nizhny.gayclub.ru ("Nizhny Novgorod GAY club") was a Nizhny Novgorod city website for a gay audience, launched on 16 November 2003[1]. It belonged to the gayclub.ru network of sites: hosting was provided by the parent project, and the "GAY'ALLIANCE Resources" link block placed it alongside identical subdomains of the network — chelny.gayclub.ru, ural.gayclub.ru, tat.gayclub.ru, irk.gayclub.ru, zazanapoli.gayclub.ru — and topical resources such as lesbi.ru, gayshop.ru and news.gayclub.ru[1]. The nn.ru directory, which called itself a catalog of Nizhny Novgorod sites, described it this way: "Everything about gay life in Nizhny Novgorod. About the city, meeting places, night clubs and cafes, dating, a forum..."[5]. The Nizhny Novgorod connection is also visible in the snapshots themselves: dating profiles are marked as being in Nizhny Novgorod and Dzerzhinsk, the profile search sets the region as "Nizhegorodskaya (Gorkovskaya)", and the news invites readers to a club on Rozhdestvenskaya Street[3].

What the site looked like

The earliest surviving snapshot of the home page is dated 21 November 2003 — a few days after launch. As the home page announced, "Today our site opens — the Nizhny Novgorod GAY club. Our site is intended for all residents and guests of the city and everyone who, in one way or another, relates to the gay life of Nizhny Novgorod"[1]. The menu at that time had five items — news, "looking for a friend", forum, library, guestbook — plus an "OUR CITY" block with sections "about the city", "meeting places", "clubs", "hotels", "internet" and a "STATISTICS" line[1]. The dating section opened with a phrase that stayed on the home page for three more years: "Where else can a decent person meet someone? At a cruising spot — not serious, through the newspaper — not fashionable. There is one more fairly effective way — the internet"[1][3].

By March 2005 the set of services had grown noticeably, and the page itself was calling itself the "Nizhny Novgorod portal for gays, lesbians and bisexuals". A lesbian forum and a club forum were added to the general forum, along with an unmoderated bulletin board, the "Nizhny Novgorod BBS" (postings with direct advertising and phone numbers were promised to be deleted), a chat, separate "dating for girls", polls, and the library was split into five sections: "our creativity", "press about gay life", "articles", "gay humor", "jokes"[2]. For cooperation and advertising inquiries the home page pointed to nizhny@gayclub.ru[2]. From 10 November 2004 the site began publishing news from the parent portal gayclub.ru, which it announced in a separate post[2]. By that time the link block was no longer called "GAY'ALLIANCE Resources" but "Our friends"[2]; by 2006 gaykirov.com had been added to it[3].

City chronicle: clubs and meeting places

Most of what survives in the snapshots is everyday chronicle material about Nizhny Novgorod venues. In November 2003 the forum discussed the closure of the "Ultra" night club: "As we've learned from informed sources, the night club 'Ultra' has closed for good and irrevocably. We'll just have to make do with Svalka and STM... a pity", a participant wrote in the thread "Ultra has died", which was featured on the home page[1]. The same page mentioned the cafe "Olen" ("Deer") on Minin Square, which was then under renovation[1]. In April 2004 the site reported a change of resident hosts at the "Molodyozhny" club[2], and a poll from 4 January 2005, "Which club do you go to?", offered a choice of "Molodyozhny", "Ultra", "another one" and "I don't go to clubs"[2]; in March 2005 the club forum was still arguing about "Ultra" as an operating venue[2]. By 2006 the news was already about the club "STM-Ultra" at 20 Rozhdestvenskaya Street, Nizhny Novgorod: programs on 28 January and 18 February, an event on 14 February from 23:00 to 5:00[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the nn.ru directory the site was listed under "Projects: Internet: Portals and universal servers"[5]. In the snapshot from 29 November 2003 it had a "Rating: 342" — eighth line in the category, sorted by rating[5]. Above it were "Nizhny Novgorod On-Line" (21835), "nnov.ru — a server for Nizhny Novgorod residents" (17384), "R52 — portal of Nizhny Novgorod business" (7715), "Kempo" (1723), "Information service www.Nizhny.ru Information Service (nizhny.ru)" (1472), "All of Dzerzhinsk" (824) and "All of Nizhny Novgorod" (765); just below it — "Bogorodsk Forum" (299)[5]. Against the backdrop of the city's main portals this was a small niche site, but in the catalog of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet it stood in the same category as them; it was precisely this directory entry that also brought it into our Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

In the surviving table of participants and results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote for 2004, the site does not appear[6].

How it closed

The decline is already visible in the snapshot from 25 October 2006: the last posts on the general forum are dated 25 April, on the club forum — 30 April, on the lesbian forum — 3 May of that same year, the counter next to the chat link showed "no one here", and the jokes section had link spam in place of a joke[3]. On the bulletin board three consecutive posts from 21 October 2006 all carry the same title — "There's no life here!"[3].

A snapshot from 5 August 2007 shows a maintenance placeholder in place of the site: "NOT AVAILABLE. Due to technical work some services are not available. We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for your understanding!"[4]. The last snapshot of the site in the web archive is dated 23 August 2007[7]; there are no later versions of the home page in our sample. As of this project's check, the address nizhny.gayclub.ru no longer responds.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2006 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, «Portals and universal servers» category, 29 November 2003 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — List of nizhny.gayclub.ru snapshots in the web archive (archive)