Just got in from a rainy walk and its past midnight, so its officially our seventh birthday - the Mboards went live on April 1, 2001.

For those of you who came along later, I thought I'd share a bit of history and roots.

The Motherboards were started because the NYC club world of the Nineties was unravelling fast, and we wanted to preserve those relationships and that aesthetic. We envisioned a small but worldwide audience, and that is how we stayed for a while.

A few events early on were to change both NYC and the boards - the first of course being 9/11.
With phone lines in lower Manhattan jammed for up to a week, our server (located near Seattle) never went down, and many expats joined us that first awful week for news. Some have never left.

The next big jump (and one that continues to affect us) was a change in our software in early 2004 that permitted public forums to be spidered by Google. With the increased traffic came many, many newbies - most of them sympathetic - and more connections from nightlife folk scattered all over the world. Our little, insular community was now an actual destination online.

The tone of the Mboards grew out of eight years spent on pioneering VCs like New York's echonyc and San Francisco's The Well. Both of these communities influenced the Mboards, and some of their members became some of our first. We wouldn't "own our own words" or be "sending beams" without The Well (nor would we have Ulysses as a Mod!)

If anyone had told me in that first difficult year of learning the software, choosing a host and paying the at times exorbitant bill that we would not just be around seven years later, but be thriving, I wouldn't have thought it possible.

As always, deepest thanks to our moderators past and present, our Board Members who help so much with that server bill, our advertisers and frequent posters. Your support has meant the world to us.

Just for fun, I attach a map of traffic in the past two months, from 127 countries! A map is really fitting, because our "long, strange trip" continues.

Thank you and sending oodles of Motherlove, wherever you're reading this..

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Chi Chi,

When we owned (the nightclub) MOTHER, The Empress told me that she was over the whole "brick and mortar" thing. She said the future was a "Virtual" club. One that would span the globe, 24 hours a day.
"bricks and mortar"?
A "vitual" club?
I thought she must have been "puff puff puff".


Now I get it.

Well, I WAS "puff puff puff"

But Im glad you get it, daddy!

*

Congratulations Chi Chi and Johnny. The Motherboards has been so much for so many. For me it has remained a life line to the world of friends and passions that I enjoyed for all those many years I lived in the city. I can live where I do and still feel connected and solid. During my illness I was so fortunate to be blessed on a daily basis by those who I loved and who loved me by the simple act of connecting to the boards. It is my home page, the first thing I read in the morning and the last thing I read at bedtime. That may sound pathetic to those of you who still have those full busy lives that come with life in Manhattan but for me it reminds me of who I am. Keep up the great work of the motherboards and thanks again for giving all of us a place to feel at home.

Puff puff puff? ROR

I want some "puff puff puff" too.

I'm with Bobby. Many times, with the way things are sliding, I feel like I don't want to go anywhere but these boards.

And I've met so many inspiring and admirable characters here... I mean where else could I cross paths with Messy Bonnie Raitt or Mrs. Plop?

Compatible consciousness is very medicinal.

Thanks everyone!

Please note our anniversary party will be next Wednesday, April 9 at 40 AVE. C.
(Full info is in a sticky at the top of the NYC NIGHTCLUBS AND EVENTS forum)

Now raising a virtual cocktail - Grey Goose and pomegranate, to the Mboards! And see you next week for a real one.

Happy anniversary to motherboards. I would also like to thank everyone who made this site possible. I got to meet and talk to people who I would never have talked to back in my club days. I don't want to sound like I'm a sad nut case, but I was too shy and I always thought most at those clubs to be,, well,, unapproachable(?). What I mean is, I was too insecure to talk to people that I felt were better than me. The queens back then seemed so fabulous, I was never like them,, they sparkled in their wonderful outfits. I could only dream to be like them.

But now, behind a keyboard, I'm kinda braver,

One thing, according to your map up above, it seems that quite a few people from Alaska come to this site.

yums... grey goose and pomegranate

wish i could come to you guy's party but alas i'll be roaming about my beloved mesa... who knows i might even run into that very illusive & exclusive terence (she'll be just a stone's throw away)

but yeah... congratulations... this site makes one feel so alive

it's dazzling...

xo

Thank you for creating the virtual brown couch!

7 years old already!! Happy birthday Motherboards!! I'm glad you're around for all the gossip and banter, and of course for giving all of us the ability to check on and chat with all of our favorite people from new york to mars. The Motherboards, I think, will outlive the cockroaches after the holocaust.

I want to thank the Motherboards too.
If it wasn't for these boards I wouldn't exist.
Ya see, I'm just a character in some sick person's imagination.
Without these boards I don't exist.

Or do I?

Jackie Bigalow an' I are sitting in my room "puff puff puff" and I'm so freakin' high right now that I think I might be a made up character.
Did that ever happen to you when you were "puff puff puff"?

Jackie wants to know if she's real or not too.
She says she forgets.

Am I leal?

A leal dlag hee hee

You funny. I ROR.

ALright, a messy smackdown!

Anyone else notice that Motherboards and Manhunt share the exact same birthday? Just an observation...

And why would you know that Mr. Joe? Hmmmm

James Copolla told me.