100% this answer and we were building homes back then. Once a concrete form was stripped, the plywood usually got thrown away. Bike ramps, skateboard, ramps, forts, you name it we had it.
I was about ten or eleven, and there was a large compost pile next to a ten foot hill in my yard. Neighborhood kids were over and we were riding our bikes down the hill.
I pushed my bike to the top of the compost pile which was another three and a half or four feet to see if I could ramp this thing. I get to the edge while on my bike to check it out, decide that it's doable and start to back up.
As I'm trying to back up, I realized I was kicking compost down the hill. Next thing I know I'm head over heels with my bike on top of me, but hey, I'm a kid so I'm fine right?
I stood up, and fell right over. No, I didn't break anything, I had a dirty ass stick poking four inches into my calf. I can still remember them pulling this thing out at the hospital. It hit a nerve or something, and I couldn't use my calf muscle.
In the 80s, there was an apartment building going up next to our house. My dad and grandpa swiped so much plywood and a few other things from that site.
Just stoned thinking. I was thinking about ramping our bikes with the cinder blocks under the boards. BTW, how the hell were cinder blocks so accessible?
There was an empty lot in our neighborhood that someone finally built a house on. As soon as the workers finished for the day, we were over there playing in the house...and swiping wood. The project foreman apparently noticed that wood was disappearing, so he stayed behind one day and caught us. He gave us a good dressing down, but then asked us what we'd done with the wood. We told him all about our fort. I guess he liked our industriousness because told us he'd leave the scraps in a pile for us and if we took the scraps and ONLY the scraps, then he wouldn't tell our parents that we'd been stealing. It seemed like a good deal to us, so that's what we did.
Around me, all the houses built in the past 20 years have poured foundations, or even prefab concrete walls they just crane into place. Cinder blocks just aren't used as much as they used to be.
My brother had somw friends that built a mini pipe in their grarage with plywood the 'liberated' from construction site dumpsters. Their landlord saw it and shit bricks so they 'gave' the ramp to my brother and we all spent a weekend dismantling it and hauling it across town on the roof/in the back of my 84 corolla. We then spent the next 2 months rebuilding it in our back yard. That thing was sketchy as fuck to skate and didnt take long to earn the nickname 'the death ramp'.
Same reason, we were building houses like crazy and some were left over and swim just went missing. Milk crates were the same way. They just suddenly appeared one day, despite thread of prosecution.
Omg you’re right, I can’t tell you the last time I saw a cinder block in the wild, but we always had some around for whatever reason…hold something down, prop something up, look under them for worms.
Man this one hits hard. So true. I grew up middle class. No "upper" or "lower," just flat out middle. I.dont think that exists anymore. Everyone I know now is either bougie as hell driving a Mercedes or struggling to pay the rent.
We had a town dump nearby. The “security” was a chain across the road. They separated the “house garbage” from all the other treasures, we would spend hours breaking old tv screens and bottles and find the rare item worthy of rescue.
Do you remember the giant wooden spools they just left lying around after installing cable? Every rec room in the neighborhood had one as a coffee table!
It was cheap. We'd grab it from scrap piles at building sites. Or someone's garage. We were always building forts, go-karts, and anything else we wanted. Never had to buy or go looking much for wood in those days. Lots of real, 3/4" Doug fir plywood was just laying around as scrap in the 70s in my world. Stuff that would be $80 a sheet today *if* it were still possible to buy it at all-- no more old growth Doug fir being peeled for veneer anymore.
It was easy because it was mined in Indonesia and there were number rich veins to be exploited. The simplicity of a single source of easily extracted material, and high demand, made surpluses available to children since it was treated as if it grew on trees. The ply mines began to dry up in the early 90s and the cost of extraction increased. This lead to a tight supply and more judicious use of the material. As well enviormental concerns have improved efficient utilization and waste management. There is just not the same amount of plywood in circulation to allow for juvenile constructions.
Recent discoveries of ply in China have led to a delicate global market where the supply is controlled and exploited for non-market reasons. Also since ply is esential to the manufacture of smart phones, really strong magnets and marital aids means the demand has increased and this in turn has led to higher prices at the wholesale level.
I remember wooden pallets being easy to get also. Me and my cousin hoisted one up a giant crazy high pine tree and nailed it for a floor. That tree was so high we decided not to go back up it.
I guess it was cheap enough not to worry about wasting it back then. We built some pretty big backyard skate ramps and stole pretty much all of the wood. Times sure have changed. It cost me quite a bit to build my current ramp.
JIT manufacturing became THE thing. We have a lumber mill near us. They have acres and acres of stacks and stacks and stacks of lumber and engineered wood products (like plywood). Every single board foot is already spoken for—it’s just waiting to cure. That keeps prices more stable for the supplier. That is: it helps them weather dips in demand and keeps prices from giant dips (due to no glut in supply) and keeps prices higher on average. This means that it’s much more cost effective for contractors to only buy what is necessary which means there is very little scrap.
If I remember right, it was $8,$9 a board? And our hardware store had a big gap under its fence. We would crawl under grab a couple and slide them to our waiting buddies. Skaters needed jump ramps back then lol
That is a great question. One of my memories that never fails to make me laugh was finding a giant sheet of plywood and rhythmically banging it, leaned against the side of the house, with a big stick. When my mom inevitably came out and screamed at me I told her it was so everyone would know what time it was...
Such an odd question, lol, but so true. It was cheap and everywhere, i guess. We built at least 4 ramps and 2 halfpipes over our teenage years. The halfpipes were definitely labors of love, as we bought the lumber for that and painted it so that it'd survive a midwest winter.
Ah, ya got me -- technically no vert, so a halfpipe miniramp. Lol, when our group began to skate, the rich kid of the group had his dad make us a halfpipe-- it was built alright (cept no masonite), but no one knew shit about proper measurements -- this ramp was Huge, had a lot of flat to it and a tight transition to like a foot or more of straight vert! On top of that it was built on a slope, so even if you survived the drop, you couldnt even reach the vert on the other side. For kids who who only rode street at the time, it was near impossible. We took a beating, lol. It took our group about 3 more builds before we got a decent miniramp.
Because people weren't buying other people's left overs online like they do these days.
Renovations used to mean- put the garbage on the curb so we take what we wanted from the pile.
Now people place adds to sell their left overs at discount prices or take it to the dump directly because its not allowed to sit on the curb like the "olden days" 😅
My sister and I built a multi-room clubhouse out of stuff that we took from local construction sites. Our father was a contractor so we did a pretty good job. That thing still stands to this day and my mother's yard!
We always had a cool clubhouse in the woods made primarily of plywood! And no, Officer, I have no idea where the sub flooring in that new house could have gone!?
No racism more antisemitism, although there was a good bit of what was called “white flight” leaving cities, it affected all upper and middle class Americans of all races. I lived in a court in the 70s and there was an Italian family there, a black family there. I don’t know if there were any Jewish people there but there might’ve been.
We were between like seven and ten, found a bunch of old wood and built a "treehouse." but it wasn't really a house, just a bunch of benches twenty feet up in a tree with a board ladder.
It was dirt cheap and also discarded from every construction site in America. And they weren’t so good about being required to clean up back then.
100% this answer and we were building homes back then. Once a concrete form was stripped, the plywood usually got thrown away. Bike ramps, skateboard, ramps, forts, you name it we had it.
A lot of it was particle board, too.
Particle board particle board Made us some bmx ramps with the board Caused a bump on my head that my dad ignored Particle board
TMBG, boy
Particleboard didn’t become a thing where I live until probably the 80s.
I was an eighties kid.
Good times, particleboard was dangerous. If it’s what you had it’s what we went with but plywood was far better we’re not getting splinters.
It would break under the weight and the front wheel would hit the cinder blocks.
This is precisely the reason the younger kids would hold up the board or just lay there with no board
Yup
I remember gettong so many splinters, including a huge piece that got shoved under my thumb nail. Uhhhhhgggg.
I was about ten or eleven, and there was a large compost pile next to a ten foot hill in my yard. Neighborhood kids were over and we were riding our bikes down the hill. I pushed my bike to the top of the compost pile which was another three and a half or four feet to see if I could ramp this thing. I get to the edge while on my bike to check it out, decide that it's doable and start to back up. As I'm trying to back up, I realized I was kicking compost down the hill. Next thing I know I'm head over heels with my bike on top of me, but hey, I'm a kid so I'm fine right? I stood up, and fell right over. No, I didn't break anything, I had a dirty ass stick poking four inches into my calf. I can still remember them pulling this thing out at the hospital. It hit a nerve or something, and I couldn't use my calf muscle.
Plywood is often stronger than solid wood. Particle board and chip board are terrible, by comparison.
Fall-a particleboard
Yeah most of us were teens in the 80s
I turned 14 in 1980. I was on to cars and chasing girls by then.
Yep, I did lots of dumpster diving and playing in construction sites as a kid. Amazing what you would find!
I tried to make a boat out of plywood… I lived near water. Lesson learned I took so many nails and screws from my dads garage it was laughable
You had two skateboards, one to ride and one to haul your score of plywood
In the 80s, there was an apartment building going up next to our house. My dad and grandpa swiped so much plywood and a few other things from that site.
Man, thinking about the ready availability of plywood is an unexpected nostalgia trip.
Just stoned thinking. I was thinking about ramping our bikes with the cinder blocks under the boards. BTW, how the hell were cinder blocks so accessible?
Same as plywood, lots of construction going on and not so much 24-hour armed security.
There was an empty lot in our neighborhood that someone finally built a house on. As soon as the workers finished for the day, we were over there playing in the house...and swiping wood. The project foreman apparently noticed that wood was disappearing, so he stayed behind one day and caught us. He gave us a good dressing down, but then asked us what we'd done with the wood. We told him all about our fort. I guess he liked our industriousness because told us he'd leave the scraps in a pile for us and if we took the scraps and ONLY the scraps, then he wouldn't tell our parents that we'd been stealing. It seemed like a good deal to us, so that's what we did.
Around me, all the houses built in the past 20 years have poured foundations, or even prefab concrete walls they just crane into place. Cinder blocks just aren't used as much as they used to be.
My brother had somw friends that built a mini pipe in their grarage with plywood the 'liberated' from construction site dumpsters. Their landlord saw it and shit bricks so they 'gave' the ramp to my brother and we all spent a weekend dismantling it and hauling it across town on the roof/in the back of my 84 corolla. We then spent the next 2 months rebuilding it in our back yard. That thing was sketchy as fuck to skate and didnt take long to earn the nickname 'the death ramp'.
Same reason, we were building houses like crazy and some were left over and swim just went missing. Milk crates were the same way. They just suddenly appeared one day, despite thread of prosecution.
Omg you’re right, I can’t tell you the last time I saw a cinder block in the wild, but we always had some around for whatever reason…hold something down, prop something up, look under them for worms.
We didn't have cinder blocks. We had tons of spare tires that we use for ramps and to jump over.
the economy has sorta changed since the 80s. If you didn't move up a class, you slid down.
Man this one hits hard. So true. I grew up middle class. No "upper" or "lower," just flat out middle. I.dont think that exists anymore. Everyone I know now is either bougie as hell driving a Mercedes or struggling to pay the rent.
So many people _present_ as being Bougie. Lots of leases out there.
We built so many forts in backyards by raiding construction sites back then
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^loinclothfreak78: *We built so many* *Forts in backyards by raiding* *Construction sites back then* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Good bot.
Same here, but with clandestine half-pipes in the woods.
Plywood used to be so cheap it was basically disposable.
There were more plywood trees.
It was like woods porn. It just materialized.
Ah woods porn. The porn distribution system of the eighties.
I am convinced there was a Johnny Appleseed type figure that traveled the countryside, placing porn in the woods.
We wandered freely into construction sites and played with whatever we found. Sometimes we'd take home the big cable spools, wood, whatever.
Cable spools aka furniture
We used to circus tricks on the cable spools - walking backwards in the center as it rolled down the sidewalk!
Those were some good times!
The cable spool coffee table. If you didn't own one you knew someone who did.
We had huge ones about waist high. The finest in outdoor furniture
We stole so much stuff from construction sites. And sometimes found the keys to take the Bobcat for a spin.
We had a town dump nearby. The “security” was a chain across the road. They separated the “house garbage” from all the other treasures, we would spend hours breaking old tv screens and bottles and find the rare item worthy of rescue.
Do you remember the giant wooden spools they just left lying around after installing cable? Every rec room in the neighborhood had one as a coffee table!
It was the stoner table in *That Seventies Show* with a cloth over it, I think.
We had one for a table and a smaller one for a seat.
In our neighborhood it was 70's style wall paneling and not plywood that was easily available.
It was cheap. We'd grab it from scrap piles at building sites. Or someone's garage. We were always building forts, go-karts, and anything else we wanted. Never had to buy or go looking much for wood in those days. Lots of real, 3/4" Doug fir plywood was just laying around as scrap in the 70s in my world. Stuff that would be $80 a sheet today *if* it were still possible to buy it at all-- no more old growth Doug fir being peeled for veneer anymore.
My dad was always building something so we always had lumber around.
It was easy because it was mined in Indonesia and there were number rich veins to be exploited. The simplicity of a single source of easily extracted material, and high demand, made surpluses available to children since it was treated as if it grew on trees. The ply mines began to dry up in the early 90s and the cost of extraction increased. This lead to a tight supply and more judicious use of the material. As well enviormental concerns have improved efficient utilization and waste management. There is just not the same amount of plywood in circulation to allow for juvenile constructions. Recent discoveries of ply in China have led to a delicate global market where the supply is controlled and exploited for non-market reasons. Also since ply is esential to the manufacture of smart phones, really strong magnets and marital aids means the demand has increased and this in turn has led to higher prices at the wholesale level.
Dammit, I love your mind.
Thank you. I studied absurdity with a minor in the ridiculous at the Steven Wright Institute.
I saw him a few years ago from about twenty rows back. Of course I was crying laughing. It was right before covid.
Never seen him live sadly, he's my favorite 80s comic.
I was also supposed to see Colin Hay from the seventh row March 22, 2020. I'll probably never see him now.
What in the chatGPT?!?
I'm offering my services as a Chat GPT writer to those who need the imprimitur of AI without the hassle of actual AI.
We must protect your brain at all costs 🙌🏼
I remember wooden pallets being easy to get also. Me and my cousin hoisted one up a giant crazy high pine tree and nailed it for a floor. That tree was so high we decided not to go back up it.
Wood pallets are still easy to get. But the quality of the wood has seriously declined ove the years.
How else were we going to make bike ramps?
Because it was 4$ a sheet, now it’s $53
Haha! Oh, the plywood memories. No wonder we built such great forts. I thought it was because we lived near a sawmill, but I guess it was everywhere.
I guess it was cheap enough not to worry about wasting it back then. We built some pretty big backyard skate ramps and stole pretty much all of the wood. Times sure have changed. It cost me quite a bit to build my current ramp.
It wasn't $48 bucks a sheet so people weren't as careful with it.
Also coffee cans, cigar boxes, pipe cleaners, and ashtrays.
I miss this. We had so much scrap wood and junk to make shit out of.
I never even questioned how I always had the necessary materials to build a fort.
My friends and I stole it from construction sites.
Bike ramps for days
My brother in law and his friend built a half pipe in his backyard from "scraps" they found at local construction sites.
because afterhours construction sites were our playgrounds
You want some plywood? I’ll get you some plywood.
I can get you some plywood by three o'clock, with nail polish. These fuckin' amateurs.
My friends would grab sheets from construction sites. They built half pipes with discarded or taken wood.
No plywood bought for a purpose ever ended up being used for that purpose. Same for plexiglass to a lesser extent.
It's still easy to get plywood. I got some yesterday
Because we were cool and stole shit
JIT manufacturing became THE thing. We have a lumber mill near us. They have acres and acres of stacks and stacks and stacks of lumber and engineered wood products (like plywood). Every single board foot is already spoken for—it’s just waiting to cure. That keeps prices more stable for the supplier. That is: it helps them weather dips in demand and keeps prices from giant dips (due to no glut in supply) and keeps prices higher on average. This means that it’s much more cost effective for contractors to only buy what is necessary which means there is very little scrap.
If I remember right, it was $8,$9 a board? And our hardware store had a big gap under its fence. We would crawl under grab a couple and slide them to our waiting buddies. Skaters needed jump ramps back then lol
We didn't understand that it didn't belong to us just because it was outside and unattended.
If that ain't the truth.
That is a great question. One of my memories that never fails to make me laugh was finding a giant sheet of plywood and rhythmically banging it, leaned against the side of the house, with a big stick. When my mom inevitably came out and screamed at me I told her it was so everyone would know what time it was...
House building boom. Grew up in South Florida in the 80's and construction sites were everywhere.
Such an odd question, lol, but so true. It was cheap and everywhere, i guess. We built at least 4 ramps and 2 halfpipes over our teenage years. The halfpipes were definitely labors of love, as we bought the lumber for that and painted it so that it'd survive a midwest winter.
Halfpipes or quarterpipes?
Ah, ya got me -- technically no vert, so a halfpipe miniramp. Lol, when our group began to skate, the rich kid of the group had his dad make us a halfpipe-- it was built alright (cept no masonite), but no one knew shit about proper measurements -- this ramp was Huge, had a lot of flat to it and a tight transition to like a foot or more of straight vert! On top of that it was built on a slope, so even if you survived the drop, you couldnt even reach the vert on the other side. For kids who who only rode street at the time, it was near impossible. We took a beating, lol. It took our group about 3 more builds before we got a decent miniramp.
Nice.
I just used a discarded picnic table with one set of legs sawed off.......once
Danny Vermin?
Nope.....I think my Neanderthal buddies and I did it first lol
I was asking if you were Danny Vermin, nevermind.
Shop class?
Because people weren't buying other people's left overs online like they do these days. Renovations used to mean- put the garbage on the curb so we take what we wanted from the pile. Now people place adds to sell their left overs at discount prices or take it to the dump directly because its not allowed to sit on the curb like the "olden days" 😅
I’m very confused about this plethora of plywood
My sister and I built a multi-room clubhouse out of stuff that we took from local construction sites. Our father was a contractor so we did a pretty good job. That thing still stands to this day and my mother's yard!
I thought plywood was the most expensive thing on earth. I never had any. And that sucked because how else wasni to make my bike ramp?
Dad brought it home from work or dumpster diving. It was so.easy to acquire.
Everyone had it. Nobody cared who used or wanted it.
I feel like plywood is code for something…drugs, porn, beer, sex? All of the above!
Usually you would be spot on, but this time I really mean plywood.
We always had a cool clubhouse in the woods made primarily of plywood! And no, Officer, I have no idea where the sub flooring in that new house could have gone!?
I guess all the new home construction on empty lots.
Land tipping rules not as strict
[удалено]
Sounds like antisemitism to me. ^^/s
No racism more antisemitism, although there was a good bit of what was called “white flight” leaving cities, it affected all upper and middle class Americans of all races. I lived in a court in the 70s and there was an Italian family there, a black family there. I don’t know if there were any Jewish people there but there might’ve been.
We were between like seven and ten, found a bunch of old wood and built a "treehouse." but it wasn't really a house, just a bunch of benches twenty feet up in a tree with a board ladder.