Some thoughts on the end of a good web site

One of the first times I saw Alex Darke online was back in 1997. We were both on the IRC #bearcave channel. It was late, and the mood on the channel was silly. For some reason that's become lost in the sands of time, some of us were doing a call-and-response sort of thing, calling out lyrics to songs we liked or were listening to. I did a few lines from Everclear's "Santa Monica", which was all over the radio at the time. To my surprise, Alex answered with the next few lines of the song. And I answered back, laughing. And so on. Like I said, the mood was silly. But fun.

Some three years after that game of IRC karaoke, how weird to see Alex invoke the same song again, on the occasion of Woof Watch's farewell:

With my big black boots and an old suitcase
I do believe I'll find myself a new place

Running a web site as a public service - and not prostituting yourself to cover the costs - is a far more difficult enterprise than one might think. There's ISP bills, hate-mail, indifference from the part of the community doesn't care, indifference from everybody else who thinks your site is okay but takes it for granted, and -- most difficult of all -- the time it takes away from the rest of your life. (Yes, web geeks do have lives. Even if those lives consist of Linux tinkering and watching old reruns of `Babylon 5'.) If I've learned anything in my tenure here at Resources for Bears, it's that you've got to be having fun while working on your web site. Otherwise it becomes yet another burden that you carry. As if we don't have enough of those already...

I was a certified Woof Watch addict back in '96 and '97. I spent most of that time lurking in the shadows of this big forest called the Internet, ears pricked, just listening and looking. Observing. Making sense of things. Resources for Bears, Bear Roulette and Woof Watch were my big three. I visited those web sites very often. The first two gave me glimpses into the lives, words, opinions, and sometimes even the souls of these men known as `bears', a term I was only beginning to comprehend.

WoofWatch did some of same things, but its specialty was pictures of these bear men. Oh, those wonderful pictures. <grin> Easy and quick to navigate, no fees to pay, no annoying banners blinking away at me ad nauseum, with sly running commentary from Kub that would make me smile and chuckle. Alex may find it embarrassing, but there's a reason that his trademark `woofdah!' entered into the collective bear subconscious. Like WoofWatch itself, it was exuberant, delicious and playful. Living in a rural area at the time, this was quite an exotic thing to me, almost like a window on another universe. WoofWatch was part entertainment, part sustenance for the soul, and all mouth-watering eye candy.

But time marches on. People and priorities change. Bear Roulette disappeared some time ago. And I admit that I didn't visit WoofWatch often in recent months. The RfB takes enough of my time as it is, and I can relate to some of the pressures Alex describes in his farewell.

It all comes back to having fun. And Alex says it's not fun anymore. So, exeunt one of my favorite bear sites, a fixture from my formative days in this loose collection of guys who call themselves `bears'.

Thanks for the memories Alex.
-Chris

Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die...

Posted: 8/6/2000

Back to Bear News

Text and images are Copyright © 1994-2010 by Resources for Bears
and their respective owners. All rights reserved.