I’ve restyled our message-board community, the Never Was Lounge. The black-and-yellow colors and neon sign harken back to the glory days of the Smoking Lounge, which was our message board when we were still The Gatehouse. When The Gatehouse became Never Was, the Smoking Lounge was renamed the Never Was Lounge.
The lounge opened in January 2008. When Brass Goggles launched their own steampunk forum that year, we had hoped to merge with them, but it soon became clear that they would not allow discussion of dieselpunk, politics or anything risqué or controversial, so there remained a good reason for the Smoking Lounge to exist.
Others came and went. SteamPunk Magazine (no longer published) ran their own community for a time, The Gaslamp Bazaar. It is gone. Gothic Steam Fantastic had a forum. It is gone. Wings of Steam created a community. It is gone. There was a Retrofuturist Society. It is gone. Club of Clockwork Gentlemen is still online but dead. Dieselpunks.org closed in 2020 after almost a decade. Now even The Steampunk Forum at Brass Goggles is down. (Some of its members can be found on Spare Goggles.)
The lounge has been online without interruption, and I intend to keep the lights on for as long as I can pay the bills. Why don’t you stop by and say hi?
