Happy Birthday, Chicagoist

By Rachelle Bowden in Miscellaneous on May 11, 2005 11:40AM

This week Chicagoist turns one year old. What a year it's been. We can hardly even believe it's been so long. Time flies when you're.... blogging!

Last year at this time Margaret and Rachelle were getting to know each other, starting to try to find a groove, and realizing just how much work it'd be to undertake this side project. We were tipping our hats to Jen and Jake and everyone at Gothamist and wondering how they do it day in and day out. But we found our rhythm and added some people, many who are still with us and some who are not. If we had to name one thing we were most thankful for that has come out of this experience it'd be meeting so many great people. Those who chip in every day to make Chicagoist a great site and those who come visit, read what we write, tell us we're great, tell us we suck nuts, and remind us to use spell checker. Also, as the otherIST sites sprung up it was fun to play big sister to them and help them out and work with people contributing to similar sites around the world.

In a year's time a we've collectively written about 2,000 posts (averaging 40/week) and have received more than 7,000 comments (averaging 140/week). Our first week, we were bitching about the CTA and gas prices, Daley was supporting a downtown casino, we were talking lots about books, wishing we could eat at Blackbird, dishing about Bill Rancic, and turning up the snark on some rodeo bulls that got loose in the suburbs. Thank you all for making it a great year. We look forward to many more!

And now for the good stuff. When will we be celebrating? Mark your calendar for May 26th. We'll be hosting a happy hour and while we can't leak all the details right now, we can tell you that we'll be buying you some drinks, feeding you some birthday cake and outfitting you in some spiffy Chicagoist tshirts. Stay tuned!