Wrongfully taking possession of this BB by the use of the term “we” in the title and thus ignoring Todd’s incredible work in putting this together (although I am posting this at his suggestion after I wrote to him about it privately), I pose the question of whether we should humbly ask Todd to add a BYO Forum. Here’s my commentary and the suggestion I sent to Todd for an upgrade to the difficult to use BYO Forum that many of us used to use. Your comments, suggestions, etc. are welcome.
One of the useful things on that BB that many people used to frequent was the BYO Forum where each thread was for a particular city. If I was going to Washington DC, I could look up the Washington thread and find BYO restaurants with corkage policies. The threads worked well, but the functionality was limited because the threads for major cities were very long. My improvement is to have a “Captain” or a “Moderator” for Post 1 on the thread for each city, with that person agreeing to keep Post 1 as a cummulative post summarizing all subsequent posts so Post 1 represents a combined BYO list for that city. Let’s say I’m in charge of Westchester County, NY. I start the thread listing Morton’s and F.I.S.H, two local restaurants that allow BYO, and I quote the corkage policy. I am the “Captain” of the Westchester thread. Then Leo posts a message that says that there is a $10 corkage at the Burger King in Eastchester. I then bring that info forward and list “Eastchester Burger King $10 corkage” on Post 1. Then Jorge wants to have a bottle of his cheap TBC at a restaurant so he looks up Westchester, finds Burger King listed on Post 1, decides it is in his price range, and goes there.
By the way - F.I.S.H. is a very nice seafood restaurant in Westchester 15 minutes from my house that we discovered because of the BYO Forum at that place I used to participate in. And where’s Flemming now that we need someone to remind me not to end a sentence a preposition with?
Having a BYO thread here (that is active) would be a HUGE plus.
As it is now, if I am travelling somewhere or want to try something new, I email friends for ideas, which is good, but having the much wider experience of the berserkers would make it complete!
Another helpful forum would be “Recommended Retailers” - one of the great uses of a longstanding board like EBob was to be able to search an unknown retailer and get info on its reputation, storage conditions, previous issues, etc.
I am more than happy to set it up, folks, but if it is not populated with valuable threads, it’s a dead space, and will just be folded back into Epicurean Exploits. There are plenty of BYO threads in the EE forum, so perhaps there is room for it. The ‘captain’ idea is a very good one, and would help keep this organized and perhaps viable.
Let’s say that it is a likelihood - who else do we have who would step up as a Captain for a certain area? Jay has Westchester County…
Since I am virtually the only Pittsburgher here (although there is another Western Pa-er) I’d probably be the captain locally by default. And I have posted before that anyone who wants local recs should PM me directly rather than starting a thread, as that is a lot more efficient and I am more likely to see it that way. There are a whole lot fo sginificant changes going on locally, too.
In light of your geneosity in donating time in general, I will take responsibility for setting up the threads and the “captains” for each city if that’s OK with you, and then we can roll out the forum once we have enough volunteers as captains. Gotta go. I have to run to the Board meeting of a bank. I have a day job, you know.
I’m sure Todd will be the first to agree that this is very much a “we” community here. Even though we all know how much work Todd and the Mods put into it, we all “own” it. Todd knows that best of all.
Further, after Saturday’s party at your house, you’ve got to be up near the top of the list!
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