Ed Zotti wrote a book about his experiences buying and fixing up a barn house. The forum was for discussion of the book, and of posters’ own DIY home fix-up experiences. It got very little traffic, and so was eventually shut down.
There was also a Chicago specific forum for a while. What was that called?
From the official announcement of the closure:
Straight Dope Chicago
Thank you. That makes sense and was familiar as soon as I read it.
I remember that. I remember at one time wondering if the SDMB would be like CSI and have different versions for different cities.
During my search for that thread announcing the end of that forum, I did see a post somewhere that intimated that this was the plan: Creative Loafing (SDMB’s TPTB at the time) was going to expand the franchise to other city-specific forums.
I think this is illustrative:
(The infobox doesn’t contain the payoff: in between the sentences is a quote from Ed Zotti.)