It makes sense that we want to remember, or even just imagine, a past that involves carefree June nights and baseball cards in bike spokes. We're now a sandwich generation, which sounds a lot better than it actually is, caught between being the parents of teenagers and the children of older adults. The fact of the matter is, Gen X is tired. It's a lot easier to look back and, possibly falsely, remember how good something was than it is to constantly keep pace at work and with younger generations. It doesn't have to be learned or understood, it simply has to be felt. Those memories are often free of the larger cultural and social issues of the time and can provide a moment's respite. I remember the smell of the tea roses outside of my first grade elementary school more clearly than where we lived. Songs can drag us back in time like the Tardis. I mean, JELL-O Pudding Pops had a disgusting mouthfeel, but my brain can remember that more clearly than why I walked into the kitchen 10 minutes ago. How we remember places and people is often tied to scents and food. RELATED: "Stranger Things" wants to be everybody's memory and nobody's parable It creeps in at the edges when you aren't looking. I never thought of it as being nostalgic, but it turns out that nostalgia is a tricky thing. I wanted to show that the 1980s were not all flashy clothes and conspicuous consumption, that poverty existed in between episodes of "Dallas" and "Dynasty." I also wanted to set it in the 1980s because my plot relied on a lack of cell phones and social media. I wanted to address the routine threat of violence gay teens faced at school.
![best gay bars in dallas best gay bars in dallas](https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/600x600/1620459_AAaHx9By7ISPtoy1vUS7f49gCqtJw17K7CJLRcVaq7k.jpg)
I wanted to talk about t he social and cultural isolation teens experienced in the 1980s. When I started working on my novel, " Sinkhole," I knew I wanted to set it in the 1980s, but not for the nostalgia factor.
![best gay bars in dallas best gay bars in dallas](https://d36tnp772eyphs.cloudfront.net/blogs/1/2017/05/544593_10151484628122780_2030743239_n.jpg)
That goes for retrospective works as well as media contemporary to the decade.
#BEST GAY BARS IN DALLAS TV#
It hits all the nostalgia buttons, but the 1980s as represented on TV and in movies are often foreign to me.
![best gay bars in dallas best gay bars in dallas](https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/600x600/K5Jxn6ulD2jTlQ8FjbrX3oHSwAlx9hvhuuKx_lqKkOs.jpg)
I love " Stranger Things" as much as any other pop-culture-obsessed Gen Xer, but it frustrates me.