Where Were You in the Summer of '78?
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By Salma Abdelnour Gilman
Summer 1978 was my own version of the Summer of Love. I was six, and instead of weed and psychedelics I had chocolate ice cream (did the trick back then). Instead of cruising around in a VW van, my brother and I crammed into the back seat of a Buick station wagon as our parents road-tripped our family around America.
A photo of me in San Francisco, fudge popsicle drippings covering my chin, is all I need to bring the trip flashing back: camping near the Big Sur cliffs (magical), getting kicked out of a Reno casino for being under 18 (scary), and eating syrupy mangoes in Miami, the best I'd ever had before or since (unrepeatable).
Where were you in the summer of 1978? If you happened to be in New York City, maybe you're in one of the photos the New York Times just discovered from that summer, when the city's newspapers went on strike and the Times photographers decided to wander around the falling-apart city and document the goings-on. Hard, sweaty, uncertain days those were, but the photos do their part to keep up the mystique of '70s NYC: squalidly romantic, poignant.
A free exhibit of the Summer of 1978 photos opens in Central Park's Arsenal Gallery this week (May 3) and runs through June 14. Don't miss it if you'll be anywhere near New York City.
The photo at the top isn't from the exhibit, by the way; it's from Wikimedia Commons. The NYT photos are properties of the paper and can't be reprinted here.
PS Chances are, if you're reading this site, you were somewhere on earth in 1978. Weren't born yet? These photos will be even more of a trip.
PPS Look Ma, no smartphones.
