The Sub-Mission Records (Subrec) BBS: "The Punk Rock Motel". This sucker consumed more of my time in the early 1990's then darn near anything else. It was a place where people, punk type people, could go to talk and hang out, get info about independent shows (and I don't mean bar/arena rock shows either), basement shows, read punk zines, get hacking info, and other shit like that.
The BBS was fairly exclusively punk rock based in it's membership. Why? Well, I really hate the typical BBS bullshit rag wars, and if I can prevent a few 14 year old kids from the richest suburbs from bitching about who is better "Van Halen" or "Dio" I'm gonna do it.
The original phone number of the BBS was: 612-339-9380 and resided at 2020 Seabury Ave. in Minneapolis MN. This was best known to the locals, and to many a touring band as "The THD House", home THD Records kingpin Jason Parker. I moved out of THD in about 1991, at which time the phone numbers changed to 612-729-2948. In it's new home, the BBS grew at one point to being 4-5 phone lines and had Usenet news (which still has not really caught on) and e-mail. Users supported the internet feed only (I always supported the phone lines) by paying $5 per year for access to the extra lines, Usenet & e-mail. The domain at that time was subrec.mn.org. The BBS ran on an Amiga 500, with an external 80MB 5-1/4" half height SCSI Seagate hard drive and some type of expansion chassis to accommodate the extra modems. The BBS ran on a fully licensed copy of C|NET Amiga BBS software.
In 1996 the active membership had dwindled to a couple dozen folks, and the membership was no longer supporting the BBS. At that time, I looked into taking the BBS to the internet, but the internet was just too new, and the technology to do something like that was impossible for me to find, not to mention expensive to do. Back then, only large corporations had web sites, and they were mostly static information only sites.
The original BBS is now offline. With the upsurge of the internet, and down-turn in users, the original BBS ended it's 5+ year legacy as the Twin Cities only Punk Rock BBS in mid-October 1996.
Another message board sprung up a few years later, and filled the void left by Subrec's demise. The fine folks at TCPunk.com accomplished what I could not, and put together a great Twin Cities rooted message board on the internet. From the moment I first logged on, the itch was there to restart the BBS. However, that would have been foolish. After all, their target audience was the same as Subrec, and many of the old Subrec users were already there. Why duplicate something that was already great? So I went on with life, occasionally visiting the "Punk Rock Nursing Home", but mostly just lurking. TCPunk shut down New Years Eve 2002, ending a good long run as the premiere source of info on the Minnesota punk scene past, present & future. I got a call or two and some e-mails from friends about the closing of TCPunk, some of them encouraging me to re-start the BBS. What a great idea!
Starting 01 February 2003, the BBS returns! The new domain name is Subrec.com. to pay homage to the original domain name. The technology and cost to do this has dropped dramatically in the 7+ year absence. The software is open source (free) and the hosting is affordable and reliable. How could I pass that up? More importantly, how can you pass it up? Get off your butt and pay it a visit. My only hope is that the new board can live up to it's name.
The 80 MB hard drive that the original BBS resided on is still sitting in my basement in the same condition it was in when I powered off the computer for the last time. One of these days I'll resurrect that sucker and make the archives available. Of course, I'd have to find someone with an Amiga to do that.....
More info about the BBS can be had by sending e-mail to: subrec@yahoo.com
Click here to visit the new Subrec BBS!
