Bord Ded, Bin Gud.

Back in the early-2000s glory days of Upstate Wasted and Upstate Ether, the cast of characters would occasionally get so out of hand that The Overlords would have to declare a meltdown, wipe the whole board, and remove the ability for new posts to be added for some undefined cooling-off period. (Note: strong language and content warnings for all four of the links in this paragraph).

When meltdowns happened, a trio of little skeletons known collectively as the Bloorp-Bloorp Uh-Ohs (yeah, yeah, I know, you had to be there) would often appear to let the readers know that the board had melted down, though it had sure been fun up until that point. Ultimately, this sentiment got truncated down to the simpler “Bord Ded, Bin Gud.”

25 months after I launched this collaborative blog in a fit of pique, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to say “Bord Ded, Bin Gud” to Indie Albany. After a year in Iowa, I’m finding that I don’t have the time to serve as motive force and moderator for both Indie Albany and its Des Moines-based heir, Indie Moines, and I don’t like seeing the writers remaining here functioning in an unsupported capacity.

The group model worked best when we were all riffing off of each other with a high volume of posts, and that has dissipated significantly since my attention has been focused elsewhere. That’s my fault, not the fault of the writers. I didn’t envision a move to Iowa at the time when I launched the site, and once I got out here, I stopped enforcing the original guiding parameters about frequency of publication that kept the place hopping through its first 18 months or so. Again, my fault, and I own it.

That being said, I think we wrote some amazing stuff here over the past two years, and I think we proved the concepts that I wanted to prove: namely, that you don’t have to whore your writing out to advertisers that you despise in order to have a place to write online for a wide audience, and you don’t have to give up rights to your intellectual property just because you put it on a public website. I continue to hoe that row on Indie Moines, and that site is growing even faster than Indie Albany did. For now, it’s just me writing there, though I may go to a multi-contributor platform there, too, at some point. We’ll see how it pans out.

I want to thank all of the writers, readers, and folks who cross-promoted this site so well for us (without asking us to pay you) over the past two years, with particular thanks to Nippertown for getting on board early and staying with us to the end. Hell, even the Deputy Assistant Editorial Subminion for Bitterness at Metroland did us a favor for deeming us worth of his scorn when he dismissed us for “bloviating in commercial-free quiet” last year. Have you gotten paid for that piece yet, Sparky? Didn’t think so.

Thanks again to everybody who was involved here. I’m pleased that my initial fit of pique produced a model where good writing gets read by interested readers with no commercial interests being served. I look forward to continuing to offer you that model, if you want it, at Indie Moines.

Until this domain expires (or someone in Albany buys in from me), I’m going to keep a few Albany-specific things (e.g. the last Hidden in Suburbia series) here, as well as forwarding links to some of the older, more popular posts that appeared here over the past couple of years. And as long as the Times Union keeps the work I did on their blog in the public domain, despite my requests that it be removed, I will also leave the story of how and why I started this blog in the public domain as well.