I came from "skateboard rumors" around the end of '04. There was a young kid "Reed" who was like a skateboarding historian at the age of 12 here at the time.
ISUCK joining over the Albany beef (hilarious story) definitely brought a huge wave of new people in. Same with Fully Flared links.
Pals and people I've met through here:
Kilgore, Marty, Vicky, PAWL, Mark Whitely, Phelps and Tony V. Vicky and Marty put me up for a night in Philly years ago
Got to visit High Speed office before Mark left & he gave me some old mags and a couple of Cliche boards
Mizzark was wild and as well as his/her buddy YMHY. Mizzark turned out to be super cool. Child of the Ghetto, classic dude who I'm sure was a well known west coast pro.
Pontoon Boat and that gorilla character were hilarious.
There was a guy from I think British Columbia who was super smart & well respected, he focused many years ago but sent me a VHS copy of of Art Bars. Donnie Murdow? from Scotland and tonycoxhox are other memorable internationals
Perfect Cock or Perfection was the guy who had the gif of Gipper and Vegan Shawn eating shit / gettin dicked down
Definitely some wild times on AIM with pals. Trolling Corey Duffle and Jerome Rogers.
Sanch was kind of a mark on here IIRC. As was Anthony Shelter. Pretty sure Brian Brown would post on here too, defending / hyping himself
It used to be serious to get to Pal status! That was a whole separate community and came with all the links to every skate video. I recall driving nearly an hour to watch a terrible quality link of Fully Flared on someone's brand new PS3 the weekend after it was released.
Last but not least thanks to everyone who helped me when I was locked up. Can of Soup? Or Campbell's Soup sent some books, someone bought me a Thrasher sub. Rusty would send letters and photographs.
Slap really is one of the best online communities, nice to read this thread and reminisce!