I’ll try think of things from earlier, but towards the latter years The National thread was brilliant. I think Les had a brilliant summary of all the topics covered in it in his signature. I think Jimmy Savill came up quite a bit in that thread and it really just sort of became the pointless topics 2.0 thread.
Also @anonymity definitely agree with you remarking on the London goes boom one. That was strangely quite a unifying moment as that really pre-dated all the twitter pseudo-journalistic crap we live with now. So, aside from whatever the BBC report was at the time, we were just relying on what some forumers were describing was occurring.
Attitudes towards events seem to have changed in recent years. Not to be all ‘kids these days’ but it seems there’s more of a “what’s in it for me?” attitude to them from younger skaters. Like when I was growing up the fact that a bunch of people were going to be in the same place together was the only reason I needed to go to a skate event. That community aspect doesn’t seem very present any more, and I think a lot of people have the mindset of if they can’t enter, can’t win anything etc then what’s the point, they can just see some clips from it on Instagram. The last time I organised an event, the guy I was doing it with was so into the idea of setting up a livestream for it. I tried explaining that that completely defeats the point of grassroots events, but he didn’t seem to get it.
Same with demos, the last few I’ve been to it was like the locals were trying to do a demo for the pros. The Bones team came down here a few years ago and just fucked off street skating after 10 minutes because they could barely get a go in on the park.
Yes @BDF, long time no smell. Good to read you’re doing well.
Knight’s Gym was another classic - a forum regular legitimately asked everybody to help out with branding/naming his mate’s new gym, with hilarious consequences.
Bear WAS FUCKING RAD AND ALWAYS POSTED IN CAPS.
Around the time that went down, I was in London for a day filming a few random clips with Mike O Shea and Jak Patryga. Jak asked us if we’d heard of the Sidewalk forum, and if we knew about the gully tonks internet beef, to which we both sheepishly said that yeah, we’d heard of it and occasionally read it. I was a mod, 8000 posts in at that stage, and balls deep in denial, ha. He thought it was hilarious how his mate was winding up all the online nerds. That’s sick to hear about Bumwin and how his life has progressed.
I always loved how many people in real life claimed to never check it out, but would always know everything there was to know about it, the shenanigans and the gossip.
To be honest though, I always loved meeting people from the forum and being introduced to them as X or Y off the forum, either at a skatepark, event or premiere and you’d just give them that nod. And they knew. And I knew. And it was cool, conversation would flow and everything was rad.
Nah, it was just one load, if that makes it any better. The Not Stoked thread on the old forum was where I most felt comfortable coming clean about it, I told you lot before I even told my girlfriend (now wife)!
I met him at a Bones Bolton all-nighter where we got very stoned and drunk and slept on top of the vert ramp with kids pouring litter on us. Good times, do those sort of events still go on?
Worst/best for me was when I got dobbed in for hammering the forum by this cunt that started in my old job who I didn’t realise could see my screen.
My boss took my hard drive in to be analysed by his mate who worked in computer forensics for the police.
He told me not to come into work one day and kept saying ‘you know why’. I was like wtf I don’t know what your on about.
He made me come in halfway through a morning and he was out when I got there and I looked down at his emails which every subject was my name with stuff like tower_analysis and stuff in it.
When he came in he was like ‘right tell me straight now have you got another job’. I said no obviously and then he was like ‘don’t fucking lie to me I know you have a job you’ve been doing from here.’
I was genuinely confused and kept saying wtf are you talking about and that’s when he asked me ‘oh yeah. What’s all this about you being a moderator of this skateboarding website then’.
It’s the only bit of it I found funny.
Anyway I got sacked but he was threatening to charge me with fraud or something for using his work property and stuff to do another job.
That reminds me. When I was first married, had quit my job and was drinking a lot, I briefly ended up trying to work in a call centre. Possibly around 2008.
You were allowed on the internet, or at least you could get on the internet and nobody had said not to, so everybody did. Especially me, on the Sidewalk forum. A lot. Not as good as Les’s story, but somehow they found out I’d been on this same site over and over, and I guess because it wasn’t either a celebrity gossip site or a gambling site, it stood out as being me and because they didn’t like me they made an example of me and the whole floor got banned from the internet. Nobody even seemed to care, they weren’t exactly big readers anyway, that lot, and I stopped going in after that.
Stayed at home, took the house phone off the hook and did fuck all for a few great days. Eventually put the phone back on and honestly about ten minutes later it rang, and it was them telling me I had to go in so they could sack me. Which was ideal because I was able to start claiming JSA that very day. After a few pints in the Argyle Street Wetherspoon. Went off and did some made-up job after that, which lasted 12 years anyway. Until just there, in fact.
Pretty sure it was blocked on a few of the ‘shop’ computers at SS20.
Then I graduated to upstairs with own Mac working on the website. Then became occasional bollocking of “ffs Ned get off the forum”, I used to hook a few of the homies on N26 up with some deals so I think I got let off the hook a bit on there.
I started in 2002 on the forum. I was working in an office 3-4 days a week.
As I mentioned earlier, my job took about an hour a week.
I actually asked for a pay rise and they denied me as they reckoned they weren’t making enough money - which I knew was bollocks - so I said “Well, instead of paying me more, can you just pay me the same but I’ll come in for 3 days instead of 4” and in one of the most mental moments I’ve ever witnessed, the boss just said “Yeah, sure”.
There were only two of us in the office most of the time and neither could see each others screens - however, I had some software @Spanky used (RealVNC, maybe?) for screensharing other peoples machines to fix issues. I used that there…but weirdly, it never asked “X is trying to view your screen” so at anytime I could see what this guy was up to as I was sure he had fuck all to do all day.
Turns out he was just on Limewire/Kazaa/Bearshare/whatever constantly. Porn and music.
I began rinsing the forum. Left the job due to utter boredom in the end.
