Remember the mid-’90s? Come on, it wasn’t all that long ago.
A lot of Big Things have come — and gone — since then: Monica Lewinsky, the dot-com bubble, the rise and fall of Enron. Other big changes have been more permanent: three huge, expensive sports palaces built by Houston taxpayers; a quantum leap in the hassles of taking a commercial flight; a huge crater in the ground where the country’s two tallest buildings once stood.
A lot of changes, though, have been subtler — our air is cleaner, if statistics can be believed; our current computers would have dazzled even a hard-core techie back then; we’re surrounded by more and more — and ever larger — SUVs and monster trucks.
There’s no one way to sum up the zeitgeist of any given time, of course, but we arbitrarily picked 1996 and took a look at a varied bunch of categories, comparing them to the present day. This, then, is how they’ve changed from the days of “911 Is a Joke” to when 9/11 is a pretext for war.
| Category | 1996 | 2002-3 |
|
Number of jobless nationally In Houston |
7.3 million 100,000 |
8.6 million 129,000 |
| Defense budget (not including any Iraq war) |
$266 billion | $369 billion |
| Barrel of oil | $26.80 | $33.91 |
| Hot reality-TV show | Rescue 411 | Joe Millionaire |
| What Ozzy was up to | Starting the soon-defunct Ozz records | Being a cultural icon |
| Stock price for Northrop Grumman (defense contractor) | High for 1996: 84.25 | High for 2002: 135.00 |
| Stock price for American Airlines | Low for 1996: 74.88 | Low for 2002: 3.01 |
| Average appraised value of a Harris County home | $77,713 | $119,183 |
| Avg. property tax bill | $1,580 | $2,695 |
| Americans “not at all worried” they or a relative will be a terrorist victim |
27 percent | 24 percent |
|
Americans who use a computer at least “occasionally” Of those, the percentage who go online |
59 percent 21 percent |
74 percent 66 percent |
| Typical computer | 133 megahertz processor, 1 gigabyte hard drive, 32 megabytes RAM, $2,000 | 2,350 megahertz, 80 gigabyte hard drive, 512 megabytes RAM, $1,250 |
| Hot SUV | Ford Expedition (14 mpg city/20 hwy) | Hummer 2 (8 mpg city/10 hwy) |
| New SUVs/trucks sold in Harris County | 92,500 (42% of total vehicles sold) | 143,500 (53% of total) |
| Presidents/VPs who ducked Vietnam service | 1 | 2 |
| Music cassettes sold in the United States | 101.9 million | 16.7 million |
| Pirated CDs seized (CD-Rs) | 87 (January-June 1997) | 2.8 million |
| Houston’s home fields | Oilers: Astrodome Astros: Astrodome Rockets: The Summit |
Texans: Reliant Stadium Astros: Minute Maid Park (née Enron Field) Rockets: Your-Name-Here Arena (in Oct.) |
| Congressional bills dealing with “profiling” | 15 | 155 |
| Wiretaps approved by state courts | 568 | 1005 (in 2001) |
| Starbucks stores in the United States | 1,015 | 5,886 |
| Carcinogens released into Houston’s air | 3.9 million pounds | 2.8 million pounds |
| Days the Houston area exceeded federal ozone pollution standards | 28 | 26 |
| Harris County’s State House delegation | 14 Democrats, 11 Republicans | 11 Democrats, 14 Republicans |
| Top box office hits (third January weekend) |
1) From Dusk Till Dawn 2) Mr. Holland’s Opus 3) 12 Monkeys |
1) Kangaroo Jack 2) National Security 3) Just Married |
This article appears in Feb 13-19, 2003.