Isn't "very special time and place for community, energy and excitement" a function of your age, more than anything else?

Everybody experiences their special unique unrepeatable time and place. It doesn't matter which decade they lived, or where. For me, it was the early 90s in post-communist Czechoslovakia. Also, "hard to understand if you weren't there".

Free pizza and beer might not hold the same sway they did 10 years ago. You cannot step into the same river twice, etc.