"All good things come to an end" Chaucer 1374

The first message on the Overflow at 79th group on Yahoo Groups appeared on July 7, 1999. The discussion group was started after several email exchanges between Ron Egan and Tim Allman discussing the South Shore Neighborhood in the '50's and '60's. The group was intended to be a place for the South Shore diaspora to get together and talk about the old days. The Overflow started slowly but eventually became popular and logged over 37,000 messages on the Yahoo site.

In 2005, the group moved to Google Groups where over 700 members posted thousands of messages in over 6500 topics. The discussions centered around life in the South Shore Neighborhood of Chicago in the '1950's and '60's. As time went on, the members began to discuss other topics at the Google site. In order to retain focus on the original goal of the group, a new site was started called the 'Overflow Pub and Coffee Shop'. The 'PubTics' site was started to keep politics in a seperate location.

On Jan 1, 2014 I have retired the Overflow site and no messages will be posted after this date. The message archive will remain viewable by anyone but no replies will be possible. The Overflow Pub and Pubtics will remain in operation for now. Info is available at the website: https://sites.google.com/site/overflowat79th/

Traffic on the original Overflow site has dropped drastically. This is not unusual for discussion groups. Once all of the topics have been hashed over dozens of times, there isn't much to talk about any more. Discussion groups like the Overflow are really old technology. The concept was invented by two friends of mine, Randy Suess and Ward Christiansen in 1979 before the internet was available. Modern sites like Twitter and Facebook have taken over the 'social media' realm with much better/flashier features.

Thanks to all who contributed in any way.

It was a great run and we enjoyed all of it.
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This is the archive of discussions on the Overflow at 79th group on Google. The site was closed to new entries on January 1, 2014.

Chicago's South Shore Neighborhood in the '50's and '60's.

A place to talk about the old days on the Southeast side of Chicago where everyone knew what the 'Overflow' was.

The Overflow

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