I wanted to pass on the very sad news that one of our members Hawk Hubbard, AKA the legendary "caphood" has passed on today. Many of the people reading this were likely friends of his on social media and have already seen the news, or at the very least, knew that Hawk had been struggling with cancer and complications from it for some time now.

This is all so fresh, and I didn't know Hawk as well as many people in the BBS and particularly art scenes did, so forgive me for not being able to write a legitimate eulogy, but I still feel compelled to say more.

Hawk and I crossed paths quite a few times in the late 90s and early 2000s, with email exchanges for help setting up echomail stuff, finding old scene files, talking about modding, that kind of thing. We always had a friendly relationship, though it was always pretty casual. He was, as I mentioned, already a bit of a legend by then; an absolute fixture in scene channels like #acid, and he was constantly popping up in irc chat logs, group member lists and distro lists, and greets on ANSIs and in textfiles and emags for as long as I can remember, and probably still will be even after his death.

Oh course, Hawk is known by many in the BBS world today for his impressive "fleet" of BBSes. I recall calling the original Piranha when he originally put it up via telnet (and possibly earlier via dial-up, though my memory on that is a bit hazy) and was absolutely floored by all of the amazing art he'd gathered and the modding he'd done. Much later, he gained a bit of *much deserved* notoriety outside of the scene after 2013 when he launched Piranha: Under the Black Flag (AKA "Black Flag") which was timed perfectly to be noticed by the growing retro computing scene, with Black Flag often showing up in various articles with lists of must call retro BBSes (and Black Flag usually at the #1 spot.)

It was after a relaunch of the original Piranha in 2011 that Hawk joined Zer0net, and I'm proud to say that just about every system in Hawk's fleet was also a member at one time or another. As I write this, his boards still occupy a ridiculous *4* slots in our node list. :P

Of course there's a lot more to Hawk than I can really go into, such as his life as a fiddler and a band leader, and all of the wild adventures and stories he had around those times. Some of those stories you can probably still read on Araknet where Smooth actually created an echo for him exclusively to share those stories and otherwise wax philosophical. I do wish he used it more, as some of the stories he had posted there and elsewhere were actually pretty incredible.

But back to BBSing, Hawk was an ardent supporter of the scene, often encouraging and complimenting artists and supporting art groups, and in the post 2000s scene he was almost always in the mix of whatever new and exciting was going on. I personally wish I knew more about him and his history with the scene - how he first got into computers, his early days as a BBSer, and how he wound up being associated with the underground scene, and particularly ACiD Productions. I've actually been planning to do sort of mini-BBS reviews, complete with interviews with SysOps for my little blog, and still hope to some day, but I'd always intended for Hawk and his fleet to be my very first subject. When I first heard about him getting sick, I scrambled to talk to him about it, and I put together a lengthy Q&A style interview for him to work on whenever he felt up to it. He seemed into the idea, but of course, I'm sure he had much higher priorities in these last 6 or 7 months, and his energy was likely sapped much of the time from fighting the good fight. besides, he certainly didn't need *my* help being immortalized in the scene.

Rest in Peace, Captain!

I'm hoping others that knew him will reply with some fun details and anecdotes about him. Reply if you have anything to add, post links, etc. He will be missed.

|07j |15A C K |07p |15H L A S H |07!
|08[https://jackphla.sh]

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: d i s t o r t i o n // d1st.org (911:1423/0)

Jey JP,

Thank you for your awesome post about Hawk and your relation with him. It was a pleasure reading.

Oh course, Hawk is known by many in the BBS world

today for his jp> impressive "fleet" of BBSes. I recall calling the original Piranha when jp> he originally put it up via telnet (and possibly earlier via dial-up, jp> though my memory on that is a bit hazy) and was absolutely floored by jp> all of the amazing art he'd gathered and the modding he'd done. Much jp> later, he gained a bit of *much deserved* notoriety outside of the scene jp> after 2013 when he launched Piranha: Under the Black Flag (AKA "Black jp> Flag") which was timed perfectly to be noticed by the growing retro jp> computing scene, with Black Flag often showing up in various articles jp> with lists of must call retro BBSes (and Black Flag usually at the #1 jp> spot.)

I just wanted to inform everyone that i will be hosting and running his boards for as long as i can. He mihjt be sailing the seven seas at the moment, but he is not taking the boards with them.

All his boards will be alove and avilable to all pirates out there! RAWR!

Thank you Hawk for everything!

... There are three kinds of people: Those who can count, and those who can't

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/64)
* Origin: SLiME CiTY BBS (911:4644/0)

I wanted to pass on the very sad news that one of our members Hawk Hubbard, AKA the legendary "caphood" has passed on today. Many of the people reading this were likely friends of his on social media and have already seen the news, or at the very least, knew that Hawk had been struggling with cancer and complications from it for some time now.

This is all so fresh, and I didn't know Hawk as well as many people in
the BBS and particularly art scenes did, so forgive me for not being
able to write a legitimate eulogy, but I still feel compelled to say
more.

Hawk and I crossed paths quite a few times in the late 90s and early 2000s, with email exchanges for help setting up echomail stuff, finding old scene files, talking about modding, that kind of thing. We always
had a friendly relationship, though it was always pretty casual. He was, as I mentioned, already a bit of a legend by then; an absolute fixture
in scene channels like #acid, and he was constantly popping up in irc
chat logs, group member lists and distro lists, and greets on ANSIs and
in textfiles and emags for as long as I can remember, and probably still will be even after his death.

Oh course, Hawk is known by many in the BBS world today for his
impressive "fleet" of BBSes. I recall calling the original Piranha when
he originally put it up via telnet (and possibly earlier via dial-up, though my memory on that is a bit hazy) and was absolutely floored by
all of the amazing art he'd gathered and the modding he'd done. Much later, he gained a bit of *much deserved* notoriety outside of the scene after 2013 when he launched Piranha: Under the Black Flag (AKA "Black Flag") which was timed perfectly to be noticed by the growing retro computing scene, with Black Flag often showing up in various articles
with lists of must call retro BBSes (and Black Flag usually at the #1 spot.)

It was after a relaunch of the original Piranha in 2011 that Hawk joined Zer0net, and I'm proud to say that just about every system in Hawk's
fleet was also a member at one time or another. As I write this, his boards still occupy a ridiculous *4* slots in our node list. :P

Of course there's a lot more to Hawk than I can really go into, such as his life as a fiddler and a band leader, and all of the wild adventures and stories he had around those times. Some of those stories you can probably still read on Araknet where Smooth actually created an echo for him exclusively to share those stories and otherwise wax philosophical.
I do wish he used it more, as some of the stories he had posted there
and elsewhere were actually pretty incredible.

But back to BBSing, Hawk was an ardent supporter of the scene, often encouraging and complimenting artists and supporting art groups, and in the post 2000s scene he was almost always in the mix of whatever new and exciting was going on. I personally wish I knew more about him and his history with the scene - how he first got into computers, his early days as a BBSer, and how he wound up being associated with the underground scene, and particularly ACiD Productions. I've actually been planning to do sort of mini-BBS reviews, complete with interviews with SysOps for my little blog, and still hope to some day, but I'd always intended for
Hawk and his fleet to be my very first subject. When I first heard about him getting sick, I scrambled to talk to him about it, and I put
together a lengthy Q&A style interview for him to work on whenever he
felt up to it. He seemed into the idea, but of course, I'm sure he had much higher priorities in these last 6 or 7 months, and his energy was likely sapped much of the time from fighting the good fight. besides, he certainly didn't need *my* help being immortalized in the scene.

Rest in Peace, Captain!

This is terrible news. I've been wondering what's been going on with him.

I've had a few phone calls with Hawk a few years ago and got to know him very little.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Clutch BBS * telnet://clutchbbs.com (911:1519/1)

on 28 Jun 2024, m00p said...

I just wanted to inform everyone that i will be hosting and running his boards for as long as i can. He mihjt be sailing the seven seas at the moment, but he is not taking the boards with them.

All his boards will be alove and avilable to all pirates out there! RAWR!

Thank you Hawk for everything!

Awesome. I suspected / vaguely remembered you might be hosting his BBSes since you and I worked together on refreshing all of his Zer0net node configs. I've seen a lot of chat about his passing on Discord and whatnot, and the subject of his BBSes still being up as come up multiple times from different people - I strongly suspect most everyone feels they should stay up if at all possible as something of a memorial to him.

|07j |15A C K |07p |15H L A S H |07!
|08[https://jackphla.sh]

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: d i s t o r t i o n // d1st.org (911:1423/0)

I wanted to pass on the very sad news that one of our members Hawk Hubbard

Indeed, sad news. Rest in Peace. I hope the BBS scene will remember him as he deserves, cause he was a very active member and as you described, offered a lot.

I remember, when i re-surfaced in the BBS scene the last years and wrote some of my mods, Hawk contacted me to visit his BBSes and see some old and very cool mods. One of them was the Oneliner from the Rebels group, that he asked me to rewrite for him.

From his Facebook page i got the impression that he was a charismatic and beloved fellow. I think everyone in the BBS scene have only a good word to say about him.

For sure the BBS scene has lost, from his absence. I hope his work and BBSes will be active and remembered to honor his name.

.
:: XQTR :: Another Droid BBS :: andr01d.zapto.org:9999 :: xqtr@gmx.com

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2020/11/23 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Another Droid BBS # andr01d.zapto.org:9999 (911:30210/0)

On Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:09:28 -0700, you wrote:

But back to BBSing, Hawk was an ardent supporter of the scene, often encouraging and complimenting artists and supporting art groups, and in the post 2000s scene he was almost always in the mix of whatever new and exciting was going on.

I'd be lying if I didn't throw in the fact that he was, by far, the biggest, most prolific supporter of the BBS scene, as well as the art scene, as (unfortunately) these two became two separate entities with the likes of social media.

He was the glue that kept the two at least somewhat related.

I'm hoping others that knew him will reply with some fun details and anecdotes about him. Reply if you have anything to add, post links, etc. He will be missed.

Somewhere around 2010-2012, I was learning FTN and had mentioned to him that I was looking to start a message network, but couldn't really decide what I wanted to focus on, or what target audience I wanted to hit. Hawk suggested I 'revive' Agoranet, which was ACiD's official message network back in the 90s. He got me in contact with Radman, who I somewhat already knew from contributing to ACID100, and some of the superjoint ansis we did back then. With Radman's blessing, Agoranet was reborn, and if I remember right, we may have even convinced him to call one of Hawk's boards to make one of the first posts on it.

I assisted Hawk in connecting all of his boards to Agoranet, as he didn't have much experience with FTN at the time. It was a learning experience for me as well, since I was remote desktopping, and going by screenshots, digging through OBV/2, PCBoard, as well as Mystic FTN configurations (which were all way behind the times back then - Mystic has come a long way since then). But we had a great time doing it.

We had many conversations on Facebook Messenger, BBS related and otherwise. He was a hell of a guy, always with a positive outlook on everything, and will definitely be missed.

RIP, Captain!

Regards,
Nick

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
--- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:115.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderb
* Origin: _thePharcyde distribution system (Wisconsin) (911:1262/1)

on 29 Jun 2024, Accession said...

I'd be lying if I didn't throw in the fact that he was, by far, the biggest, most prolific supporter of the BBS scene, as well as the art scene, as (unfortunately) these two became two separate entities with
the likes of social media.

He was the glue that kept the two at least somewhat related.

I didn't really think about it in those terms when writing my post, but you're absolutely right. He was a (if not *the*) dude who art scene people loved to draw for, yet whose involvement centered around his BBSes. This seemed to be the case even in the 1990s, looking as how many different affils his board had even back then. In the 2000s, this got some of the top tier ANSI artists who had evolved (?) to typically only drawing for each other, weird imaginary vanity, projects, and other random stuff, to actually draw for *ACTUAL* BBSes again, which I'm sure influenced many of them to do more work for other boards too.

|07j |15A C K |07p |15H L A S H |07!
|08[https://jackphla.sh]

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: d i s t o r t i o n // d1st.org (911:1423/0)

I just wanted to inform everyone that i will be hosting and running his boards for as long as i can. He mihjt be sailing the seven seas at the moment, but he is not taking the boards with them.

I'm so happy to see this - as stated elsewhere. There are MANY others willing to help in a decade when yer done. (or not) pls make sure BF lives forever.



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbS>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (911:1503/0)

I just wanted to inform everyone that i will be hosting and running h boards for as long as i can. He mihjt be sailing the seven seas at th moment, but he is not taking the boards with them.

Awesome. I suspected / vaguely remembered you might be hosting his BBSes since you and I worked together on refreshing all of his Zer0net node configs. I've seen a lot of chat about his passing on Discord and
whatnot, and the subject of his BBSes still being up as come up multiple times from different people - I strongly suspect most everyone feels
they should stay up if at all possible as something of a memorial to him.

Dude! Yeah, thank you very much for your help setting up 0N on the boards, he did not really know any of his credentials or configs. Its always difficult to maintain someone elses boards, but with joint effort we can do it.

So once again, thanks man, very much appreciated.

... A Skydiver is taken by the gravity of his situation.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/64)
* Origin: SLiME CiTY BBS (911:4644/0)

on 05 Jul 2024, m00p said...

Dude! Yeah, thank you very much for your help setting up 0N on the
boards, he did not really know any of his credentials or configs. Its always difficult to maintain someone elses boards, but with joint effort we can do it.

So once again, thanks man, very much appreciated.

You bet and, of course, if you need anything else don't hesitate to reach out!

|07j |15A C K |07p |15H L A S H |07!
|08[https://jackphla.sh]

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: d i s t o r t i o n // d1st.org (911:1423/0)