In case you haven't gotten the memo, The Solitary Life is now Everything Skateboarding Magazine, and can be found here:
www.everythingskateboardingmagazine.blogspot.com
We'd all like to thank everybody that took the time to read The Solitary Life. Especially me, considering that it was originally designed to be my personal blog. But as time went on, The Solitary Life quickly became much, much more like an online skateboard (and snowboard) 'zine... complete with a small staff, and a whole lotta contributors. Considering the metamorphosis, we all ultimately decided that it was probably time to find a title- and, an address- that better suited this new and entirely unplanned mission.
As a quick epilogue: This week, as I was going through my many skateboard-related archives, I found the first (and only) print 'zine that I ever made. It was called "Alley-Oop!" (complete with the exclamation point and everything), about 16 pages long, and finely printed on only the choicest low-budget copy paper that Kinko's offered at the time. I think I made something like fifty copies, and basically gave them to all my friends and family. So, I probably had a whopping forty-nine readers, most of whom I knew already, anyway.
In contrast, The Solitary Life ran for well over a year, cost me nothing at all to print (because it's not printed at all, goofball), and routinely got well over 250 readers a week... sometimes, over a thousand... from literally every corner of the world. No joke, it was quite a trip to find out that we routinely got readers from places like Tokyo, Prague, Moscow, Brussels, Melbourne, Madrid, Tel Aviv, Paris, or London. We even got somebody from San Diego once, which I thought would be the highlight of my entire existence. Little did I know how crazy this would ultimately get.
The best part, though, was having a readily available outlet for my wellspring of whimsy and creativity. I'm not sure how I'd get through life, without some sort of interesting project to work on all the time. Yeah, it's a major pain in the ass to edit HTML code at two in the morning... which is exactly what I was doing tonight... or should I say, this morning? Whatever. The point being, I probably ended up getting way, way more out of the experience than I put into it. Namely, having a ton of fun with my friends, causing trouble, and being able to share my- our- perspectives with a worldwide audience. Maybe, we even did something cool for skateboarding. That would be the bossest thing ever.
So... would I encourage you, your buddies, or anybody else to start up a blog (or two) of your own...? Well, of course. You'd be a damned idiot if you didn't. And if you ever need help, look me up. I'll be more than happy to lend a helping hand.
So thanks again, everybody. It was truly a wonderful time, and a really, really rewarding experience. I hope it was for you, too. I'll certainly never forget it.
See you after the jump-
Bud Stratford
Former Head Nemesis,
The Solitary Life
(*I'm really gonna miss this pig...)
