To fill the void left by the imminent closing of WaccoBB, Townsy Sebastopol has opened a new bulletin board called Townsy Cafe, which opened to comments on Jan. 22.
Townsy Cafe hopes to carry on WaccoBB’s mission of creating deeper community connections through the discussion of both local issues and broader cultural ideas. We also hope to keep alive the WaccoBB tradition of connecting people through the exchange of goods, either for free or for sale.
The goal of Townsy Cafe is to give a home to WaccoBB’s many users, but also to call back many of the users WaccoBB lost in recent years to flashier competitors like NextDoor, which, while it’s very good for finding lost cats, often doesn’t go much deeper than that.
We hope everyone in Sebastopol and west county who is looking to find a deeper and richer sense of community will join in the conversation.
As of now, Townsy Cafe has several categories open for discussion:
- Political issues in Sebastopol/Sonoma County, as well as National/Intl politics.
- Books/Articles/Podcasts, where you can discuss and recommend your favorites. As a part of this section, there’s also quote board where you can share your favorite quotes.
- Family life and parenting.
- Housing
- Free and for sale items
- We also have sections for Recommendations and Appreciations
- Finally, there's a section called Mutual Aid, where you can share your time and talents with fellow humans for free or trade.
We are just beginning to create and populate the discussion boards, but they won’t really come to life until people decide to use them. Early users of the board will likely be the ones who’ll get to decide on its future shape – determining new categories by the nature of their posts.
WaccoBB’s founder Barry Chertov announced on Jan. 4 that WaccoBB would be closing to new posts as of Jan. 22 and would shut down completely six months after that. This week, he extended the closing date for new posts by two weeks to help Townsy Cafe get on its feet.
If you’re looking for a deeper way to connect with your community – especially in these peculiarly isolating times -- we hope you’ll take a look at Townsy Cafe to see if it’s your cup of tea.
Find it here: https://www.townsycafe-westcounty.com/