Was on site in it's early days, when Clutch first strated it in 1996 I believe. Back then it was barebones with mostly clutch's takes on Rockets and a chat feature where a handful of fans would log on to chat a our Rockets. This was also relatively early days of internet so not much traffic. I found out about the site because back then I used to search the internet for anything Rockets. Lycos, Yahoo, infoseek?
Eddie at the buzzer. Rocketspimp told me. That must have been 98 or earlier. Pretty funny when talking 99ers...those are newbies
I joined in 96. I got here through random internet searches. The force was strong in this one, so I hung around. If only the user names didn't get trashed in 99, I would have been a 96er.
Way back in 2003 I was told, "Clutch City is the shitpost capital of the world!" So naturally, I had to see for myself.
I am not sure if @DarkHorse is still around, but he had a site called launchpad. This was back when I was using the Microsoft network to connect. My history is kind of fuzzy on it, but I do know that the first rockets page I went to was that launch pad site. I always try to give dark horse props because I do believe his site was the 1st all dedicated rockets fan board, Clutch however was better at HTML than darkhorse was and that is why clutch city was the better site and why everybody went to clutch city But if you really want to know the history of clutch city and clutch fans, you have to include the launch pad in that.
I found it trying to find stuff on the internet about the potential T-Mac to Houston trade, then lurked for a bit before joining
yahoo search on netscape using dial up at a 9th grade computer class I think, when it went from clutchcity.com to clutchcity.net to clutchfans
96ish - a friend of mine I was playing ball with at the local Y mentioned it, I joined up....I think there were like 40 or 50 when I first got here..... DD
So there I was in 1998 using Netscape and I type into yahoo's search engine these fine words "rockets news" and Hardisty's page comes up. Back then you couldn't lurk so I was known as "agrockets" and everyone loved me. Then the name changed and my bookmark would forward me from clutchcity.com to clutchcity.net then later it forwarded from clutchcity.net to clutchfans. I lurked on here for a few years before I got tired of the opinions I was reading and I signed up using this name. Now no one loves me. It's gotten quite sad.
I don't think I had ever surfed the internet prior to 97. I still remember getting an email account at UT in 95 and really still thinking it was so futuristic. I think I started job hunting on the internet in 97 or 98. I just found clutchfans randomly in 2002
I was on RealGM initially when I first heard about Clutchfans. Clutchfans was HUGE in comparison to the Houston RealGM forum, so it seemed pretty intimidating at first. You guys are the best; the transition was smooth and fun.