become dependent on fruits as a source of food.[1] Accordingly, fruits account for a substantial fraction of the world’s agricultural output, and some (such as the apple and the pomegranate) have acquired extensive cultural and symbolic meanings.
In common language usage, “fruit” normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of a plant that are sweet or sour, and edible in the raw state, such as apples, bananas, grapes, lemons, oranges, and strawberries. On the other hand, in botanical usage, “fruit” includes many structures that are not commonly called “fruits”, such as bean pods, cornkernels, tomatoes, and wheat grains.[2][3] The section of a fungus that produces spores is also called a fruiting body.[4]
Songs with Food in the title. At the intersection of music and food rests a dazzling buffet of options for self-expression. Quick-witted songwriters turn to the dinner table when formulating life advice (e.g., “mind your biscuits and gravy“). They use food imagery as a tantalizing way to communicate pick-up lines and flirtation (e.g., “my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,” “Do fries go with that shake?” and “spread it like peanut butter and jelly“).
Food isn’t just for sustenance. It’s also a language of self-expression. If you love food for all of its uses, then make a playlist of pop, rock, and country songs with food in the title. We have a long list to start you out!
Salena Zito joined the Washington Examiner in 2016 as a Pittsburgh-based columnist and reporter and is also a columnist at the New York Post. She is the author of The Great Revolt. She previously wrote for the Atlantic and spent the last 11 years at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review as both a reporter and a columnist covering national politics. Before that, she worked for the Pittsburgh Steelers and held staff positions for both Democratic and Republican elected officials in Pennsylvania. She has interviewed every president and vice president in the 21st century. In the 2016 election cycle, she interviewed 22 presidential candidates, both Democrats and Republicans.
This motor court is still in session.
There is a little burst of wonder that road travelers experience when they climb Tulls Hill, heading west out of Bedford, where the Lincoln Highway Motor Court welcomes them at the crest on their left. It’s a burst of wonder up for sale.
The motor court is a concept that is both familiar and foreign to the modern eye: part motel, part cabin, delightfully welcoming as 12 detached cabins all form a semicircle around the central office, nestled cozily among scores of pine trees waiting for their next occupants.
Long before the orange-roofed Howard Johnsons dotted America’s highways or Holiday Inns opened at interchanges of our newly constructed interstates, the middle-class family had nowhere to stay on vacation other than tourist camps.
(Shannon Venditty / for the Washington Examiner)
Owners Debbie and Bob Altizer explained that tourist camps didn’t have much to offer this new generation of travelers other than a parking space and outhouses until some enterprising farmers turned portions of their fields into tiny coves of cabins and a main house.
“And thus, the motor court was born,” they said in unison.
“We estimate that our motor court was built in 1940, based on the number of people who have come back to see the place they stayed on their honeymoon just before being shipped off during the beginning of World War II,” explained Debbie.
Each cabin is lovingly preserved from the era, beginning on the outside of each cabin, where two red-and-white metal chairs are waiting for the occupants to step outside and sit a spell while lazily enjoying watching the cars zoom past on U.S. 30, America’s first coast-to-coast two-lane highway.
Sometimes we wake up and have no idea that we’ve dreamed, while other times, we can closely recall our dreams because they were so intense. These are known as vivid dreams.
Recently I had what I call my dream was dreaming. I was on a business trip and it looked as if something bad was going to happen. Just then I sat up and saw I was dreaming. What happened next? My wife rolled me over on my side and then I actually woke up.
Let’s head on down the road to the weekend. Strike up the music on your playlist. The middle of the week, usually regarded as being from Tuesday to Thursday. So play all your favorites.
The Buffet, is it possible to out-eat the price you pay for a buffet? How do these places make money? We looked at the dollars and cents behind the meat and potatoes.
Few things epitomize America more than the all-you-can-eat buffet.
For a small fee, you’re granted unencumbered access to a wonderland of gluttony. It is a place where saucy meatballs and egg rolls share the same plate without prejudice, where a tub of chocolate pudding finds a home on the salad bar, where variety and quantity reign supreme.
“The buffet is a celebration of excess,” says Chef Matthew Britt, an assistant professor at the Johnson & Wales College of Culinary Arts. “It exists for those who want it all.”
But one has to wonder: How does an industry that encourages its customers to maximize consumption stay in business?
To find out, we spoke with industry experts, chefs, and buffet owners. As it turns out, it’s harder to “beat” the buffet than you might think.
How a $20 buffet breaks down
When you go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, you pay a single fixed price regardless of how much you consume. It doesn’t matter if you eat 1 plate or 10 plates: Each bite incurs an extra marginal cost to the restaurant, but no extra cost to you.
We analyzed the prices of 30 all-you-can-eat buffets across the country, taking into account a variety of factors: Geographic region, size of the buffet (independent vs. chain), time of day (lunch vs. dinner), day of the week (weekday vs. weekend), and age (children and seniors often get discounted rates).
All considered, our analysis yielded an average buffet price of ~$20.
Like most restaurants, buffets operate on extremely thin margins: For every $20 in revenue, $19 might go toward overhead, leaving $1 (5%) in net profit.
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
Buffets often break even on food and eke out a profit by minimizing the cost of labor.
Self-service allows a buffet to bypass a wait staff, and all-you-can-eat dishes (which are generally less complex and prepped in enormous batches) can be made by a “skeleton crew” of line cooks.
“At a typical restaurant, a cook can service 25 customers per hour — and that’s at best,” says Joe Ericsson, a managing partner at the food consultancy Restaurant Owner. “In the same amount of time, a single buffet cook might be able to prep enough food for 200 people.”
Because margins are so slim, buffets rely on high foot traffic: At Golden Corral, a buffet chain with 498 locations in 42 states, dining floors are 5k-square-feet and seat 475 people. On a typical Saturday, it’s not uncommon for 900 diners to come through the door.
The volume of food required to satiate 900 all-you-can-eaters on a daily basis can be staggering.
Each year, Ovation Brands, the owner of multiple major buffet chains, serves up 85m dinner rolls, 47m pounds of chicken, and 6m pounds of steak — 49.3B calories in total.
It is estimated that between 5% and 25% of any given dish will be wasted, either through the buffet’s miscalculation of demand or the diner’s overzealousness. Waste reduction is a key focus of any successful buffet and a frequent tactic is reusing food.
“Buffets have always been a landing spot for food scraps,” says Chef Britt. “They call them the ‘trickle-down specials’ — day-old vegetables or beef trimmings can be repurposed into a soup or a hash.”
Buffets are also able to save money by utilizing economies of scale and buying food in bulk. Using data from a wholesale food supplier, we worked out the approximate cost per serving of a few popular buffet items.
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
Fully prepped, starches like potatoes might only cost the restaurant $0.30 per serving, compared to $2.25 per serving for steak.
By nature, buffets attract the very customers they wish to avoid: Big eaters with insatiable appetites. Buffets seek to “fill the customer’s belly as cheaply and as quickly as possible.” To do so, they employ a number of research-backed tricks to get people to eat less food:
They put the cheap, filling stuff at the front of the buffet line: (Study: 75% of buffet customers select whatever food is in the first tray — and 66% of all the food they consume comes from the first 3 trays.)
They use smaller plates. (Study: Smaller plate sizes reduce the amount of food consumed.)
They use larger than average serving spoons for things like potatoes, and smaller than average tongs for meats.
They frequently refill water and use extra-large glasses.
Even higher-end buffets, like the $98 brunch at the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, employ these tactics: “They hide the truffles, the foie gras, and the oysters,” says Britt. “You literally can’t find them.”
But what happens when a customer ignores these tricks and devours a Godzilla-sized portion of food? Is it possible to — dare we ask — out-eat the all-you-can-eat buffet?
Buffets and the law of averages
Let’s imagine that Larry, a 280-pound offensive lineman, decides to stop by his local all-you-can-eat buffet after a big game.
Larry’s got a reputation around town for being a gourmand. He’s got an appetite that puts Homer Simpson to shame — and on this particular day, he’s ready to do some serious damage.
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
Larry pays his $20 and proceeds to eat 5 servings of steak and chicken, far more than the average customer.
The cost of this food to the buffet amounts to $16.90. This means that after factoring in other expenses, Larry has handed the restaurant a loss of -$8.50.
Luckily, eaters like Larry (“vacuum cleaners,” as one buffet owner calls them) are baked into any all-you-can-eat buffet’s pricing model. While the buffet might lose money on a small number of meat gluttons, it handily makes it back on those who under-consume or only eat the cheaper foods.
“Most people don’t go in and beat the buffet,” says Britt. “They eat an appropriate amount, or even less than they should, averaging out the outliers.”
Picture 3 diners: One who eats exactly the average cost of food to the restaurant ($7.40), one who loads up on cheaper carbs ($4.70), and a guy like Larry:
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
While the restaurant loses $8.50 on Larry, it makes $3.70 from the under-eater and still takes in its steady $1 margin on the average eater.
And there are a lot more of the latter two patrons: The buffet owners we spoke with estimated that over-eaters like Larry only account for 1 in every ~20 diners.
Of the 300 diners that might come through on a given day, this hypothetical buffet would see 255 average eaters ($225 profit), 60 undereaters ($222), and 15 gluttons (-$127.50). That works out to $320, or right around that $1 profit per customer average. Annualized, the eatery is looking at a respectable $117k in pre-tax profit.
Buffets don’t stop there: Many beef up their margins by selling soft drinks separately. At a cost of $0.12 per fill, a $2 soda comes with a 1,500% markup.
Still, buffets aren’t impervious to extreme circumstances. Larry won’t put a significant dent in a buffet’s bottom line — but imagine if he brought the rest of his team with him.
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
Every buffet owner we talked to had a few war stories about dealing with policy abusers. “All-you-can-eat,” it seems, comes with certain limitations.
“There are people who go to a buffet and eat for 3 or 4 hours straight,” says Anna Hebal, owner of the Red Apple Buffet in Chicago. “They’ll go to the bathroom, then come back and eat again. They don’t stop.” She has since imposed a 2-hour time limit.
Other proprietors have taken more extreme measures. Over the years, buffets have made headlines for kicking out guests who eat too much:
A 6’6″, 350-pound Wisconsin man was removed from a buffet after downing 12 fried fish fillets (and subsequently arrested for protesting outside).
A German triathlete was asked to prematurely leave an $18.95 buffet after consuming 100 plates of sushi.
A woman was booted from a Golden Corral for eating all the brownies, then attempting to smuggle home extras in her purse.
To avoid these situations, some owners have updated their language to “All-you-can-eat within reason,” or resorted to charging customers extra for food left on plates.
But the real enemy of the buffet isn’t the occasional over-eater: It’s the steady march of technological progress, and the changing consumer preferences that have come with it.
The end of the (buffet) line
According to the market research firm NPD Group, the number of buffets in America has fallen by 26% since 1998 — even as the total number of all restaurants in America has risen by 22%.
In the past 20 years, more than 1.3k buffets have shut their doors. The big buffet chains that once dotted the Midwest have been hit the hardest: Old Country Buffet is down to 17 of its 350 original locations; HomeTown Buffet has closed 217 of its 250 eateries; Ryan’s Buffet has downsized from 400 to 16.
Ovation Brands, the conglomerate that owns these chains, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy 3 times since 2008.
Zachary Crockett / The Hustle
Industry experts attribute this decline, in part, to the spread of food delivery apps. By 2030, the National Restaurant Association projects that 80% of all restaurant items will be eaten at home — a trend that buffets can’t effectively capitalize on.
Today’s health-conscious consumers have also shifted away from quantity in favor of experience-driven dining options.
Golden Corral, one of the last-standing American buffet chains, has found success by redesigning its dining spaces to be more “bright, shiny, [and] friendly,” and investing in higher-quality food that makes for better Instagram photos.
Anna Hebal, who runs a small buffet in Chicago, has a different strategy.
For 30 years, she has served guests a Polish-themed spread that includes kielbasa, schnitzel, and pierogi. Her secret? Sticking to the roots of what first made buffets popular in the 1970s: excess and variety.
“A buffet is just like life itself; you have so many choices,” she says. “It’s up to you to choose wisely.”
