Man, I hated those things,
For people who wanted to conduct loud one way conversations in public spaces, but were afraid that the outside world wasn’t paying enough attention to them.
chirp
JA, I JUST GOT ON THE BUS
chirp
WE’RE ON MONUMENT DRIVE RIGHT NOW
chirp
SO HOW ARE YOU DOING?
chirp
I TOLD YOU, I"M ON THE BUS
Soviet consumer electronics - the original vapourware.
Even if you could afford one, there would have been a year-long waiting list for the opportunity to buy one.
Okay, so the original portable cassette players were bulky. Remember, if you wanted variety, you also had to lug around that mini-suitcase that held somewhere around 20 cassettes.
Listen, here in America we are rugged individualists who only listen to music ourselves! Hell, sharing music with a second headphone jack is practically stealing music, and robbing poor record companies of the money they deserve!
For comparison, here’s a Walkman from 1983. I remember this one very, very well since 1) I owned one, and 2) during my first attempt at purchasing it (here in SoCal; listed as being on sale), the salesman tried hard to bait and switch me to a more expensive Walkman. To put me off of buying the Walkman I wanted, the salesperson intentionally fumbled around with loading in the batt, cursing all the way. “What a piece of shit! You don’t want this. I’ll show you something better.” I made it clear that I wanted what I wanted. “Okay. It’s your funeral. We only take cash.” I then pointed to the American Express Card decal on the entrance glass door. “No. That’s wrong. We don’t take that credit card.” I walked out. Now, I’ve had to haggle with electronics vendors on Time Square, (if you’re up for it, maintain your wits, and stick by your guns, you can get a good deal on TS) but that SoCal guy was the absolute worst of all.
Honestly, if it wasn’t made by Sony, I would totally believe that ensuring one user per tape was the motivation for designing the Walkman with one port.
Miniature reel-to-reel recorder (about the size of an adult hand). I first saw this in the 1971 film, Klute.
Here’s another small r-t-r… made by an outfit called Nagra.
I was wondering what size batteries it would take. If someone told me 8 D batteries, I’d believe them.
I have a buddy that bought a Walkman from a guy on the street in Times Square. As soon as the exchange was made, the guy took off running. My buddy opened the Walkman box and found nothing but an old whiskey bottle. He was so embarrassed he said it took him several years before he could tell anyone the story.
Yikes! At least when I lived in NYC up to the very early 80s, Time Square’s brick & mortar electronics sellers were markedly less larcenous… but still undeniably larcenous. Buying a calculator there, the salesman got me a pretty good price. But when I asked about the calculator’s noticeably missing case and manual… “That will cost you more.” Earlier on, a more worldly school buddy with me that day warned me never to show my money before the final price was set. I showed the money. Hence the up in cost. My buddy was pissed at me! He handled the transaction at another business just a few doors away; I learned from the master.
Typically the way to get electronics and luxury goods in the Eastern Bloc was to buy it at a hard currency shop. Basically, the Communist governments needed hard cash to import stuff and pay debts to the outside world, and by running these shops they could get the hard currency that their citizens had. How did people get hard currency? Well, some of them had relatives in the West that would send them some cash, but mostly by exchanging local soft money with tourists at a better rate than the official one.
I dunno, that dual headphone port had me wanting…
Does not hold a candle to the “mini - cam” from the same era, though:
Back in the 1980s was in Toronto with a couple others on business, rubes from Hicksville more or less. One of us went into a well stocked electronics shop on Yonge Street, bought a nice, expensive BoomBox. Almost the moment he stepped out of the shop with his purchase a guy on the street did a grab and run. The “rube” found a nearby cop, who rolled his eyes and took him back to the store, told the shop owner to stop f*cking around and give the rube his money back 
(which he did)
Fun fact: very early Walkman models had headphone jacks labeled “Guys” and “Dolls”.
As bulky s early Walkmen were, they were still slimmer than this monster simply by the difference in orientation of the cassette.
Fun fact: jumping over the counter and demanding political asylum did not work.
(Punchline from a GDR joke about how stupid cops are.)
"Because photographing in Intershops was not allowed, there are few photographs of the inside of the stores. Most of those that do exist are from the Stasi archives. "
naturlich!
I don’t need pictures, I still have vivid memories.
(Maybe I should go through my old negatives, though.)
