I put Hoperatives.com in permanent maintenance mode today.

I feel like I shot Old Yeller.

It was long past time for it to be done. Regular updates stopped in 2017 and even the sporadic ones petered out earlier this year.

I started and stopped trying to turn it into something else a couple of times. I’m not sure I really believed in what I said I was going to try to do.

I’d dearly love to blame the goddamned pandemic for killing it, but the truth of the matter is that its days have passed. In some ways we did what we set out to do. The beer scene is so different from when we started. The online world is different. It was lightning in a bottle. I’m glad we were there to see it. I’m glad it’s turned into what it has.

I had a hard time accepting that this needed to be done, though objectively all that’s changed is one front page that never changed has been replaced by another that also won’t — but this one is honest about it.

Getting older seems to be a process of watching things you thought were important become irrelevant. Hoperatives has now joined … (let’s see … that … that … that… carry the three) … every job I’ve ever had in disappearing without a trace.

So yeah, it’s sad. But it’s also the right thing to do. Hoperatives changed my life for the better, and I’m always going to be grateful for that.