I’ll never forget the day that a perfect stranger by the name of Bob Guskind called to say that he was starting a blog. He told me that he was a seasoned journalist and a reader of OTBKB—and that he planned on focusing on real estate and development issues in Brooklyn.
He was calling his blog, Gowanus Lounge, named after a shuttered bar on Union Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
I met Bob a few weeks later at the First Annual Brooklyn Blogfest at the Old Stone House. That was June of 2006 and I was very impressed with him. Serious, funny, he had a hearty laugh and a radio announcer’s voice. He told me that he’d worked at the National Journal in Washington for years. It was obvious that he was really excited about this blogging thing.
Clearly, he was smitten by the promise of the Blogosphere because it offered him the chance to pursue a lifelong dream: to be the publisher, editor, and star reporter of his very own Internet newspaper.
In the months that followed I was amazed at the scope of Bob’s reporting. At the time he had a day job at community newspaper in New Jersey and a freelance job with Curbed, a real estate blog in Manhattan. But somehow he managed to put out numerous blog posts every day. How, I wondered, did he have the time for all the top-notch reporting he was doing in and around Brooklyn?
And, boy, did he get around: Gowanus, Park Slope, Williamsburg, Coney Island. Bob was an old style newspaper reporter. He walked the walk, made the phone calls, drove the car doing the real face-to-face reporting that few bloggers are willing or able to do.
Later he worked full-time for Curbed.com and he still managed to create a wonderfully dynamic blog that had its own distinct editorial voice and hard-hitting reporting.
I especially enjoyed Bob’s frequent Street Couch series, photographs taken by Bob of derelict couches that were abandoned on the streets of Brooklyn. Those posts exhibited a whimsical and creative side of Bob that I found compelling.
Last summer we were both interviewed on Brian Lehrer’s television show. It was a nice experience and Bob and I spoke afterward about the myriad ways that blogging had changed our lives. That’s when he told me that Gowanus Lounge was the best thing he’d ever done professionally because it was a dream come true to invent his own “newspaper.”
Many of us knew that Bob worked too hard. That, like many journalists, he had “workaholic” tendencies. He worked until he dropped. He would often regale me with tales of work days that began well before dawn and took him till the wee hours of the morning. It seemed that long hours were the rule not the exception for Bob, who obviously loved what he was doing.
In the summer of 2007 Bob married his longtime girlfriend. I was very happy for him when he told me that they were honeymooning in Hawaii.
In the fall of 2008, he alarmed the Brooklyn Blogosphere by taking a sudden hiatus without any warning. He left a cryptic note on his blog that few understood. Readers and fellow bloggers were concerned. He did, however, return a few weeks later seemingly rejeuvantated and ready to blog on. He added a roster of contributors as well, which seemed like a good sign.
And now this. Yesterday Susan Fox of Park Slope Parents emailed to ask me if I knew why Bob’s blog was inaccessible. Last night Hugh checked out the address of Bob’s main server and discovered that it wasn’t online. He concluded it was not a matter of a malfunction but that the server had been turned off (the IP address was not on the net).
And then this morning, I got word, later confirmed by the Medical Examiner’s Office, that Bob died on March 4th. That’s all they would tell us. No cause of death was mentioned.
It is too soon and sudden to write about the significance of Gowanus Lounge and the lasting influence he has already had on other bloggers, blog readers, activists, and those who are passionate about historical preservation, contextual architecture and affordable housing. Bob’s contribution to reporting on the Atlantic Yards, the building boom in Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, Greenpoint, Fourth Avenue and the destruction of Coney Island is vast.
Much will be written about the pioneering influence of Bob Guskind and Gowanus Lounge.
So let me simply say: This is a sad day for all who love Brooklyn and cherish its neighborhoods and the spunky, historic charm and faded beauty of places, like Coney Island, that loom large in the American imagination.
As a journalist, Bob was looking out for this borough and trying to protect it from the forces of money and development that have swept through these parts in the last few years like a reckless tornado.
Bob, you had Brooklyn’s back. And for that we will always remember you. Thank you for you hard work and your belief that change is possible in the form of good reporting, a well-crafted blog post, and photographs that speak volumes.
We’ve gone through archival footage of Brooklyn Independent Television’s shows “Reporter Roundtable” and “Brooklyn Review” that featured Mr. Guskind. His contribution to our community is evident in his appearances and I hope this collection of archival footage helps celebrate his passion and concern for our borough.
To see these clips, please see:
http://briccommunitymedia.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/more-archival-footage-of-robert-guskind-from-brooklyn-independent-television/
Again, our condolences to Guskind’s family, friends and followers. He will be missed.
Miss Heather says
“The IP address was “not on the net” because Lunar Pages, Gowanus Lounge’s host server is down— has been for days. It was and is most decidedly a matter of “malfunction” not design.”
It’s a little more complicated than that.
First I did a tracert of gowanuslounge.com and there was no nameserver for that. Normally when a site is down the domain name is still resolvable.
>tracert http://www.gowanuslounge.com
Unable to resolve target system name http://www.gowanuslounge.com.
>tracert gowanuslounge.com
Unable to resolve target system name gowanuslounge.com.
I did a whois of gowanuslounge.com, and found that the gowanuslounge.com server and of both it’s nameservers were all on the same IP address of 67.210.110.205 ,
(Note, putting the server and the nameserver and the *backup* nameserver all on the same IP address is a really bad idea !)
I tried pinging 67.210.110.205
>ping 67.210.110.205
Pinging 67.210.110.205 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 67.210.110.205:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),
Then I did a trace route of that IP number
>tracert 67.210.110.205
Tracing route to vps.lunarmania.com [67.210.110.205]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 8 ms 7 ms 19 ms 10.47.128.1
3 34 ms 36 ms 48 ms gig-5-1-nycmnys-rtr1.nyc.rr.com [24.29.100.45]
4 13 ms 11 ms 9 ms gig-12-0-0-nycmnyrdc-rtr2.nyc.rr.com [24.29.113.
218]
5 16 ms 14 ms 12 ms tenge-2-0-0-nycsnyoo-rtr1.nyc.rr.com [24.29.119.
98]
6 19 ms 22 ms 8 ms 66.109.6.76
7 28 ms 29 ms 32 ms ae-0-0.pr0.nyc20.tbone.rr.com [66.109.6.157]
8 25 ms 22 ms 13 ms 64.132.69.157
9 118 ms 122 ms 103 ms hagg-02-ge-1-3-0-503.lsag.twtelecom.net [66.192.
251.90]
10 121 ms 118 ms 95 ms ge0501-csr2.rvs1.marquisnet.com [208.110.168.10]
11 133 ms 115 ms 132 ms cust-00990005-cpe.marquisnet.com [208.110.171.22
]
12 94 ms 103 ms 113 ms emergencyvpsibm2-main.lunarpages.com [74.50.29.4
8]
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 * * * Request timed out.
21 * * * Request timed out.
22 * * * Request timed out.
23 * * * Request timed out.
24 * * * Request timed out.
25 * * * Request timed out.
26 * * * Request timed out.
27 * * * Request timed out.
28 * * * Request timed out.
29 * * * Request timed out.
30 * * * Request timed out.
Trace complete.
I then poked around the lunarmania and lunarpages sites, and looked at the usual discussion boards where sysadmins post about outages and found no mention of lunarpages problems since December 2008
So I think in the midst of all this I said something like ” Gee, it’s weird, but not only is the webserver down, but it’s nameserver is down too and not only that but the IP address is unreachable even though it’s still in the routing tables”
Louise shortened that down to “not on the net”
Without taking a look at lunarpages logs, I have no idea why the server was down.
Hugh
Thank you, Louise, for such a heartfelt tribute. I’m so sorry to hear this. A sad day for Brooklyn.
“And now this. Yesterday Susan Fox of Park Slope Parents emailed to ask me if I knew why Bob’s blog was inaccessible. Last night Hugh checked out the address of Bob’s main server and discovered that it wasn’t online. He concluded it was not a matter of a malfunction but that the server had been turned off (the IP address was not on the net).”
The IP address was “not on the net” because Lunar Pages, Gowanus Lounge’s host server is down— has been for days. It was and is most decidedly a matter of “malfunction” not design. As a close friend of Bob’s (who is in the know) I do not appreciate the hype, conjecture, innuendo being posted online, this blog included. This post is not in my opinion an obituary. It is gossip-mongering and capitalizing off of someone’s misfortune/misery.
Thanks, Louise. This is a sad day, but I’m grateful to you, Miss Heather, and the other bloggers.
Street Couch was a wonderful series, but just one of many he posted, like the pics of beautiful scenes of Brooklyn at all hours and in all seasons.
Thanks for a really thoughful and respectful rememberance of RG. I’m very saddened by the news.
Thank you for breaking the news, and for your tribute to Bob. It was unsettling to click on the GL since Tuesday and have it load into nowhere. No response to emails asking if he was OK.
Heartfelt eulogy, Louise. I didn’t know Bob Guskind at all, but having read your piece, I now feel I did, a little.
I am so sad, Louise. I was looking for him at the March 3rd public hearing on Coney Island, because he’d emailed that he’d be there. Then the silence. Bob’s astute observations and analysis will be missed more than I can say. Is there going to be a memorial service where we can pay our respects?
Thanks Louise.
This should have been the Brooklyn Paper’s obituary.