Confessions of the former Bark BBS sysop in New York City in the 90s
reddit / bbs

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max_avramenko · 2017-05-09 15:15

It was fall of 1992 and I was a sophomore Computer Science student at
the New York University in the heart of Greenwich Village, the center
of cool and young, rebellious and romantic. I was 22, liked hard rock
and heavy metal, had long hair, and wore black jeans with tucked-in
combat boots and striped Russian sailor shirt with long leather coat
over it. Yeah, I had the look I thought. I was a Russian refugee from
the Soviet Union which had just collapsed. My family managed to leave
in 1989 prior to USSR’s self-destruction but I did not care much for
it because I was in America, the land of Rock’n’Roll!!!

I worked three jobs at the time. One was at NYU computer lab where I
made $6.50 per hour helping other students with computers and
homework. The other two were in Brooklyn where I worked in a photo lab
developing pictures in a Jewish area of Brooklyn called Midwood and
the third was on weekends in a Russian restaurant in Sheepshead Bay
where my brother and I worked as photographers. We did not make much
money and I was always open to new job prospects. One day I saw it: a
poster on the wall in the building of Courant Institute of
Mathematical Sciences: “Part type System Operator wanted for a BBS,
$12.50 an hour” Wow, I thought, this is some serious dough!! I took
the flyer down and put it in my pocket so no one else would compete
with me for this golden opportunity of a lifetime. I dialed the number
on the flyer and spoke with Parker Reilly who was the guy hanging the
poster in the first place. The office was just two blocks away from my
NYU computer lab on E4th St, between Broadway and Lafayette St. and I
thought it was perfect as I can just walk over there between classes
and do the work. I met with Parker the same day, he asked me if I knew
much about BBSs and I assured him that I was the BBS master even
though I have never even heard of one. Parker was a young man perhaps
in his mid or late 20s, with flowing blond hair and a kind, pleasant
smile. I instantly liked this man. We were going to become friends.

And so I got the job. What was the job? I had to make sure the BBS was
always up and running and later Parker would give me tasks to do with
it. “What kind of tasks”, I asked him. He was not so sure himself. He
explained to me that Bark BBS was some executive’s idea at Polygram
Records for which we ultimately worked. Of course, I knew Polygram as
they were publishers of many of my favorite rock artists. But what was
the idea behind Bark? Parker explained that Polygram wanted to do
marketing research through Bark and find out what young kids of high-
school age wanted to listen to and what kind of music they were going
to buy, so that Polygram could produce such artists and sell the
records. At the moment the strategy was not very well defined and
Parker was the chief editor with the job of running Bark and another
guy was joining soon to be the marketing director. I thought that it
was all fine. All I wanted to do is play with technology and the
office was really cool. We were located in the same building as my
favorite records store Tower Records on the corner of Broadway and
E4th street. Next to us were offices of few other record labels such
as Great Jones Records and also Island Records started by Bob Marley
and acquired by Polygram. There was a recording studio and sometimes I
could see musicians playing behind the glass wall. It was really,
really cool place to hang out at. I had a set of keys and could come
in any time of the day or night. My job was part time and I was not to
exceed the 20 hours per week Parker had budgeted for. And so I did
come when I had some spare time between classes, after classes, at
night after a late movie or even on weekends. I had an old beat-up
1983 Ford Thunderbird and I liked to drive into the city, go do some
work at Bark and then go hang out in the Village on the weekend.

So what did I do initially? We had an 800 dial-in number and four
modem lines anyone could dial into. Parker had previously created
relationships with many high schools across the country and in each
school there was supposed to be a “representative” who would
communicate with other representatives from different schools about
pop culture, music etc. and then relay everything to his fellow
students at the school. It was going to be a beautiful community of
children all across USA and Polygram would know what their tastes in
music are before other labels discovered the artists kids wanted to
buy records of. I think they also tried publishing a magazine for the
school kids, but probably one one or two issues actually came out as
far as I remember.
Meanwhile I had to deal with the day-to-day operations of the Bark
BBS. We ran DOS-based software called PCBoard (or PCBored as some kids
called it). I had just one computer and a DOS multitasking software
from Quaterdeck which allowed me to run four instances of PCBoard on
one machine. My tasks were to fix problems when the PC froze, monitor
discussion boards and also clean up the hard drive from old files. The
hard drive filled up very quickly. I only had 200MB to work with which
was huge by 1992 standards but it was not enough. At some point I
realized that the beautiful online echo-system some Polygram executive
dreamed up just was not there. The high-school “representatives”
Parker signed up were not really participating much and Bark BBS was
receiving just random people who found out about a free 800-number BBS
they can use to chat with strangers. One frustrating thing was that
some people did not really care about the Bark BBS and and simply took
advantage of Bark resources to swap files (software,porn,etc) for free
hogging up the all four of available lines. The PCBoard allowed
configuring maximum time a user could occupy a line and would hang up
the line when time was up but as I later discovered people had BBS
client software which automatically redialed quickly as soon as the
line was disconnected and continue their file exchange activities. No
amount of my pleading would help. When I banned users they would
create new identity and login again. I could block the phone number
but if they blocked the caller ID then this strategy did not work. At
some point I’ve implemented the call-back feature for registering new
users which required the new user receive an automated call back from
BBS, but people just tricked me by sending messages saying that call-
back verification did not work for them and begged me to let them in.
And what did I care? I had my NYU classes, my other jobs, my
girlfriend Maria, and my life in New York, so I just let them in.

One day the Director Of Marketing finally arrived. FROM DENMARK!!! He
had a difficult to pronounce Scandinavian name but he said that I
should call him Datti which was his nickname. Datti was about the same
age as Parker, a young guy with no special talents who knew somebody
on the inside at Polygram and that was how he got the job. He had a
fat “Introduction to Marketing” text book but I never saw him actually
read it. In fact, he was rarely there. Most of the time it was Parker
and I in the office. Parker had a wife Daniella who was a dancer. She
often came to the office. I liked her, she was pretty and petite, very
nice woman and I know that later they moved to Westchester north of
New York City and had a house and family there. They also created a
start-up company but I had lost touch with them by that time. Parker
also had formed a band called “The Sons”. Look up their song “Too much
of a good thing” which was used in film “Dumb and Dumber”. Look at
Parker’s “resume” here: http://www.solfege.tv/bio.html

Anyway, in 1993 as life at Bark went on and I was putting out fires
and fighting “Illegal intruders” Datti finally came up with a
“marketing strategy”.  The users were to be presented with a
questionnaire upon connecting to Bark BBS and had to answer the
questions before being let into the system. I was to program the
questionnaire screens into the system. Datti did not really have a
mandate from Polygram as what to ask specifically. I was also to come
up with “interesting” questions to make us look “real”. And so I asked
“what music style do you prefer?”, “what instrument do you play?”, “do
you like cats or dogs?” “did you ever kissed someone?” Some people
liked the questionnaire some found it annoying and asked to stop it.
There was also an “issue of profanity” on the board. By Parker’s
decree we were to eliminate all profane language from Bark in case any
of the teachers or parents ever look. I’ve created special filters in
PCBoard to look for and flag messages with bad words, but naturally
people quickly got around it by writing “P11s off”, “F..k u”, and so
forth. I was to become a profanity policeman but it was a no-win war.
I begged, I posted messages on login screen asking people to watch
their language or we will get shut down, all to no effect. People
seemed to love starting flame wars and then spend time insulting each
other for no reason. I could not understand why they would spend so
much time at the computer writing to people they’ve never met. What a
waste of life, I thought. But what did I know about American suburban
life? Having come from a Ukrainian city of Odessa on the Black Sea,
living in New York City I always had so many things to do that I just
could not afford to waste my time fighting people that were not even
present. I worked, I studied, I went out, went hiking, to the beach,
sailing, windsurfing, biking, skiing and much more. I saw some people
at the NYU computer lab who spent countless hours in IRC chats and I
always thought they did not know what they were missing.

The BBS was getting out of hand. Parker once in a while scanned the
messages posted on Bark BBS, found profanity which I did not detect
and admonished me. Datti still did not have any real idea what to do
regarding gathering real valuable marketing information, people kept
filling up my hard drive with junk and I was tired of sitting there
combing messages looking for binary uploads or profanity to delete. I
liked receiving $12.5 for my efforts in my spare time but I was about
to graduate and find myself a real job.
In summer of 1994 there was a revival Woodstock festival and Bark had
a booth there. Both Parker and Datti went but I did not get an
invitation. I was really upset. I like Woodstock area and often went
there camping in the woods and Woodstock itself is an amazing little
town at the foot of a mountain with a Buddhist monastery at the top.
Being not invited to Woodstock festival with Bark upset me. Their
message to me was clear: “you are just a sysop”

In January 1995 after graduating I finally got my first job at a small
software company called “Integrated Software”. I tried juggling both
jobs (out of greed) and came to handle Bark issues during lunch and
after work but it was not working out. Parker was upset that I was not
there when problems happened and my boss at my main job also noticed
that I took very protracted lunches. So I told Parker I could not do
it anymore and would find him a replacement.  The replacement was my
friend Boris who was not doing much with his life and ran a BBS at
home collecting all sorts of files, pirated software, porn, etc. So I
gave the job to him. After that I had little interest in Bark. I had
my new job which at the time paid $34,000 a year and I was golden. My
girlfriend wanted to see more of me, so Bark was slipping into
oblivion for me.
I remember that at the end of 1995 Polygram finally de-funded Bark and
BBS was shutdown. By that time Bark BBS system was replaced with
Macintosh computer and a MacOS-based BBS software package, a fault-
tolerant 2GB hard-drive system and new "high-speed" 54000-baud modems.
Boris later told me that some people on the board went crazy after
they announced that in few weeks Bark was about to cease to exist.
Like the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah some posted very obscene
messages, some came out and declared that they had multiple identities
and were there to create quarrels and mess with people. One “girl” who
was notoriously bad revealed that she was a boy who also logged in
under a different user name and was actually very nice. So he would
log in as this girl start flame wars, then log in as the boy and
respond to her and continue the flame war. I thought that was a bit
crazy to spend your life living through a computer via multiple
personalities. But hey, what did I know? I was just a Russian
immigrant trying to fit in the society which we used to admire so much
from behind the Iron Curtain. Nowadays I can see the many flaws in US
society that lead to depression in kids living in suburban areas
having more than we ever had but with nothing to do in their spare
time. I am sure some of the Bark kids moved on and made something of
themselves. Others… Well, who knows? And who cares? Many people who
were born in US and had huge advantage of having grown up speaking
English, living at home with parents, having time and resources to
study and live interesting lives chose the lives online instead,
possibly because it was easier to pretend to be someone else on the
BBS system than to be themselves in real life. I certainly had an
interesting life since then. I have a great career in software
engineering, work on Wall St., make great money, more than I could
ever dream of, travel around the world, play music (I am now more into
Brazilian and Latin than rock), have my own apartment in the city, a
great girl, and much more a man can ever dream of when he comes to the
Land Of Opportunities, The United States of America.

Cheers,
-Max

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HotCharlie · 2017-05-10 00:37

Hey, so:

I posted [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/bbs/comments/3df0oi/bark_bbs_
and_other_1800_boards/) a year + ago, asking about Bark and other
1-800 boards. I [later found some old QWK mail](https://www.reddit.com
/r/bbs/comments/4o5aln/found_my_old_qwk_mail_anybody_know_how_to_read_
it/) and, with the help of /u/jesseroonie and /u/piranhaphish (fellow
Bark alum, as t'were) was able to read some of it.

Then I started googling. My creepy ass eventually found Mr. Avramenko,
who was kind enough to write this up for us (thanks, Max!).

That "last days of Sodom and Gomorrah" comment made me laugh. The QWK
mail I found happened to be the last packet I ever got off there
and...yeah. It was pretty dramatic. The fake lady that had us all so
pissed went by "Mellissa Hamrick," or, as one user referred to her,
"SMELLPISSA HAMDICK," an epithet which I guess I'm forever doomed to
find hilarious.

It wasn't all flame wars and cuss words, though (and sorry for that,
Max and Boris). For 92-95, in the rural midwest, it was *frikkin
magic* (for me). There wasn't any social media. There wasn't any
internet. There weren't even any BBS's in my local calling area.

I was a kid stuck out in the sticks with a 286 computer and a 2400
baud modem. And yet I was able to communicate with my peers across the
country, in near real-time (dependent on call volume)! It was some
pretty heady shit. I wouldn't say that it was my whole life at the
time, but it was pretty damned supplemental.

Thank you, again, for that wonderful account. And how bout that bio on
Parker Reilly, huh? Had it got out that he was on the *Dumb and
Dumber* soundtrack (which I'm listening to now), we former users may
have "boycotted" that, as well as Polygram. ;)

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max_avramenko · 2017-05-10 14:15

Charlie, why don't you reach out to Parker and ask him to post his
account of Bark here? Could be an interesting read!

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bugtank · 2017-10-04 02:02

Did you ever call party lines?

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ricoxg · 2017-10-15 14:51

I too was a kid living in the middle of no-where, and Bark was my
first big introduction to a larger world.  I was one of the very few
people in my town to even have a computer, much less a modem.  In
fact, I think I still have that old IBM and I'm pretty confident that
I have an old harddrive with some of the traffic from Bark.  I'll see
if I can get it booted and get what I can off of it.

I was one of those lonely kids that spewed a whole lot of really
hateful stuff.  I'm almost afraid to open those files up and see what
my young juvenile self said.

I'd just like to tell Max that his efforts did make a lot of
difference to poor country kids who had no access to the outside world
or differing ideas.  It's easy to forget these days how isolated we
were back then.  Since those days, I've gone on to serve a tour in the
US Army and have started both a company in the cyber industry and a
501(c)(3) that supports veterans as they transition into the civilian
workforce.  Both have been successful, and I don't think it's wrong to
note that the germs of it all probably came from those early days of
trolling Bark BBS.

So while I'm sorry for the horrible stuff I posted, I'm very thankful
to Max for his support on the project and just wanted him to know that
it made a bigger impact on more people than he probably realizes.