The 1990s

As grown up as I felt at nine, whenever my parents let me walk to school, the corner store or Prospect Park with friends, I’d have been lying through my teeth if I denied sometimes feeling afraid — even in the little slice of Brooklyn I called home. But it wasn’t the New York Police Department or endemic racism that made me anxious. In the 1990s, getting mugged or beaten up in my own neighborhood always felt like more than a remote possibility. That sense of wariness was dull and could easily be forgotten if I was distracted. But it was always there, just under the surface. That anxiety disappeared when we moved to a mostly white town in suburban Long Island. At school, no one looked like me.

Everyone is bullish on natural gas, but I think America’s most inexhaustible resource might be 1990s nostalgia. Every time it seems our BuzzFeed badlands have run dry, another Friends reunion or reassessment of Francis Fukuyama comes gushing through the soil. So it is that the most hyped series on TV right now is American Crime Story, dedicated this season to Ryan Murphy’s telling of the Clinton impeachment. Legends of the Hidden Temple, perhaps the most beloved children’s show from the Nineties (and that’s saying something), is being remade for adults. Even the recent death of comedian Norm Macdonald elicited callbacks to the days of cynical wiseasses and O.J. Simpson cracks. What is it about the Nineties that remains stuck in America’s craw?