Break Bread with Brad, July 21st 2001 (via jaschu). Brad, Paul, Dan, John, Nikolai and Jeremy. An early weblogger meetup in Chicago, brought together when Brad was visiting from St. Louis on one of his frequent weekend trips up to our town. Way back when I started a weblog, there were only a few other queer webloggers that I knew of. Brad was one of them who I met early on, and one of the first folks I’d met in person from that sphere. Back when nobody had an eye on making money from weblogging, when it was all feeling crazy, personal, uninhibited, and very few people saw where it was all going. We were just people with sites talking about whatever, and we didn’t always have much in common, but we had this thing we were doing, and often that was enough. Finding others like Brad—and there were a lot of others, not just Brad, of course—was great for me. I was in my mid-20s, mostly comfortable as an out gay man, and had queer friends from offline, but seeing others being unabashedly out online reaffirmed that I could carve out my own queer-friendly space online, for myself and hopefully for others. Brad was better at it than I was, I think. A better writer, certainly, and terribly funny. I was younger, more giddy, more frantic, less focused. I’ve often felt more comfortable with other queer people, and having allies like Brad in the early days of weblogging made it seem like we made sure there would always be room for us at that table. Brad not only saw the usefulness of connecting online, but carrying those connections outside of the internet. He started the Break Bread with Brad tradition at the SxSW Interactive conference as an icebreaker event for webloggers, which I finally got to attend in 2005. Before that, he held a less formal lunch in Chicago, which is when I met a lot of the folks above for the first time. I’ll be honest, a couple I hadn’t even heard of, but was glad to have been introduced. Two years after this photo, the opportunity to move to San Francisco came up, and Brad was gracious enough to host me on the first night of my drive out west, even though it was a weeknight, after calling him up a week or two prior and saying I wanted to see him and also my high school friend Sarah, who had moved down to St. Louis. Brad passed away during the first week of 2010, and even though it had been years since I saw him in person last, it already feels weird knowing he’s no longer out there. He was dear, and he was a king.
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Break Bread with Brad, July 21st 2001 (via jaschu). Brad, Paul, Dan, John, Nikolai and Jeremy. An early weblogger meetup in Chicago, brought together when Brad was visiting from St. Louis on one of his frequent weekend trips up to our town.

Way back when I started a weblog, there were only a few other queer webloggers that I knew of. Brad was one of them who I met early on, and one of the first folks I’d met in person from that sphere. Back when nobody had an eye on making money from weblogging, when it was all feeling crazy, personal, uninhibited, and very few people saw where it was all going. We were just people with sites talking about whatever, and we didn’t always have much in common, but we had this thing we were doing, and often that was enough. Finding others like Brad—and there were a lot of others, not just Brad, of course—was great for me. I was in my mid-20s, mostly comfortable as an out gay man, and had queer friends from offline, but seeing others being unabashedly out online reaffirmed that I could carve out my own queer-friendly space online, for myself and hopefully for others. Brad was better at it than I was, I think. A better writer, certainly, and terribly funny. I was younger, more giddy, more frantic, less focused. I’ve often felt more comfortable with other queer people, and having allies like Brad in the early days of weblogging made it seem like we made sure there would always be room for us at that table.

Brad not only saw the usefulness of connecting online, but carrying those connections outside of the internet. He started the Break Bread with Brad tradition at the SxSW Interactive conference as an icebreaker event for webloggers, which I finally got to attend in 2005. Before that, he held a less formal lunch in Chicago, which is when I met a lot of the folks above for the first time. I’ll be honest, a couple I hadn’t even heard of, but was glad to have been introduced.

Two years after this photo, the opportunity to move to San Francisco came up, and Brad was gracious enough to host me on the first night of my drive out west, even though it was a weeknight, after calling him up a week or two prior and saying I wanted to see him and also my high school friend Sarah, who had moved down to St. Louis.

Brad passed away during the first week of 2010, and even though it had been years since I saw him in person last, it already feels weird knowing he’s no longer out there. He was dear, and he was a king.

Source: Flickr / jaschu