Congratulations, you've won a free trip in my Delorean/TARDIS to any time, any place in history. You'll spend two weeks in the past, kickin' it with the locals. Where/when would you go?

Assume that you can speak the native language, are innoculated against whatever historical germs might be found, and can bring with you anything that would fit in a standard backpack. No cameras, though: time travel wrecks the lenses.

Might be a bit of a cliché, but either San Fran '68 or New York '81.

London 1649

Paris 1789

the courts of Elizabeth I and Louis Quatorze are high on my list

http://gb.fotolibra.com/images/previews/34461-triceratops-tyrannosaurus-rex-illustration.jpeg

wkiw

Might be a bit of a cliché, but either San Fran '68 or New York '81.

The party was over by '68, wasn't it? Why not a year or two earlier?

the courts of Elizabeth I and Louis Quatorze are high on my list

I think I started to feel a little guilty as a kid always dreaming about time travel when I realized I always wanted to go back and see what 99% of the ppl from that time could and would never see.

xxp

god not since i read some fucked up Aldiss story about Brontosaurus lice

honestly feel like most interesting periods of history would be horribly dangerous

Why not a year or two earlier?

Yeah, show up in '65 or '66, leave by August '67.

Alexandria Louisiana, circa late 1987

I would kick it with my older brother and get to know him better before he died.

Oh man...

sorry I shouldn't have done that, extreme maudlin moment

Yeah, but totally, totally understandable answer

i didn't even think of family. i would like to hang out with my grandfather when he was young, but it would be horrible to go back in time and find out that

a) your grandpa was a jerk
b) he didn't like you
c) your grandma was a slut or something

It's always Paris with me, isn't it? I'd love to have seen Paris in the Belle Epoque or Vienna.

Athens, the middle of the 5th Century BC.

I like Michael's choice too - London, late January 1649 - be around for the trial & execution.

Old, old London, too, pre-fire.

What a choice, but for me it would be the raging 20's. Champagne, coke, bright young things. Just seems a time of total hedonism. I would totally work the whole monacle and ladies in jodphers look to. Zing!

Don't you mean the roaring 20's? That indeed would have been the cat's pajamas.

Doh, yes, you get the gist.

I would love to hit up the court of Henry II in England, but my dream has always been to get a time machine and spend about 20 minutes in Medieval England. I don't think I'd survive 2 weeks.

I gather any interest in Boudicca/pre-Roman Britain is a red flag for white power nuts but I wd totally like to see how the Iceni were living and then pop into Roman Colchester to see if I liked that side of the deal any better, y'know?

Maybe Bath, Dorchester or Cirencester too, since I'm more familiar with those places in their modern form, though I don't know how far I could get in two weeks pre-combustion engine. Guessing that a jaunt to Anglesey to see the druids who get such an intriguing writeup from Tacitus would be right out. They probably wouldn't like a woman sightseeing anyway.

Or, 15 centuries later, pop in on whoever was writing the Voynich manuscript and say "oh hai, who are you and what is that thing anyway?"

Tough call because it would have been really shitty being a woman in many of the time periods I'd like to visit.

Will have a think.

New York 1977 comes to mind but that seems like a boring answer.

Tough call because it would have been really shitty being a woman in many of the time periods I'd like to visit.

I am having the same qualms re: being black

honest and boring answer wd be Hull in the late 50s/early 60s
other honest answer wd be silk road c. Tamurlane

Xpost Hanging with druids for a few weeks is a good call, kinda like a time travellers retreat.

Henry II's court when stillw/his wife and getting along with his sons would be fascinating.

Pre-Roman Britain would be cool, too.

Both would require language skills I don't have so while we're dreaming how about going back w/enough skills to decipher Etruscan?

Just don't visit Baghdad in February of 1258.

Yeah ENBB, p much I think it has never been as good as the present. Not rly interested in being who I am at any other time!

Probably Alexandria, between 100 to 200 AD. Scrounge through the library a lot and if no cameras means no scanners I'd like to at least be able to take some notes.

Ha, I was just about to suggest that the best use for being in Baghdad, February 1528, would be to save some books. But Alexandria too...

Now there's a thought: a supermarket sweep-style run-through just before various major library-destructions of history.

I might go for turn of the 16th/17th London, just so I can hang with Shakespeare, though I would be afraid of breaking Hamlet or finding out author is a cock.
Judaea or Galilee around the time of Jesus. Obvs I'd like to see him, but even if I didn't it'd be nice to get a sense of what's going on round the birth of xtianity.

self-correction: 1258 obv (xp again)

late Roman Republic

alternately: Baghdad during the reign of Haroun Al-Rashid

Crete around 1600 BC, I guess -- I've always wondered about lost civs and the Minoans in particular.

I'd be all into the big-city 20s as long as I had money and knew the cool kids. Same with 70s nyc les.

Wld be rad, what with the tardis translator action, to hang out w the psychrock music/art crowd in weirdo 70s Japan.

Wld also kick it in the jungles w the Amazonian warrior princesses.

totally depends whether we could choose our social status beforehand or not

Amazons first choice for everything obv but would require them to have actually existed unless this is more than just a time-traveling machine but also an inter-dimensional one. Which is fine. In which case, what she said.

the Amazons were meant to live somewhere out in the Ukraine or Russia iirc, the river name is coincidental or something?

I've seen a few giant Slavic goddesses around Brooklyn, I believe it.

to hang out w the psychrock music/art crowd in weirdo 70s Japan

Was just thinking this morning that I'd like to read some books about what life was like in 70s West Germany for all these rad bands to spring up

so 2 weeks living it instead + seeing good shows would be a good offer, plus I think that is about as far away as I could go in time and space and still be something approaching myself without sticking out like a sore thumb, if that needs to be a concern

xp Next can you find evidence that they really said "Great Hera!"?

"About 20% of Scythian-Sarmatian "warrior graves" on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle as if they were men, a phenomenon that probably inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons."

if they'd existed i don't think they'd've said "Great Hera!" cos they'd be barbarians but since they likely only existed as a greek myth they probably wd say that in greek people's heads

but since they likely only existed as a greek myth they probably wd say that in greek people's people-who-watched-Super Friends's heads

I always thought they were complimenting each others hairdos in an Amazonian accent.

- 1942 Singapore, with my Grandad during the fall. He died before I was born, never talked about the war with anyone in his family

Based on Christopher Isherwood's memoirs, I might like to hang around in Hollywood during the '40s and '50s.

Havana in the late '50s for the music/dancing provided that all i did during those 2 weeks is dance/eat/party

I'm drawn to ancient Greece, probably Periclean Athens, just to see what those dudes were like if you saw them in person, eating, drinking and talking smack.

Las Vegas, January 1969 and pick the Jets to win Super Bowl III at 20-1 odds or whatever it was. Hopefully we can take our winnings across the time-space continuum

Are you sure its not Biff McGill?

Sometime in the late 1980s, possibly 1987 or so. I'd like to boff every sexy pompadoured contrast collar-and-suspenders wearing yuppie.

For anyone who wants to do mid-60s LA...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLv4g_A1JP8

1905, Vienna — hanging with Schoenberg

Looking into the middle distance of Ned's Sunset strip video makes my eyes water and burn.

Finally thought of something. I'd go back to late 1982 and "rescue" all of the Marvel original art that was otherwise going to be destroyed in a flood in 1983. And while I'm there I'll buy up all that Cerebus original art that Dave Sim was selling for $50/page.

Always worth a repost with re: time travel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY&playnext=1&list=PLAB876262CE4CB2FD

are innoculated against whatever historical germs might be found

you would be more likely to kill others by spreading your future-germs around.