A Blast From The Past!

mantic · Post by **mantic** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 6:41 pm

I'm working on a post for Sharpologist about the "early days" (!) of the modern old school wet shaving movement. I was thinking back on the old MSN Wetshaver days and I got to wondering if the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine" had anything on it. Sure enough:

Ah, memories, memories.

gsgo · Post by **gsgo** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 7:40 pm

Instant classic!

Thanks Mark.

Craig_From_Cincy · Post by **Craig_From_Cincy** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 7:58 pm

Nothing ever completely disappears from the internet!

fallingwickets · Post by **fallingwickets** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 4:34 am

thanks for sharing.

clive

brothers · Post by **brothers** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 4:40 am

Can you read the posts, or is a screen shot all we can get? If all we can get is the front page, then it is not accurate to say it hasn't disappeared from the internet. I was under the impression that all of the postings have been deleted. Wouldn't it be great if I'm wrong!

gsgo · Post by **gsgo** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 5:00 am

It would be interesting to see what they thought of G.F. Trumpers back then.

brothers · Post by **brothers** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 5:06 am

I do know they were all crazy about FM Fraser's, Proraso, and VDH.

jww · Post by **jww** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 5:35 am

Brilliant, classic, etc.

mantic · Post by **mantic** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 6:06 am

brothers wrote:Can you read the posts, or is a screen shot all we can get? If all we can get is the front page, then it is not accurate to say it hasn't disappeared from the internet. I was under the impression that all of the postings have been deleted. Wouldn't it be great if I'm wrong!

Unfortunately, no. When I click on a post it re-directs me to Microsoft Skydrive.

bernards66 · Post by **bernards66** » Tue Apr 30, 2013 8:48 pm

Yeah, it's a shame. Don kept those archives up as long as he could, but he was quite ill and eventually they were lost. There were a hell of a lot of interesting threads you may be sure. Hell, I think I've forgotten half of what I knew back then...seriously. That one part of a page is from Feb. 2005 which was right after Corey Greenberg did his bit on traditional wet shaving on the Good Morning America network TV show. Those few minutes got this whole trip more attention than almost everything else put together. Vendors sold out of Trumpers Violet within 24 hours they said ( chuckle ). It may have been crude in format but it was a great shave forum.
Regards,
Gordon

mantic · Post by **mantic** » Wed May 01, 2013 12:07 pm

bernards66 wrote:Yeah, it's a shame. Don kept those archives up as long as he could, but he was quite ill and eventually they were lost. There were a hell of a lot of interesting threads you may be sure. Hell, I think I've forgotten half of what I knew back then...seriously. That one part of a page is from Feb. 2005 which was right after Corey Greenberg did his bit on traditional wet shaving on the Good Morning America network TV show. Those few minutes got this whole trip more attention than almost everything else put together. Vendors sold out of Trumpers Violet within 24 hours they said ( chuckle ). It may have been crude in format but it was a great shave forum.
Regards,
Gordon

Don? Wasn't Ray DuPont admin'ing that group?

I remember my early days on MSN Wetshavers well. My first post was entitled "Excited Newbie" and I talked about getting a shave at this place called "The Art Of Shaving" in Las Vegas. I had no idea it was a franchise.

This was also right about the time Arran's Aromatics had their vetiver shaving cream dropping into TJ Maxx. Trumper's-quality shaving cream at a fraction of the price.

Post by **drmoss_ca** » Wed May 01, 2013 1:56 pm

But Ray left when a couple of hellraisers called Vince and Joel posted reviews of products. Ray didn't want positive reviews of products that didn't come from Classic Shaving posted there and deleted them, then banned J & V. I'm afraid I expressed my sorrow at this turn of events and Ray chastised me, saying I wouldn't want flyers for another doctor being posted in my waiting room (if only he knew the truth of that!) SMF was created as a direct result.

I later had some long telephone chats with Ray and we made up. He was a victim of the essential problem of having a forum run by a vendor, and that is why we at SMF are very concerned to stay aloof from the profit motive. Yes, I know that one of the founders later wanted to "monetize" SMF and went on to do just that elsewhere, as was his right.

After Ray left 'Wetshavers' it was resurrected (all old posts being lost) by Don, and then it amalgamated with the smaller group 'The Wetshavers' under the control of the guys who ran 'The Wetshavers.' It dwindled and was pretty quiet by the time MSN was shut down.

Chris

Dave T · Post by **Dave T** » Thu May 02, 2013 10:40 am

The original MSN Wetshavers group was started by Charles Roberts of Enchante in Austin, Texas. I don't remember the year. That's a whole new string in itself. When he abruptly closed it, Ray jumped in and took it, and, I believe, Don did too, but neither one knew what the other had done, so there were two Wetshavers sites. (I'm a little fuzzy about that last part.)

The post called "Cutting Forms?" in the screenshot Mark posted was most likely about the shaving method Charles Roberts promoted.

Dave

Esoteric83 · Post by **Esoteric83** » Thu May 02, 2013 12:14 pm

Any shave shops in London - Adorable

I happened to stumble upon here around that time and never really took to posting elsewhere.

2005-2006 was in interesting time period. I cut class when the postage tracking number told me my new and first Merkur had arrived a day early. I only regret taking for granted the seemingly limitless opportunities and sources for products at the time cause the concept of reformulation was never even close to my radar of thought. Meh, I'll try Coates Lavender next month when I place an order with any of the accessible online purveyors...

mantic · Post by **mantic** » Thu May 02, 2013 7:29 pm

drmoss_ca wrote:...After Ray left 'Wetshavers' it was resurrected (all old posts being lost) by Don, and then it amalgamated with the smaller group 'The Wetshavers' under the control of the guys who ran 'The Wetshavers.'...

Yeah, that's right, I remember that now. But I think Ray was still admin'ing it in the timeframe of the screenshot, wasn't he?

divotmax · Post by **divotmax** » Fri May 03, 2013 7:26 am

I think Ray took over the forum after Charles shut it down and it moved to the MSN location. Seems like there was a lot of confusion what happened to the website and all the information on it. I think I got an email from someone telling me where to find the new site; that must have been the one with Ray running it.