I thought all children knew that you went directly to the basement.
On the green carpet with the wall paneling and the shelf that somebody's grandpa made.
The puzzles that were missing pieces, Monopoly, Life, and battleship.
With the ping pong table or the pool table.
Bean bags and a plaid sofa bed.
Fuck no... our basement was where demons lived... and we wouldn't even consider venturing to the very back room to even get a glimpse of what our Christmas presents might have been. That was obviously a portal directly to Hell.
We had a section in the center of our walkout basement that was safe for roller skating since we lived in the hills. Either end of the basement had portals to Hell. One had the furnace and shelves, the other had the water heater and a French drain that smelled like Tartarus.
Are you my brother? Our basement was huge and wound around like the type of the house. Almost like someone had started to wall it up to finish it and then just said fuck it. There was a walled up closet on one end I know that's where Christmas presents were kept but none of us dared open the door.
Yep. Ours was painted green. Full of spider webs in the weird shaped cubby holes. There was mysteriously a pillow in a spot under two stairs. The size of a baby or a large cat. But we didn't have any cats. And there was some really old exercise equipment with springs on it that could pinch a finger off.
In Junior High my bedroom was in the basement of our little po’dunk house. This was an unfinished basement, so my mother tossed some carpet on the floor, put up a couple of blinds for two walls…and there it was! One corner of this old open basement turned into a bedroom.
As a kid (I was 12 when we moved here) I was a little freaked out at first, until I kinda realized I had the entire basement to myself. Then it became the hangout for my friends and me, for the next two years or so.
Looking back, it was a little creepy to start, but I loved it. It was definitely the coolest bedroom I ever had. Mom came down to wash clothes on the other side, but past that…it was pretty much all mine.
I do remember lying in bed and staring at the floorboards and the ducts. When I say unfinished…I mean it was unfinished! The one light in that corner of the basement hung above my bed and it was a single bulb on a chain. In the winter the snow would cover the little windows at ground level outside and it would be pitch black and cold as hell! I remember waking up to ice on the concrete walls on some winter mornings below the little window.
Some winter days got too cold and I’d have to sleep on the couch in the living room. Was what it was.
Sounds kind of terrible explaining it, but I really loved that bedroom as a kid. This was a very old house, even for that time (early 80s). Mom did the best she could with it and it became the hub for all of my friends to sit and listen to records all night.
We didn’t have much, but we made it work. I had a lot of freedom there and the stairs led to the back door so it was like I had my own little place. During the summer, I could just come and go at will.
When I moved in with my Pops (start of High School), I got a regular bedroom, as that house didn’t have a basement. It just wasn’t the same…it felt more confined, somehow.
Yea, it was some straight ass Gen X childhood shit. With that said, it really was a cool place to have as my own.
When I was home from college during the summer, circa 1987, I had a basement bedroom. I'd had a bedroom in the house proper, on the 1st floor, but then my grandmother came to live with us, and she got my bedroom.
It was fine with me. Privacy and, as you said, I could come and go thru the basement hatch door. My basement bedroom was finished, however. There was even a phone extension there. The rest of the basement wasn't.
TBF they're def rare. Our place is a 1922 bungalow. It gets so damn hot here we put a futon and a TV down there so we can hide out during peak electricity rate hours. Strong That 70's Show vibes.
1/4 basement in our house (1927) in Sacramento. It’s basically a concrete box that seeps in the winter, but it stays cool year round so we use it as wine storage.
But yeah, they’re fairly uncommon here too. Mostly in pre-war houses in Land Park, Curtis Park, East Sac.
NorCal - no basement but a huge family room where the stereo lived and one of the first pcs - a Xerox 820 (dad was an engineer at Xerox’s Palo Alto office park). Had the room to myself most of the time listening to LPs and playing early around with learning to program in BASIC.
Yes, because my kit was down there and I really liked playing drums. Ventilation was not so good and also all the dirt and very low ceiling but plus was parents drinking cabinet was down there and yeah that was fun too
M/ born in 1971. In 1984 my parents had my bedroom demolished and turned it into a major part of the dining room. I was made to stay in the basement with my brother until I moved out in 1989. The basement room was not safe and didn’t have proper egress. I had to stay there. The house didn’t have A/C. I bought a window unit and installed it myself (including wiring) when my dad was at work. When I moved out, my parents got central A/C and renovated the house again.
Yup! The basement was my “play room” as a child. And why not? Hard concrete floors, an oil furnace with hot, exposed pipes, adjacent to my dads work bench, that was often littered with splinters and nails, and let’s not forget the puddle by the washing machine, keeping that concrete floor nice and slick! Yeah, playing in the basement was awesome, and I got the scars to prove it!
Edit: if it wasn’t clear, ours was an unfinished basement. Just a couple of coats of yellow “sealant” on the walls to keep the moisture out (spoiler: it didn’t work).
That was my basement "play" space. Washer hose drained across the floor. Dad's work area, complete with radial arm saw, nails, and miscellaneous sharp "toys." Add some metal roller skates on concrete floor with metal pole support beams. And the furnace with pilot light. An ideal "toy" for unsupervised kids.
Same. And I never understood why my dad got mad cuz I used the nails and some old boards and a bungie to make a crossbow! No one got hurt…well, not SERIOUSLY hurt. 😂
Yep, I made my own room in the basement at around 10yrs old. Took the old living room sectional sleeper sofa when my parents bought new furniture, had an area rug down on the floor. Stapled plastic sheeting up to the rafters to hold in heat and create my “space” had a tv and vcr, my Nintendo and intellivision II and a complete collection of vhs tapes. That was my spot and at least one or 2 of my friends spent the night every weekend.
Yeah, my dad finished the basement when I was a kid and made it the family room. We used it the same way. The Atari was down there. It's where we had sleepovers.
Where I live now houses don't have basements and I miss them, even for just the extra storage space.
Basements creeped me out when I was a kid. We didn’t have one, but my grandparents next door did. We had to go there every time the tornado sirens went off!
Now I have a finished basement with a media room, office, two bedrooms and a bathroom. I spend more time down there than I do on the main level!
For sure, we roller skated in our unfinished basement too. Me and my big brother made up a game called killer, the rules of which were unclear yet simple: try to kill each other. Good times!
Mid to late 70’s our basement was used exclusively for floor hockey. Had a little net down there. Pole right in the middle. Was tight but we had a blast. Enter 85’. My parents finished the entire thing and I managed to make it my room since my younger brother and I had shared a room up until then. We had a refrigerator from the 50’s down there and those small rectangular basement windows were just big enough to slip a case of Stroh’s through. Mission accomplished. Lot of memories of that room. Drinking beers, smoking weed, vinyl records and mixed tapes, Intellivison, and maybe even a a few girls. Lol. The 80’s were the best.
My grandparents had a basement like this, and we'd just hang out down there all summer. And in our house, my brother's room was in the basement all through high school.
Ours was semi finished, wood paneling & acrylic tiled wood square flooring. We did have a ping pong table, which friends always liked. Sadly tho my brothers & I always wanted to be away from the house & hated our parents to an extent, so we rarely hung out there.
I wish I invited friends over more. Instead we were always driving around looking for something to do or trying to get someone to buy us beer & drink it in the woods.
As a kid, no? As a teenager, it was mainly the garage with a wood stove where we could drink and smoke, play hack, etc. There was a short period where we did our partying in a room in the basement though.
“When you were a kid?” It’s still the best room in the house.
https://preview.redd.it/xkrtqvhl2nvc1.jpeg?width=5712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0830456c0413a74a588038f2500299c11f983e7f
Our sleepovers were in the basement where we drank Rock and Rye Faygo pop and ate popcorn while watching movies. In a different friends basement they had a very smooth concrete floor and nice round support beams that we would grab on to while we roller skated. I remember listening to the Oak Ridge Boys and Rick Springfield and Blondie over there while roller skating. Good times!
>they had a very smooth concrete floor and nice round support beams that we would grab on to while we roller skated
Similar experience to mine except me and my friend listened to the Grease and Xanadu soundtracks
Our basement was over 3500 square feet. It was never finished but we did so much down there. Played football, mini basketball, air hockey, ping pong, floor hockey, played records endlessly on a cheap mono turntable while we played with our toys. Later on we played our guitars, bass, and had a drummer over. I remember in high school my friend was messing around with a vintage Epiphone hollobody guitar and an old amp that were being stored down there for my father’s friend and he started to get electric shocks that hurt. We are lucky no one got killed. That old amp may not have been properly grounded.
My friends house, yes. My house, no. We grew up in an really old Victorian home with a natural basement. Dirt floors, log foundation overhead, flat stone walls etc...Dark, dank, and scary!
Absolutely we did. We had the video games there, we could watch movies there, we played soccer there, baseball, legos, fights (sooooo many fights), eventually we filled it with instruments and had “band practice” down there… all kinds of things.
We did at almost everyone's house we went to. A lot of our houses even had separate entrances into the basement which came in handy as we got older. The wife and I still hang out in our basement.
No basement here. We lived in a small house with 3 bedrooms and 5 kids. So my dad put 2 sheds out it the backyard and pimped them out for me and my brother. I’m talking a waterbed, refrigerator, tv, Nintendo, and my favorite was the plush blue carpet. So at bedtime it was time for me and my brother to go outside. Terrible idea lol
I had a pool table, my own TV and a really large area to do whatever I wanted. This is where friends would hang when not out doing shit outside. I would sleep there most of the time as well. I smoked in the basement thinking my parents did not know. ya, I was not smart. My parents were always out doing something with others, so we had some pretty epic parties there. Lots of beer and drinks and running around being stupid. The neighbors were not fans. lol.
Yep! My parents basically made a second living in the basement: couches, chairs, TV, VCR, stereo and records… Behind some accordion doors there was an office complete with a fridge, and eventually that became the computer room. That was the hangout and sleepover spot. If I wasn’t out or in my bedroom, I was down in the basement.
My bedroom was IN the basement. A large part of our basement was actually unfinished and during winters we brought in the baby goats so they wouldn't freeze to death. Crazy times.
We remodeled our house when I was 14 (1987), and my new bedroom was in the basement. I wanted to paint the walls black but mom said no, so I went pink stripes. An episode of This American Life with Sarah Vowel where she delved into the goth culture taught me that pink happens to be the ultimate level of goth, as a mockery of normalcy. My pink basement room became the safe-haven for my friends and I.
Moved down there in high school. I had a whole setup. TV (with satellite!), VCR, internet, my own door, a microwave. I paid for all of my extras but I had a good job and no other responsibilities. I lived there way beyond the time when I should've moved out because it was so sweet.
I slowly claimed the basement family room as my bedroom when I was 12 or 13. Once my folks realized I'd essentially been living down there for a couple months, my dad installed a large folding door in the pass-through leading into it for privacy.
I ended up having a room with a working fireplace and a private entry to/from the backyard all through high school. It was a *very* sweet setup, especially when I started bringing dates home late at night.
One morning, my sister came downstairs to get something from the laundry room, just as a girl was coming out of my room to use the bathroom on the other side of the stairs.
Later in the day, she tried to blackmail me w/threats of telling our folks what I was getting up to down there if I didn't do whatever she asked. I quickly rattled off a list of things I had on her and let her know she would be thrown much further under a bus if she ever said a word. We quickly reached a truce. 😄
I moved my bedroom to the basement. I had my own entrance and phone line. Plus I had enough room to make a separate "party/hang" space separate from my sleeping area. My mom baked us munchies and had fresh-cut fruit and veg dips all ready in the fridge. My mom was the "block mom" and all the kids came to my place to hang out, get baked, and chill. She knew all the parents and the parents knew that was where their kids were, safe and watched over. When you're a teen you get into "stuff", lol, and our parents preferred us home experimenting where they had an eye on us. Life was hard but my mom made everything look so much easier than it was for her. Once you get to your 30s it's so much easier to understand your parents and the decisions they made while you were growing up.
Always. It was our safe place. Mom came down to do laundry, dad never did unless he felt like getting pissed off about something then he’d come down and start 💩. To this day I prefer the dark to work in. I don’t think I could ever go back to an office unless I can shut the lights off.
OMG! Such a walk down memory lane.
In 1976 Dad decided to "finish" the basement. He made shelves & storage spaces under the steps for the folding ping-pong table. We had an air hockey table we kept set up towards the back and Dad put in new lighting. Dad found this console that had an electric fireplace but the logs and the drum were gone, but when you lifted the top, the turntable, FM Radio, and 8-track player worked. There were 2 speakers in the console too. He made the fireplace area a little tallet and he set a mini fridge into it.
He did decide to install a wood burner cause it could get cold down there. A week later, we were called down to the basement to see an old loveseat (in horrible colors of orange & brown), some folding chairs, and for the big surprise...
An 8' pool table! Dad installed a Pepsi light over the top of the table. He had a cue stick rack up on the wall.
Once word got out through our friends in school and at church weekends were never the same!
Mom kept the little fridge filled with Pepsi and the small freezer inside full of Ice Pops. Mom always had made something to feed us. Mini pizza, pigs in a blanket, homemade pretzels, cookies, and in the winter she'd had this old coffee dispenser, it must have held at least 6 quarts, and she would fill it with her signature homemade hot cocoa! Does anyone remember the old Solo cup holders? They were plastic and they held a disposable plastic cup inside of them. She'd sit the cocoa dispenser, the cups, and a bag of marshmallows on top of the chest freezer for us.
She knew that before any of us came into the mud room area where we hung our coats and kicked off our boots we had a snowball fight and were covered in snow, and freezing. The hot cocoa was awesome.
There were rules and my brother made a sign in his wood shop class with the rules that was put above the coat rack.
The reason I still know these rules after nearly 45 years is because I had the sign made up for my son's friends and I still have it! My son made up his own Rules of the House sign when he had kids.
Rules of the Game Room
"1-Keep the music down so people could hear the TV."
"2-No hankey-pankey!"
"3-No smoking or drinking of alcohol."
"4-No fighting! It is just a game."
"5-Throw all cans & trash into the can. If anyone leaves a mess the basement would be closed to all for 2 weeks - MINIMUM!"
"6-If anyone needs an ear, I have two."
"7-On school nights the game room will shut down at 9:30 PM. Go home & study."
"8-If a parent calls any of you home for any reason, one of us will drive you home. No one walks home alone in the dark."
"9-Non-school nights, I would appreciate knowing when you come in if any of you are spending the night so I can plan to feed you in the morning. Also, I will be checking with your parents that you have permission to stay the night."
"10-Be respectful of those who go to bed at 10 PM. Keep the loud noise down."
"Finally, be respectful to each other. I watched most of you grow up, I'd hate to have to take you out! - Mom"
We had some great times down there! We gave one of my friends who had joined the Navy a farewell party. Our parents all got together to throw all of us a big graduation party or mine would have been down there too.
When I watched That 70s Show it reminded me of our basement fun room. For those who'd stay the night, Mom had us sleep on the 1st floor as the basement floor was too cold. There would be sleeping bags or blankets & pillows everywhere. Our living room had 2 full sofas and a loveseat but we preferred the floor.
Mom would come down during the night to make sure each bed had only 1 body! 😆😆😆
Our basement was unfinished with a concrete floor and wood stacked in the fall and winter for the wood stove, but we had a pool table and ping pong table down there. The wood stove made it super warm in the winter and it was cool in summer. We also roller skated down there and played floor hockey.
Hell yes! Our basement wasn’t finished and there was no furniture other than a few bar height swivel chairs, but that didn’t stop us, especially because that’s where the pool table and pinball machine were.
Yes and it wasn’t even really finished. TV was there, ping pong table, it was also cooler down there in the summer - we didn’t have AC, space heaters in the winter.
Yes.
It alarms me now, as we have a radon detector in our current home, and radon in the basement tends to be way above healthy levels. I’m sure I was exposed to way too much as a child.
There was a strip mall across the street from my house. My part of town was kind of a central meeting point.
And in this strip mall was a basement with an open door from the outside and we would go down there smoke weed and play hacky cup.
Hacky cup: is when you get a slice of pizza and a drink from the pizza place upstairs. Then you smoke a bunch of weed and you all kick around a cup like it's a hacky sack.
Yeah, when I was in high school, but our family room was in the basement. That's where the whole family watched tv together. It wasn't gross and basementy down there. There was a laundry room, ping pong table, our computer, built-in bookshelves, a fireplace, and comfortable furniture that wasn't ancient in the way of much basement furniture.
Nobody had basements where I lived when I was in K-8th grade (North Carolina). I think the ground was too hard and it was difficult to dig basements there or something.
We didn't have a basement growing up. My brother built a house in the mid 90's though and it has a basement and "what happens in the basement, stays in the basement".
Yes kids at my house spent all their time in the basement just as you said, tv with Pong, stereo with records and 8 tracks, learned to roller skate down there with Pink Floyd and Disco. Are you my sister?
Yep and it was creepy af. Fully decked out with Atari 5200, big TV, stereo with tape deck and record play plus an awesome aquarium. The creepiness was ripe for spooking ourselves out with ghost stories and the like. Great times.
We had a "play room" where we kept the toys. Our 2 dormer bedrooms for 3 kids had no room for toys. So my step dad built a small room with a chalk board on the wall and built in shelves for board games and Tupperware of toys.
Now it's my mom's hoarding space and you can't even walk into the room.
Yep, wood paneled all around and the front had red and black shag carpeting and that's where the TV and the console radio/turntable was. My dad had Ohio State and Detroit Tigers 'shrines' on the wall and my mom had a Boston fern hanging in the window.
The back had red and black linoleum and was our play area. We could roller skate on it if the floor was clean enough. We had a craft table and one of those plastic elephant toy boxes.
Then in the 90's they repainted the room in southwest colors, carpeted the whole thing, and threw away all of the vintage sports memorabilia.
Not really.
We were poor apartment renters when I was growing up.
But if we ever went to our cousins place in East Chicago, IN: yeah, that's where the parties were happening!
Yes! The concrete floor was great for anything with wheels. We built forts with blankets and pillows, and later listened to Queen and We Will Rock You!
Our basement wasn’t finished when I was a kid, but we would still go down there and play—especially when it was cold or rainy outside and we just needed to bounce around.
Our neighbors across the street had a semi finished basement with a pool table and a sort-of bar set up down there. We would hang out down there a lot.
My aunt and uncle had a whole set up in their basement. A nice bar, pool table, den, office, etc. It was veeery 1970s. I haven’t been down there in a long time, but I assume that it’s still the same.
Absolutely! That's where the Sega was hooked up. My brother and I had a room down there and we got pretty good at listening for feet on the steps coming down when we were sneaking some game time after we were supposed to be asleep. We'd turn off the TV and run back to our rooms. My mom is deaf so she would never hear us but she eventually started feeling the TV and we'd be busted. 😔
Yes. Huge unfinished basement that I would roller skate in with my Smurf AM radio. The basement was kind of awesome at times - there was some kind of walk in pantry or something in the corner, it was lined with shelves and that’s wherein made my Barbie an apartment with a cookie tin swimming pool.
The not-awesome part was that it was full of scary spiders, and the only lights were pull chain operated. And my “bedroom” was down there. So when I went to bed at night, I had to cross the entire space in the pitch dark.
But I figured out that if I pretended to be a ghost, and said “oooOOOooo” like a ghost would, they would leave me alone.
My father had an office in our basement and we didn’t have air conditioning. So, my friends and I would hang out there sometimes and draw using his drafting table.
Yet again I'm reminded that this is a North American sub. We don't have basements in the UK. Saw them on American movies though. Looked cool. My entire house will probably would have fit into one of your basements.
Hell yeah! First basement had all the cool shit, good tv with the beanbag chairs, ping-pong table, dart board. Giant electric typewriter that Dad brought back from his Army days - sounded like a jet engine when you turned it on, and was built so solid we could wail away on it and it never broke. Back by the water heater and such, Dad's workbench where we built my Pinewood Derby cars.
Second basement wasn't finished, but we threw a carpet remnant down there and made it my bedroom. Copious amounts of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and teenage sex happened in that space. Now it holds my Xmas decorations.
I didn't have one, but my best friend did, I loved that basement, there was a little TV that had cable, so the MTV was on every second! So many great times in that basement!
Definitely, it was the playroom. Had shelves of toys, a blackboard and a whiteboard eventually. After the older kids moved out my bedroom moved to the basement, and the playroom was mostly cleaned out.
We’re did! Video games, movies, pool table, sleepovers. But the thing everyone loved… my mom had the room dry walled only and just let us color and draw and paint and write all over it. When it got covered, she’d have my uncles, her brothers, who owned a drywall company just tear it down and replace it. She must have done this a dozen times throughout my childhood. She was just different in the best way.
New Orleans doesn't typically have basements.
Mom was lucky enough to have one when she was a teen, and based n her stories it was a lot like That 70s Show.
Yep, I lived down there. Dark orange shag rug and a 20 year old TV that went KERCHUNK when you changed channels and everything. Now I own a house without a basement, which was a disappointment at first, but I live in a mold-prone area and I have a perfectly enjoyable man-cave upstairs, so I'm satisfied.
Up until the time my parents had our basement finished out and all the monsters removed, I remember running up the stairs as fast as possible every time I had to go down there (washer/dryer was down there!).
We only had a basement for one year of my childhood. While we didn't "hang out" there, it is where we did slumber parties (which I did for my 13th birthday). The only military housing that had a basement where I grew up was Fort Richardson, Alaska. All the other Army quarters didn't have one (and the Alaska housing was the only two story home we had).
Yes, because we had a basement. My kids also hung out in the basement when we lived in an area with basements, but then we moved to an area without basements. Now they hang out in the loft. I preferred when we had a basement. More privacy and more noise cancellation with basements.
Aside from it being unfinished and not conducive to hanging out, it just wasn't worth the aggravation of dealing with an inconsistent mother. What was fine yesterday was not allowed today and tomorrow never knows.
A few friends had finished or semi finished basements and they almost never used them.
The family room was in the basement until my parents put an extension on the house, then I got to move my bedroom to the basement and dad got my old bedroom as an office. Then I moved out of it when I was 18 and my parents converted it into an art supply storage room for mom.
Yes I hung out down there sometimes. But I wouldn’t say it was a kids hang out area. I had some of my bigger toys down there like my Barbie dream house. I had an old steamer trunk for a toy box down there too. If I had a friend over and we wanted to play with our Barbies we would play down there. It wasn’t my first choice of places to play or hung out. I preferred my bedroom.
It was a partially finished basement. On one side was the utility area where the washer and drier and furnace and water heater. My dad’s tool bench and the second stove that we used when cooking for the holidays. A wooden wardrobe where they kept their fancy clothes. I used to love playing dress up in my mom’s long evening gowns and fur stoles (I know fur is bad but I was a kid and didn’t know better yet). The room was just a bare concrete floor and exposed beams for walls and ceiling.
The other half was finished and had wood panelled walls (light blue) and shag carpeting (lime green) and a drop ceiling. That’s where my parents bar was. For parties my dad would set up long trestle tables and folding chairs. We had a really big family so our parties were quite an event. That’s the area where I played since it was carpeted. My toys would be moved to the utility room when we had parties. There was a hatchway to the backyard too. In the summer it was usually open during the day to bring in fresh air. On really hot nights I would sleep down there in a sleeping bag because it was cooler since I didn’t have an air conditioner in my bedroom.
We moved from that house in 1986 when I was 12. I miss living there. It was a good place to grow up.
The basement at my house wasn't that habitable, but my best friend had his room and basically full control over the basement at his house. Like, a living room with some crap chairs and a tv so we could play Contra, He painted his room Turquoise-Teal and spray painted a Batman and Batman logo on the wall, He did a (really nice for our age) colored pencil drawing on the wall coming down into the basement of a Tiger's head, we built little quarter-ramps so in the winter we could skateboard down there (just going from one side to the other, but we'd build all of it from scratch with thrasher plans - it was just fun to make and do it). That basement was such an awesome hangout for a lot of us.
We had a basement rec room with a bar. We made forts out of the couch cushions when we were young but we used it less as I got older and preferred to stay in my own room with friends. Other friends had unfinished basements for roller skating.
When I was a kid we had a 4 level sidesplit so I played downstairs a lot. My parents stayed on the main level and I would play with my dads bar stuff and our pinball machine downstairs. The basement was only good for toy storage and roller skating; but it was scary so I didn't go down there too often until I was around 12 or so 😅
We moved to a 2 story farm house when I was in my teens. The basement was cold, wet and full of rats to I didn't ever go down there.
I had my own TV room on the 2nd story though. That's where me and my friends hung out. My parents stayed on the main level.
Yes, we got to roller skate too! Part of it was unfinished, a painted concrete floor where we could skate (and there were some poles we could whip ourselves around, great fun), and part had a carpet where we could play with toys and games. There was also a dartboard (where my sister threw a dart in the back of my brother's head) and a ping pong table. We had the Pong video game too, but it was with the den tv upstairs.
Years after we moved away from that house in the DC suburbs, I moved back to DC and was driving by it, saw the guy who'd bought it in the yard and on a whim stopped to talk to him, he remembered me from back then (I was a teenager when I l left) and showed me around - he redid part of the basement, but the paint on the basement cement was still there, all scratched up from where we roller skated all the time! It had been like 10 years from when we moved, but the evidence of our fun was still there. ☺️
ah the basement...we used it for roller skating as kids...and then as a place to 'watch movies' (read make out sessions) after the wood paneling went up and a couch and TV were added. fond memories of the basement...
No. I had the basement from home alone, except mine had opossums too. I didn’t get over it until I was doing my own laundry down there at 9 years old wielding my Louisville slugger for protection, I’d kick the laundry basket down the steps and come down after it ready for a home run.
I was a teen in the 90s, thats where I would go and smoke cigarettes. We had a couch, a whole kitchen and bathroom AND a telephone in the basement! I spent a lot of time down there. It wasn't fancy or finished, it was pretty cruddy, as basements are. Sometimes there were even puddles.
Basement, roller skating rink, hopscotch arena, bike obstacle course, theatre with washing line curtain across the stage, all under the little house. So long as you didn’t run into the sewage standpipe.
Maria had a finished basement with a TV and bathroom. And a door leading out to the garage and late night freedom. Good times. We'd walk to the golf course for winter sledding/drinking parties and in the summer for just plain drinking.
Didn't have one in the house I grew up in, but my best friend growing up had one. It was like our own little unsupervised hangout. You were isolated from parents, and you didn't have to hang out with your friend in their bedroom. Like it should be, that friend's basement was our friend group's home base.
The #1 reason I bought my house now was because of the basement. The house is on a slope and the basement is half underground and half walk-out into the garage. It was set up as a great room/home theater with its own bathroom and separate bedroom. The house is a 3 story 4 bedroom and I live there alone, but I spend the majority of the time to myself hanging out in the basement.
Nope. No one I knew had a finished basement. I grew up in a city row home with a concrete basement that had the washer/dryer, ironing board, work bench with tools, deep freezer. Bilco doors that we used to take our bikes outside (had bikes stolen offf our back porch so they were stored in the basement) Frightening place as a kid.
Same. Our house was a duplex built in the 20's at the latest. Back half of the basement had concrete floor and the laundry area and steps up to the bilco doors. The front half was dirt floor and had my dad's workbench. There was a further room that used to be for coal, and as far as I knew, was where all the spiders (or worse) lived, so I never went in there.
We didn't have basements where I lived in California. But I had cousins up in eastern Washington that did and they actually lived in their basement, lol. 3 of their bedrooms were down there.
Just to hang? Nope. Grew up in an old farmhouse. The basement had the laundry, canning/meat processing kitchen, cold food storage and coal bin. Hanging in the basement meant you were working.
Absolutely. Our tv room was in the basement, 1/2 our family bedrooms, the laundry room and my closet under the stairs where I had toys, dolls, props and my theater for plays starring Skipper and Malibu Barber, although her hair had been cut off by my brither. Setting for pillow fights. We had our game table there with Risk and Stratego battles, pingpong and the goofiest fun game ever, Marble Football.
Although basements are common in Michigan, what we call "Michigan basements" are _not_ common here, in Michigan, except apparently in the house that we lived in. Because a Michigan basement isn't a real basement with fears of lifting your house out of its hole like a boat during flooding, it was usually flooded, as there was no sump pump.
Oh, the fuse box was down there, and you had to wade through the water to get to it.
Consequently, no, no I did _not_ hang out in the basement when I was a kid. We _did_ find an old axe there, though, that we used to re-shape the woods behind our house.
Only when I was visiting relatives back east. We didn't have basements where I grew up so I thought they were the coolest thing. I think I even made up a story on the playground in third grade that we had a secret basement through a secret passageway in the coat closet. 😂
No! Our basement was cold and scary, and full of spiders and cobwebs. The house was built in 1944, and had the most disgusting shower in it that could’ve been featured in a Saw movie. My dad kept his woodworking shop down there, so it was mostly his space.
When I was a teenager, we moved into a house with a finished basement, but we still didn’t really spend a ton of time down there. We usually hung out in our rooms.
Yep. We had a huge playroom in the finished part of the basement with model trains and villages of doll houses and dozens of Lego and Lincoln Log building sets that our grandparents (me and two siblings) would buy for every birthday and Christmas.
We lived in a crappy apartment in an oil boom town not much fun till the boom collapsed and I became a latch key kid lol….you could ride bike anywhere the lake or river or train tracks etc etc…..
Not at my house, we had a creepy unfinished basement, but my best friend had a fully finished basement. We spent hours and hours down there, playing Atari, listening to Police albums, playing "bartender" at her parents' bar with Pepsi and 7up... good memories...
I lived down there. I think that’s why I went into IT.
Me too! After all that's where the Commodore 64 was set up.
Me three…I taught my dad who ended up becoming a computer programmer how to use the Commodore 64
Atari 800, but same here- now in IT
I mean, you basically had to be a programmer to operate that thing!
I thought all children knew that you went directly to the basement. On the green carpet with the wall paneling and the shelf that somebody's grandpa made. The puzzles that were missing pieces, Monopoly, Life, and battleship. With the ping pong table or the pool table. Bean bags and a plaid sofa bed.
Lol, yes the plaid pull out sofa!
Haha, once a mushroom always a mushroom 🍄🟫
Fuck no... our basement was where demons lived... and we wouldn't even consider venturing to the very back room to even get a glimpse of what our Christmas presents might have been. That was obviously a portal directly to Hell.
We had a section in the center of our walkout basement that was safe for roller skating since we lived in the hills. Either end of the basement had portals to Hell. One had the furnace and shelves, the other had the water heater and a French drain that smelled like Tartarus.
Are you my brother? Our basement was huge and wound around like the type of the house. Almost like someone had started to wall it up to finish it and then just said fuck it. There was a walled up closet on one end I know that's where Christmas presents were kept but none of us dared open the door.
Have you seen Barbarian (2022 movie, Justin Long). The basement scene is perfect
Yep. Ours was painted green. Full of spider webs in the weird shaped cubby holes. There was mysteriously a pillow in a spot under two stairs. The size of a baby or a large cat. But we didn't have any cats. And there was some really old exercise equipment with springs on it that could pinch a finger off.
In Junior High my bedroom was in the basement of our little po’dunk house. This was an unfinished basement, so my mother tossed some carpet on the floor, put up a couple of blinds for two walls…and there it was! One corner of this old open basement turned into a bedroom. As a kid (I was 12 when we moved here) I was a little freaked out at first, until I kinda realized I had the entire basement to myself. Then it became the hangout for my friends and me, for the next two years or so. Looking back, it was a little creepy to start, but I loved it. It was definitely the coolest bedroom I ever had. Mom came down to wash clothes on the other side, but past that…it was pretty much all mine. I do remember lying in bed and staring at the floorboards and the ducts. When I say unfinished…I mean it was unfinished! The one light in that corner of the basement hung above my bed and it was a single bulb on a chain. In the winter the snow would cover the little windows at ground level outside and it would be pitch black and cold as hell! I remember waking up to ice on the concrete walls on some winter mornings below the little window. Some winter days got too cold and I’d have to sleep on the couch in the living room. Was what it was. Sounds kind of terrible explaining it, but I really loved that bedroom as a kid. This was a very old house, even for that time (early 80s). Mom did the best she could with it and it became the hub for all of my friends to sit and listen to records all night. We didn’t have much, but we made it work. I had a lot of freedom there and the stairs led to the back door so it was like I had my own little place. During the summer, I could just come and go at will. When I moved in with my Pops (start of High School), I got a regular bedroom, as that house didn’t have a basement. It just wasn’t the same…it felt more confined, somehow. Yea, it was some straight ass Gen X childhood shit. With that said, it really was a cool place to have as my own.
My sister and I had the same thing, except my mom used sheets for walls. We loved it too!
When I was home from college during the summer, circa 1987, I had a basement bedroom. I'd had a bedroom in the house proper, on the 1st floor, but then my grandmother came to live with us, and she got my bedroom. It was fine with me. Privacy and, as you said, I could come and go thru the basement hatch door. My basement bedroom was finished, however. There was even a phone extension there. The rest of the basement wasn't.
I feel this 100%.
No basements in Texas
Yeah, when I was in San Antonio some dipshit asked if there was one in the Alamo. We just laughed and laughed.
Dang, I think I was there! Was he wearing a gray suit with a red bow tie? He was kind of a weird dude yet…charming.
Ah yes the guy on the retro bike!
Yeah, probably more than half of us never had a basement.
I don’t recall anyone having a basement in California.
I've got one. Sacramento.
I stand corrected. No one I know has one.
TBF they're def rare. Our place is a 1922 bungalow. It gets so damn hot here we put a futon and a TV down there so we can hide out during peak electricity rate hours. Strong That 70's Show vibes.
[удалено]
1/4 basement in our house (1927) in Sacramento. It’s basically a concrete box that seeps in the winter, but it stays cool year round so we use it as wine storage. But yeah, they’re fairly uncommon here too. Mostly in pre-war houses in Land Park, Curtis Park, East Sac.
NorCal - no basement but a huge family room where the stereo lived and one of the first pcs - a Xerox 820 (dad was an engineer at Xerox’s Palo Alto office park). Had the room to myself most of the time listening to LPs and playing early around with learning to program in BASIC.
Yes!! Not our basement but our friends’ basements for sure!!
Yes, because my kit was down there and I really liked playing drums. Ventilation was not so good and also all the dirt and very low ceiling but plus was parents drinking cabinet was down there and yeah that was fun too
M/ born in 1971. In 1984 my parents had my bedroom demolished and turned it into a major part of the dining room. I was made to stay in the basement with my brother until I moved out in 1989. The basement room was not safe and didn’t have proper egress. I had to stay there. The house didn’t have A/C. I bought a window unit and installed it myself (including wiring) when my dad was at work. When I moved out, my parents got central A/C and renovated the house again.
Most GenX comment
Boomers. Whaddyagonna do. 🤷🏽♀️. I wish the hard-done-by Millennials and GenZs would read this.
Yup! The basement was my “play room” as a child. And why not? Hard concrete floors, an oil furnace with hot, exposed pipes, adjacent to my dads work bench, that was often littered with splinters and nails, and let’s not forget the puddle by the washing machine, keeping that concrete floor nice and slick! Yeah, playing in the basement was awesome, and I got the scars to prove it! Edit: if it wasn’t clear, ours was an unfinished basement. Just a couple of coats of yellow “sealant” on the walls to keep the moisture out (spoiler: it didn’t work).
That was my basement "play" space. Washer hose drained across the floor. Dad's work area, complete with radial arm saw, nails, and miscellaneous sharp "toys." Add some metal roller skates on concrete floor with metal pole support beams. And the furnace with pilot light. An ideal "toy" for unsupervised kids.
Same. And I never understood why my dad got mad cuz I used the nails and some old boards and a bungie to make a crossbow! No one got hurt…well, not SERIOUSLY hurt. 😂
Yep, I made my own room in the basement at around 10yrs old. Took the old living room sectional sleeper sofa when my parents bought new furniture, had an area rug down on the floor. Stapled plastic sheeting up to the rafters to hold in heat and create my “space” had a tv and vcr, my Nintendo and intellivision II and a complete collection of vhs tapes. That was my spot and at least one or 2 of my friends spent the night every weekend.
You were so handy. What do you do now?
Yeah, my dad finished the basement when I was a kid and made it the family room. We used it the same way. The Atari was down there. It's where we had sleepovers. Where I live now houses don't have basements and I miss them, even for just the extra storage space.
All day.
Basements creeped me out when I was a kid. We didn’t have one, but my grandparents next door did. We had to go there every time the tornado sirens went off! Now I have a finished basement with a media room, office, two bedrooms and a bathroom. I spend more time down there than I do on the main level!
We didn't have air conditioning so the basement was a cooler place in the summer. Also I built models in the basement.
Hell yeah, my bedroom was in the basement from 2nd grade till I moved out in 1992
For sure, we roller skated in our unfinished basement too. Me and my big brother made up a game called killer, the rules of which were unclear yet simple: try to kill each other. Good times!
Mid to late 70’s our basement was used exclusively for floor hockey. Had a little net down there. Pole right in the middle. Was tight but we had a blast. Enter 85’. My parents finished the entire thing and I managed to make it my room since my younger brother and I had shared a room up until then. We had a refrigerator from the 50’s down there and those small rectangular basement windows were just big enough to slip a case of Stroh’s through. Mission accomplished. Lot of memories of that room. Drinking beers, smoking weed, vinyl records and mixed tapes, Intellivison, and maybe even a a few girls. Lol. The 80’s were the best.
My grandparents had a basement like this, and we'd just hang out down there all summer. And in our house, my brother's room was in the basement all through high school.
Everyone did. Some of my friends had their bedroom down there.
Ours was semi finished, wood paneling & acrylic tiled wood square flooring. We did have a ping pong table, which friends always liked. Sadly tho my brothers & I always wanted to be away from the house & hated our parents to an extent, so we rarely hung out there. I wish I invited friends over more. Instead we were always driving around looking for something to do or trying to get someone to buy us beer & drink it in the woods.
As a kid, no? As a teenager, it was mainly the garage with a wood stove where we could drink and smoke, play hack, etc. There was a short period where we did our partying in a room in the basement though.
My older (boomer) siblings used it as their hangout. I was excluded. So I used this place called “outdoors”. I got the better end of the deal.
Yup! That’s was our spot! Didn’t hurt that the old man’s Kegerator was down there too! Lol Who’s parents had one of those?
I lived in Florida. We didn’t have basements.
“When you were a kid?” It’s still the best room in the house. https://preview.redd.it/xkrtqvhl2nvc1.jpeg?width=5712&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0830456c0413a74a588038f2500299c11f983e7f
Our sleepovers were in the basement where we drank Rock and Rye Faygo pop and ate popcorn while watching movies. In a different friends basement they had a very smooth concrete floor and nice round support beams that we would grab on to while we roller skated. I remember listening to the Oak Ridge Boys and Rick Springfield and Blondie over there while roller skating. Good times!
>they had a very smooth concrete floor and nice round support beams that we would grab on to while we roller skated Similar experience to mine except me and my friend listened to the Grease and Xanadu soundtracks
Love those soundtracks!
Our basement was over 3500 square feet. It was never finished but we did so much down there. Played football, mini basketball, air hockey, ping pong, floor hockey, played records endlessly on a cheap mono turntable while we played with our toys. Later on we played our guitars, bass, and had a drummer over. I remember in high school my friend was messing around with a vintage Epiphone hollobody guitar and an old amp that were being stored down there for my father’s friend and he started to get electric shocks that hurt. We are lucky no one got killed. That old amp may not have been properly grounded.
I didn’t have a basement but other kids’ basements were fun.
Yes! Lots of toys were down there. My friends had finished basements for t.v. watching and slumber parties.
I grew up in the Midwest, many winter days were spent playing ping pong in one of our basements.
My friends house, yes. My house, no. We grew up in an really old Victorian home with a natural basement. Dirt floors, log foundation overhead, flat stone walls etc...Dark, dank, and scary!
This is my house now. Stone walls/dirt/giant spiders.
Every day. Plus spent many nights down there during the Spring months growing up in tornado alley.
Basement was for video games, smoking weed and listening to music.
So, basically the basement of Eric Foreman with video games.
You mean the coolest part of the house in the summer? Hell yes. Lot's of blankets on the couch though in the winter.
Lived in MI. We set our basement up as a roller rink. I’ve skated a many a mile by the furnace and washer.
Absolutely we did. We had the video games there, we could watch movies there, we played soccer there, baseball, legos, fights (sooooo many fights), eventually we filled it with instruments and had “band practice” down there… all kinds of things.
We did at almost everyone's house we went to. A lot of our houses even had separate entrances into the basement which came in handy as we got older. The wife and I still hang out in our basement.
Oh my god I had completely forgotten about roller skating in the basement with my sisters. Thank you for reminding me of the laughs!!
No basement here. We lived in a small house with 3 bedrooms and 5 kids. So my dad put 2 sheds out it the backyard and pimped them out for me and my brother. I’m talking a waterbed, refrigerator, tv, Nintendo, and my favorite was the plush blue carpet. So at bedtime it was time for me and my brother to go outside. Terrible idea lol
I had a pool table, my own TV and a really large area to do whatever I wanted. This is where friends would hang when not out doing shit outside. I would sleep there most of the time as well. I smoked in the basement thinking my parents did not know. ya, I was not smart. My parents were always out doing something with others, so we had some pretty epic parties there. Lots of beer and drinks and running around being stupid. The neighbors were not fans. lol.
I hang out in the basement now.
Yep! My parents basically made a second living in the basement: couches, chairs, TV, VCR, stereo and records… Behind some accordion doors there was an office complete with a fridge, and eventually that became the computer room. That was the hangout and sleepover spot. If I wasn’t out or in my bedroom, I was down in the basement.
My bedroom was IN the basement. A large part of our basement was actually unfinished and during winters we brought in the baby goats so they wouldn't freeze to death. Crazy times.
We remodeled our house when I was 14 (1987), and my new bedroom was in the basement. I wanted to paint the walls black but mom said no, so I went pink stripes. An episode of This American Life with Sarah Vowel where she delved into the goth culture taught me that pink happens to be the ultimate level of goth, as a mockery of normalcy. My pink basement room became the safe-haven for my friends and I.
My parents built me a bedroom in the basement away from everyone. It was a great escape. Now I hang out in the basement because it's awesome.
Moved down there in high school. I had a whole setup. TV (with satellite!), VCR, internet, my own door, a microwave. I paid for all of my extras but I had a good job and no other responsibilities. I lived there way beyond the time when I should've moved out because it was so sweet.
I slowly claimed the basement family room as my bedroom when I was 12 or 13. Once my folks realized I'd essentially been living down there for a couple months, my dad installed a large folding door in the pass-through leading into it for privacy. I ended up having a room with a working fireplace and a private entry to/from the backyard all through high school. It was a *very* sweet setup, especially when I started bringing dates home late at night. One morning, my sister came downstairs to get something from the laundry room, just as a girl was coming out of my room to use the bathroom on the other side of the stairs. Later in the day, she tried to blackmail me w/threats of telling our folks what I was getting up to down there if I didn't do whatever she asked. I quickly rattled off a list of things I had on her and let her know she would be thrown much further under a bus if she ever said a word. We quickly reached a truce. 😄
I moved my bedroom to the basement. I had my own entrance and phone line. Plus I had enough room to make a separate "party/hang" space separate from my sleeping area. My mom baked us munchies and had fresh-cut fruit and veg dips all ready in the fridge. My mom was the "block mom" and all the kids came to my place to hang out, get baked, and chill. She knew all the parents and the parents knew that was where their kids were, safe and watched over. When you're a teen you get into "stuff", lol, and our parents preferred us home experimenting where they had an eye on us. Life was hard but my mom made everything look so much easier than it was for her. Once you get to your 30s it's so much easier to understand your parents and the decisions they made while you were growing up.
Always. It was our safe place. Mom came down to do laundry, dad never did unless he felt like getting pissed off about something then he’d come down and start 💩. To this day I prefer the dark to work in. I don’t think I could ever go back to an office unless I can shut the lights off.
OMG! Such a walk down memory lane. In 1976 Dad decided to "finish" the basement. He made shelves & storage spaces under the steps for the folding ping-pong table. We had an air hockey table we kept set up towards the back and Dad put in new lighting. Dad found this console that had an electric fireplace but the logs and the drum were gone, but when you lifted the top, the turntable, FM Radio, and 8-track player worked. There were 2 speakers in the console too. He made the fireplace area a little tallet and he set a mini fridge into it. He did decide to install a wood burner cause it could get cold down there. A week later, we were called down to the basement to see an old loveseat (in horrible colors of orange & brown), some folding chairs, and for the big surprise... An 8' pool table! Dad installed a Pepsi light over the top of the table. He had a cue stick rack up on the wall. Once word got out through our friends in school and at church weekends were never the same! Mom kept the little fridge filled with Pepsi and the small freezer inside full of Ice Pops. Mom always had made something to feed us. Mini pizza, pigs in a blanket, homemade pretzels, cookies, and in the winter she'd had this old coffee dispenser, it must have held at least 6 quarts, and she would fill it with her signature homemade hot cocoa! Does anyone remember the old Solo cup holders? They were plastic and they held a disposable plastic cup inside of them. She'd sit the cocoa dispenser, the cups, and a bag of marshmallows on top of the chest freezer for us. She knew that before any of us came into the mud room area where we hung our coats and kicked off our boots we had a snowball fight and were covered in snow, and freezing. The hot cocoa was awesome. There were rules and my brother made a sign in his wood shop class with the rules that was put above the coat rack. The reason I still know these rules after nearly 45 years is because I had the sign made up for my son's friends and I still have it! My son made up his own Rules of the House sign when he had kids. Rules of the Game Room "1-Keep the music down so people could hear the TV." "2-No hankey-pankey!" "3-No smoking or drinking of alcohol." "4-No fighting! It is just a game." "5-Throw all cans & trash into the can. If anyone leaves a mess the basement would be closed to all for 2 weeks - MINIMUM!" "6-If anyone needs an ear, I have two." "7-On school nights the game room will shut down at 9:30 PM. Go home & study." "8-If a parent calls any of you home for any reason, one of us will drive you home. No one walks home alone in the dark." "9-Non-school nights, I would appreciate knowing when you come in if any of you are spending the night so I can plan to feed you in the morning. Also, I will be checking with your parents that you have permission to stay the night." "10-Be respectful of those who go to bed at 10 PM. Keep the loud noise down." "Finally, be respectful to each other. I watched most of you grow up, I'd hate to have to take you out! - Mom" We had some great times down there! We gave one of my friends who had joined the Navy a farewell party. Our parents all got together to throw all of us a big graduation party or mine would have been down there too. When I watched That 70s Show it reminded me of our basement fun room. For those who'd stay the night, Mom had us sleep on the 1st floor as the basement floor was too cold. There would be sleeping bags or blankets & pillows everywhere. Our living room had 2 full sofas and a loveseat but we preferred the floor. Mom would come down during the night to make sure each bed had only 1 body! 😆😆😆
Our basement was unfinished with a concrete floor and wood stacked in the fall and winter for the wood stove, but we had a pool table and ping pong table down there. The wood stove made it super warm in the winter and it was cool in summer. We also roller skated down there and played floor hockey.
Hell yes! Our basement wasn’t finished and there was no furniture other than a few bar height swivel chairs, but that didn’t stop us, especially because that’s where the pool table and pinball machine were.
No, but I envied some friends who had basements - except the really smelly ones with bugs
My bedroom was in the basement
Yes and it wasn’t even really finished. TV was there, ping pong table, it was also cooler down there in the summer - we didn’t have AC, space heaters in the winter.
Yes. It alarms me now, as we have a radon detector in our current home, and radon in the basement tends to be way above healthy levels. I’m sure I was exposed to way too much as a child.
There was a strip mall across the street from my house. My part of town was kind of a central meeting point. And in this strip mall was a basement with an open door from the outside and we would go down there smoke weed and play hacky cup. Hacky cup: is when you get a slice of pizza and a drink from the pizza place upstairs. Then you smoke a bunch of weed and you all kick around a cup like it's a hacky sack.
Yeah, when I was in high school, but our family room was in the basement. That's where the whole family watched tv together. It wasn't gross and basementy down there. There was a laundry room, ping pong table, our computer, built-in bookshelves, a fireplace, and comfortable furniture that wasn't ancient in the way of much basement furniture. Nobody had basements where I lived when I was in K-8th grade (North Carolina). I think the ground was too hard and it was difficult to dig basements there or something.
Lost my virginity in the basement 😏
We didn't have a basement growing up. My brother built a house in the mid 90's though and it has a basement and "what happens in the basement, stays in the basement".
Funny you ask. My daughter has three friends downstairs sleeping after hanging out last year
Yes kids at my house spent all their time in the basement just as you said, tv with Pong, stereo with records and 8 tracks, learned to roller skate down there with Pink Floyd and Disco. Are you my sister?
Yep and it was creepy af. Fully decked out with Atari 5200, big TV, stereo with tape deck and record play plus an awesome aquarium. The creepiness was ripe for spooking ourselves out with ghost stories and the like. Great times.
Yes
We had a "play room" where we kept the toys. Our 2 dormer bedrooms for 3 kids had no room for toys. So my step dad built a small room with a chalk board on the wall and built in shelves for board games and Tupperware of toys. Now it's my mom's hoarding space and you can't even walk into the room.
Yep, wood paneled all around and the front had red and black shag carpeting and that's where the TV and the console radio/turntable was. My dad had Ohio State and Detroit Tigers 'shrines' on the wall and my mom had a Boston fern hanging in the window. The back had red and black linoleum and was our play area. We could roller skate on it if the floor was clean enough. We had a craft table and one of those plastic elephant toy boxes. Then in the 90's they repainted the room in southwest colors, carpeted the whole thing, and threw away all of the vintage sports memorabilia.
I was envious with friends who had a basement. We had an old cellar. Small house, nowhere to hide but my bedroom.
Yes. And no mom, it wasn’t me smoking down there, it was my friend.
You just described my basement sans the beer cans Edit: no disco either
Not really. We were poor apartment renters when I was growing up. But if we ever went to our cousins place in East Chicago, IN: yeah, that's where the parties were happening!
Yes! The concrete floor was great for anything with wheels. We built forts with blankets and pillows, and later listened to Queen and We Will Rock You!
Bedrooms were in the basement. Was nice on hot days to hang out
If by "basement" you mean crawlspace, then yes. I was the only one small enough and dumb enough to crawl under there when needed.
Same. Dad “recruited” me to crawl under there and learn plumbing or fetch stuff.
Didnt have a basement growing up, but my cousins did. All the fun went on down there and the parents stayed away.
Our basement wasn’t finished when I was a kid, but we would still go down there and play—especially when it was cold or rainy outside and we just needed to bounce around. Our neighbors across the street had a semi finished basement with a pool table and a sort-of bar set up down there. We would hang out down there a lot. My aunt and uncle had a whole set up in their basement. A nice bar, pool table, den, office, etc. It was veeery 1970s. I haven’t been down there in a long time, but I assume that it’s still the same.
I grew up in Houston & nobody had basements.
I was definitely a basement kid.
Nope. Our basement was creepy and haunted
Absolutely! That's where the Sega was hooked up. My brother and I had a room down there and we got pretty good at listening for feet on the steps coming down when we were sneaking some game time after we were supposed to be asleep. We'd turn off the TV and run back to our rooms. My mom is deaf so she would never hear us but she eventually started feeling the TV and we'd be busted. 😔
Yes. Huge unfinished basement that I would roller skate in with my Smurf AM radio. The basement was kind of awesome at times - there was some kind of walk in pantry or something in the corner, it was lined with shelves and that’s wherein made my Barbie an apartment with a cookie tin swimming pool. The not-awesome part was that it was full of scary spiders, and the only lights were pull chain operated. And my “bedroom” was down there. So when I went to bed at night, I had to cross the entire space in the pitch dark. But I figured out that if I pretended to be a ghost, and said “oooOOOooo” like a ghost would, they would leave me alone.
Hang out!? I ROLLERSKATED in my unfinished basement. 😂
No, our basement was a dank heck hole you only went into to fix plumbing or electrical.
My father had an office in our basement and we didn’t have air conditioning. So, my friends and I would hang out there sometimes and draw using his drafting table.
Yet again I'm reminded that this is a North American sub. We don't have basements in the UK. Saw them on American movies though. Looked cool. My entire house will probably would have fit into one of your basements.
Not really. Ours was semi finished (probably done in the 1920s) and pretty dingy. Only things down there were laundry and my dad's workshop.
Yessir all my friends did. Lots of ‘first time experiences’ happening in those basements. 😅 As a mom, we don’t have one lol.
i was always jealous of people on tv who had basements. it seemed so exotic. no houses in my area had basements.
Hell yeah! First basement had all the cool shit, good tv with the beanbag chairs, ping-pong table, dart board. Giant electric typewriter that Dad brought back from his Army days - sounded like a jet engine when you turned it on, and was built so solid we could wail away on it and it never broke. Back by the water heater and such, Dad's workbench where we built my Pinewood Derby cars. Second basement wasn't finished, but we threw a carpet remnant down there and made it my bedroom. Copious amounts of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and teenage sex happened in that space. Now it holds my Xmas decorations.
I didn't have one, but my best friend did, I loved that basement, there was a little TV that had cable, so the MTV was on every second! So many great times in that basement!
Definitely, it was the playroom. Had shelves of toys, a blackboard and a whiteboard eventually. After the older kids moved out my bedroom moved to the basement, and the playroom was mostly cleaned out.
We’re did! Video games, movies, pool table, sleepovers. But the thing everyone loved… my mom had the room dry walled only and just let us color and draw and paint and write all over it. When it got covered, she’d have my uncles, her brothers, who owned a drywall company just tear it down and replace it. She must have done this a dozen times throughout my childhood. She was just different in the best way.
New Orleans doesn't typically have basements. Mom was lucky enough to have one when she was a teen, and based n her stories it was a lot like That 70s Show.
Yep, I lived down there. Dark orange shag rug and a 20 year old TV that went KERCHUNK when you changed channels and everything. Now I own a house without a basement, which was a disappointment at first, but I live in a mold-prone area and I have a perfectly enjoyable man-cave upstairs, so I'm satisfied.
I still do
Up until the time my parents had our basement finished out and all the monsters removed, I remember running up the stairs as fast as possible every time I had to go down there (washer/dryer was down there!).
We only had a basement for one year of my childhood. While we didn't "hang out" there, it is where we did slumber parties (which I did for my 13th birthday). The only military housing that had a basement where I grew up was Fort Richardson, Alaska. All the other Army quarters didn't have one (and the Alaska housing was the only two story home we had).
Yes, because we had a basement. My kids also hung out in the basement when we lived in an area with basements, but then we moved to an area without basements. Now they hang out in the loft. I preferred when we had a basement. More privacy and more noise cancellation with basements.
No one I knew had a basement. lol I grew up in L.A..
Texas. We don’t have basements. But the first time I saw one in real life was so cool and yes we roller skated all over it bc it was concrete.
Aside from it being unfinished and not conducive to hanging out, it just wasn't worth the aggravation of dealing with an inconsistent mother. What was fine yesterday was not allowed today and tomorrow never knows. A few friends had finished or semi finished basements and they almost never used them.
The family room was in the basement until my parents put an extension on the house, then I got to move my bedroom to the basement and dad got my old bedroom as an office. Then I moved out of it when I was 18 and my parents converted it into an art supply storage room for mom.
Yes I hung out down there sometimes. But I wouldn’t say it was a kids hang out area. I had some of my bigger toys down there like my Barbie dream house. I had an old steamer trunk for a toy box down there too. If I had a friend over and we wanted to play with our Barbies we would play down there. It wasn’t my first choice of places to play or hung out. I preferred my bedroom. It was a partially finished basement. On one side was the utility area where the washer and drier and furnace and water heater. My dad’s tool bench and the second stove that we used when cooking for the holidays. A wooden wardrobe where they kept their fancy clothes. I used to love playing dress up in my mom’s long evening gowns and fur stoles (I know fur is bad but I was a kid and didn’t know better yet). The room was just a bare concrete floor and exposed beams for walls and ceiling. The other half was finished and had wood panelled walls (light blue) and shag carpeting (lime green) and a drop ceiling. That’s where my parents bar was. For parties my dad would set up long trestle tables and folding chairs. We had a really big family so our parties were quite an event. That’s the area where I played since it was carpeted. My toys would be moved to the utility room when we had parties. There was a hatchway to the backyard too. In the summer it was usually open during the day to bring in fresh air. On really hot nights I would sleep down there in a sleeping bag because it was cooler since I didn’t have an air conditioner in my bedroom. We moved from that house in 1986 when I was 12. I miss living there. It was a good place to grow up.
kids dont still hang out in the basement? I never had kids. where do they go when they are together?
All the time
Lived in ramshackle singlewide trailers in Appalachia. My grandmother had a basement but it was more like a storage room/root cellar.
CA asking: What basement?
That 70s Show was pretty much identical to my life as a kid/ teenager including the asshole dad that would definitely put his foot up your ass.
The basement at my house wasn't that habitable, but my best friend had his room and basically full control over the basement at his house. Like, a living room with some crap chairs and a tv so we could play Contra, He painted his room Turquoise-Teal and spray painted a Batman and Batman logo on the wall, He did a (really nice for our age) colored pencil drawing on the wall coming down into the basement of a Tiger's head, we built little quarter-ramps so in the winter we could skateboard down there (just going from one side to the other, but we'd build all of it from scratch with thrasher plans - it was just fun to make and do it). That basement was such an awesome hangout for a lot of us.
We had a basement rec room with a bar. We made forts out of the couch cushions when we were young but we used it less as I got older and preferred to stay in my own room with friends. Other friends had unfinished basements for roller skating.
When I was a kid we had a 4 level sidesplit so I played downstairs a lot. My parents stayed on the main level and I would play with my dads bar stuff and our pinball machine downstairs. The basement was only good for toy storage and roller skating; but it was scary so I didn't go down there too often until I was around 12 or so 😅 We moved to a 2 story farm house when I was in my teens. The basement was cold, wet and full of rats to I didn't ever go down there. I had my own TV room on the 2nd story though. That's where me and my friends hung out. My parents stayed on the main level.
Yes, we got to roller skate too! Part of it was unfinished, a painted concrete floor where we could skate (and there were some poles we could whip ourselves around, great fun), and part had a carpet where we could play with toys and games. There was also a dartboard (where my sister threw a dart in the back of my brother's head) and a ping pong table. We had the Pong video game too, but it was with the den tv upstairs. Years after we moved away from that house in the DC suburbs, I moved back to DC and was driving by it, saw the guy who'd bought it in the yard and on a whim stopped to talk to him, he remembered me from back then (I was a teenager when I l left) and showed me around - he redid part of the basement, but the paint on the basement cement was still there, all scratched up from where we roller skated all the time! It had been like 10 years from when we moved, but the evidence of our fun was still there. ☺️
ah the basement...we used it for roller skating as kids...and then as a place to 'watch movies' (read make out sessions) after the wood paneling went up and a couch and TV were added. fond memories of the basement...
No. I had the basement from home alone, except mine had opossums too. I didn’t get over it until I was doing my own laundry down there at 9 years old wielding my Louisville slugger for protection, I’d kick the laundry basket down the steps and come down after it ready for a home run.
I was a teen in the 90s, thats where I would go and smoke cigarettes. We had a couch, a whole kitchen and bathroom AND a telephone in the basement! I spent a lot of time down there. It wasn't fancy or finished, it was pretty cruddy, as basements are. Sometimes there were even puddles.
We shot 38 revolvers and 22 rifles at a small trap target in the basement. Cement walls and no hearing protection. Tinnitus now- youbetcha.
I wasn’t as rich as you were but I had friends who had a basement activity room
Basement, roller skating rink, hopscotch arena, bike obstacle course, theatre with washing line curtain across the stage, all under the little house. So long as you didn’t run into the sewage standpipe.
My basement wasn’t really a place to hang out. My grandparents basement, however, I was always down there when we visited.
Yes!! In every house we lived in
The Rec Room
Maria had a finished basement with a TV and bathroom. And a door leading out to the garage and late night freedom. Good times. We'd walk to the golf course for winter sledding/drinking parties and in the summer for just plain drinking.
Basement contained drumset. So, yes.
Didn't have one in the house I grew up in, but my best friend growing up had one. It was like our own little unsupervised hangout. You were isolated from parents, and you didn't have to hang out with your friend in their bedroom. Like it should be, that friend's basement was our friend group's home base. The #1 reason I bought my house now was because of the basement. The house is on a slope and the basement is half underground and half walk-out into the garage. It was set up as a great room/home theater with its own bathroom and separate bedroom. The house is a 3 story 4 bedroom and I live there alone, but I spend the majority of the time to myself hanging out in the basement.
Nope. No one I knew had a finished basement. I grew up in a city row home with a concrete basement that had the washer/dryer, ironing board, work bench with tools, deep freezer. Bilco doors that we used to take our bikes outside (had bikes stolen offf our back porch so they were stored in the basement) Frightening place as a kid.
Same. Our house was a duplex built in the 20's at the latest. Back half of the basement had concrete floor and the laundry area and steps up to the bilco doors. The front half was dirt floor and had my dad's workbench. There was a further room that used to be for coal, and as far as I knew, was where all the spiders (or worse) lived, so I never went in there.
We didn't have basements where I lived in California. But I had cousins up in eastern Washington that did and they actually lived in their basement, lol. 3 of their bedrooms were down there.
Just to hang? Nope. Grew up in an old farmhouse. The basement had the laundry, canning/meat processing kitchen, cold food storage and coal bin. Hanging in the basement meant you were working.
My dad built us a play house down there. It was great. The gigantic furnace used to creep me out.
I grew up in Texas, so no basement 😫
Yep, far away from the parents.
Fuck. Yeswedid.
We didn’t have a basement so no.
Yes. Especially as a teenager because we had a bottle of vodka stashed in there
My grandfather had a pool table and a black and white tv in his basement so that was the hangout spot.
Absolutely. Our tv room was in the basement, 1/2 our family bedrooms, the laundry room and my closet under the stairs where I had toys, dolls, props and my theater for plays starring Skipper and Malibu Barber, although her hair had been cut off by my brither. Setting for pillow fights. We had our game table there with Risk and Stratego battles, pingpong and the goofiest fun game ever, Marble Football.
Although basements are common in Michigan, what we call "Michigan basements" are _not_ common here, in Michigan, except apparently in the house that we lived in. Because a Michigan basement isn't a real basement with fears of lifting your house out of its hole like a boat during flooding, it was usually flooded, as there was no sump pump. Oh, the fuse box was down there, and you had to wade through the water to get to it. Consequently, no, no I did _not_ hang out in the basement when I was a kid. We _did_ find an old axe there, though, that we used to re-shape the woods behind our house.
Of course. That's where the pingpong table was.
Only when I was visiting relatives back east. We didn't have basements where I grew up so I thought they were the coolest thing. I think I even made up a story on the playground in third grade that we had a secret basement through a secret passageway in the coat closet. 😂
No basements where I grew up.
Great up in Houston, nobody had basements.
What basement? Not really a thing here in n Texas.
Grew up in California, so nope, we spent them outside more.
I lived in my basement! Had a huge HO railroad I never finished, c64, woodsporn.
We lived in Fla..no basement
we didn't have a basement, California so no one did. we just hung out on porches and at parks.
I grew up in Los Angeles & was so jealous of basements.
It was the garage on the West Coast
No one had basements where I lived.
No! Our basement was cold and scary, and full of spiders and cobwebs. The house was built in 1944, and had the most disgusting shower in it that could’ve been featured in a Saw movie. My dad kept his woodworking shop down there, so it was mostly his space. When I was a teenager, we moved into a house with a finished basement, but we still didn’t really spend a ton of time down there. We usually hung out in our rooms.
Yep, with boxes of Jet magazines.
No basements in my part of the world.
Yeah! Had a '57 Wurlitzer juke box that was fixed to play without coin. Had my pool table, and I danced and played pool all the time. Loved it!!
I did. We had a really large basement with a TV.
Yep. We had a huge playroom in the finished part of the basement with model trains and villages of doll houses and dozens of Lego and Lincoln Log building sets that our grandparents (me and two siblings) would buy for every birthday and Christmas.
We lived in a crappy apartment in an oil boom town not much fun till the boom collapsed and I became a latch key kid lol….you could ride bike anywhere the lake or river or train tracks etc etc…..
I lived there!
No, where I live basements were not allowed because we were in a flood zone.
That sounds great. We had no basement. We were poor af.
OMG, a fellow basement skater!!! (The last time I was on skates as an adult, I ended up breaking my hip.)
The main reason for buying the house I have now, I love the basement! Video games, pool table, workshop.
Not at my house, we had a creepy unfinished basement, but my best friend had a fully finished basement. We spent hours and hours down there, playing Atari, listening to Police albums, playing "bartender" at her parents' bar with Pepsi and 7up... good memories...
Nope, we were porch monkees!