Hands Up Is Dead, Long Live HandsUp (and Texas Is Dead, Too)

Yep, it finally — and I mean fucking finally — happened. After years of limping along, the denizens of the venerable Hands Up Houston Message Board at last got sick of all the annoying-as-hell spambots and essentially tossed the board off the bridge. Sure, it’s still there, but it’s primarily populated at this point by said spambots and a handful of diehards, and nearly all of the old posts have been deleted.

Happily, not one but two new message boards have sprung up in its place. There’s the new HandsUp Houston board, started up by expat Houstonian Marshall Preddy, and then there’s Texas Is Dead, which popped up independently by way of (I think) scenester Tony Balls.

Will both survive the test of time? Not a clue; we’ll have to wait and see. I’m happy as hell to see something rise up in place of the old HUM board, and hey, two heads are better than one & all that. I’m a little more fond of the design to the new HandsUp board, I’ll admit, but I’m digging the Texas Is Dead logo & organization more, so it balances out. I’ll be signing up for both of ’em & checking as regularly as I can. (Hrm. Now I just need to see if there’re RSS feeds, like there used to be for the old HUM board…)

So here’s a heartfelt salute farewell to HUM, may the old girl roll on into the annals of H-town scene history…