John Moore,
I gave a bit of thought to your j'accuse! upbraiding and have decided to be offended at your presumptuous assumption that because I grew up at San Francisco Muni (Read: Olympic), somehow my Armenian blood runs blue. So, driving down the road stewing about the way you expelled snot from your nose on my Foot Joys, I made a rough head count of my GCA homies from the years when discussion of golf design was so arcane and hopelessly nerdy that we might as well have been sitting in front of our computers wearing nothing except Dungeons and Dragons costumes.
Bahto, Shivas, Getka, Clem, Emperor, Brains (in the USA), Clayman, Dan King, Green Bay, Moriarty, Huckster, Meagher, Redanman, Fortson, Stettner, Gunner and Cummings were (or still are) public golfers. I count "semi-private" clubs because they are also "semi-public." I've gotten to know a few of the newcomers and most of the ones I call friend play public golf. Kids like Ben Sims may fly a billion dollars worth of military hardware around the globe, but he steps up to the window and pays the starter just like everybody else.
I'm leaving out another two-dozen regular contributors from the old days, most of whom used Casa de Dicknozian as a crash pad when stumbling into town on a golf junket. Sure, some of the regular gang had impressive logos on their club ties, but it was understood that everybody was equal in the Treehouse - except for the occasional pseudo-intellectual idiot with a wicker basket tattooed to his forehead.
I think a previous poster hit the target: The Treehouse was a lot more fun before everybody knew about us. This was demonstrated to me in technicolor at an incredibly toney East Coast event six years ago. We were off to dinner with a group when one of the guests whispered in my ear that a certain architect - with whose work I have a trifle critical - would be joining us, along with the Exec. Director of the USGA.
Someone must have thought it an amusing experiment to seat me directly across from him, but I felt sure that a person of his stratospheric stature had never heard of Golf Club Atlas, let alone an obscure golf scribe from a regional newspaper.
I walked in the door and sat down, held out my hand to this gentleman and introduced myself. His response was like a bucket of ice water over my curly locks.
"I know exactly who you are," sneered the world famous architect, who also somehow knew I was well acquainted and a fan of his brother's work.
It was at that moment of crystal clear clarity, overlooking the boats wandering into Newport harbor, that I realized just how many people actually read what I always thought was a private conversation over the internet between friends.
Now, those actually in the industry are forced to tread lightly because you never know who is lurking. Maybe the answer is to shut off access to non-members . . . . . but that hardly advances the cause of bringing great architectural ideas to the masses. I don't know what the answer is, because this website - thanks to Ran and Ben - seems to have unimaginable influence.
But I still miss Tommy's shrieking critiques and Moriarty's leftist rants and Huckster's Opie Griffith rap . . . . . . we take ourselves too seriously these days - mostly because we don't know each other personally. I especially loved OT threads . . . . . . nobody likes a game of ping pong better than me.