They, like surfers now, needed wheels that were at once cheap and practical.
Berberechos are small clams, rather stinky — sorry, there's no better word — and once cheap.
Batteries are imported through official channels or smuggled in to satisfy a growing demand for lead, once cheap and readily available but now in short global supply.
Once cheap meals felt stuck in a darker era — think equal parts cabbage and secondhand smoke — but now moderate and inexpensive restaurants often offer excellent food.
"Made in Japan" gadgets, once cheap and flaky, ended up as world leaders in quality, humiliating America's electronics industry along the way.
Where once cheap space was plentiful in the run-down city centre (Bold Street is an unusual enclave of independent businesses), Liverpool is changing.
But space downtown, once cheap because of then-high vacancy rates, has become more expensive as the vacancies have been filled.
For example, doing clinical trials on illiterate subjects in poor countries, which was once cheap and fast but ethically dubious, has become time-consuming and expensive as ethical standards have improved.
As for economic worries, inflows of money from Ukraine and the Gulf are helping to plug the current-account deficit and Turkey's energy bill should decline once cheap Iraqi Kurdish oil comes on stream.
For all her sensitivity to questions of inequality, she also believed that, once "cheap electric power" is "at every village door," the "emancipation of the craftsman and the unchaining of art" would naturally follow.
