Welcome to the Chicago Downtown and Northside Ring, the first and (so far) only Webring focused on life on the North Side of Chicago (believe it or not). If you need to get in touch with me about something ring related, eg. you'd like to join the ring and want to request an appointment to see me to discuss that, you may use the form below. If that form not be in working order, you can also reach me using my homelist. You will need to leave a picture of yourself in the photo gallery for this webring so that I can recognize you, should you wish to set up a meeting. Don't worry, that picture will never be seen by the general public. It is for my viewing alone.

If you'd to get to one of the webrings this ring belongs to, click here. Here is the full description of what this webring is for.

For those living in the Loop, or north of it near the Red, Brown and Purple lines on the El. Your page should be about something that people are invited to visit or participate in, just for the sake of their own enjoyment. Politics, causes or volunteering? No. Hate groups? Definitely no. Theatres, social groups, stamp collecting clubs, your corner coffeehouse or bar, fiction or poetry readings, bungee jumping crossdresser's associations ... whatever you're in a mood for, as long as it's not illegal and people are there to have fun I'll almost certainly say "yes". This ring is here to help people in our area meet each other. I'm trying to run this on the honor system, so please be considerate and honor the purposes of the ring when submitting sites to it.

Let's understand that when I say "hate groups", that's not a codeword for "those who are politically incorrect". The fact that somebody may have an anti-immigration page on his website or have written some scathing anti-feminist satire is of no concern to me. Neither is the fact that she's a charter member of SisterSerpents or PETA. If, on the other hand, somebody's calling for physical harm to be done to somebody because he doesn't care for the person's ethnicity, religion, gender etc., that I do care about and his site will not be welcome on this ring. People are here to have fun. Hatred and ranting aren't fun.

Aside from that ... as long as you honor the purposes of this ring (we're here to play and make friends) you're going to find that I run a pretty mellow show. Are you using HTML or SSNB code? Did you use it as I've laid it out or customized it to your own liking? These things are really not important. All that really matters to me is "can people easily find their way to the ring from your page and navigate it". I want to see a link for "next site", one for "previous site" and one for "ring hub" or "list" (or both, if you wish). Your ring code must be on the page listed on the ring; I don't have time to go hunting for it.

Oh, and yes, you can still use the old version of the navbar, if for some obscure reason you'd actually want to do so, and even link to the old graphic on my page. I used two of them : "north_side.jpg" for the navbar version of the code and "northside-logo.jpg" for the "native" HTML version) At the time of a previous slight revision of the ring's homepage on June 8, 2005), I was using the same free photo I downloaded off the web for both, just for the sake of having a logo, writing "In the near future, though, once I get done shooting a roll of black and white I have in my trusty pentax, I'll go out and put a pair of pictures up that haven't been on a thousand different pages already. Link to one of the logos on my site and it should automatically appear on your page." As you can see, I've since created a new image. (No version is being shot for the native HTML, as that is dropping out of use). But at least, now, both the graphic and the ring logo are my own original work, and there is some satisfaction in that. A scanner is a nice thing to have.

I hope you have fun on this webring, and please do consider signing up for my homelist, where I'll be sure to mention any new members on this ring, as well as relentlessly promote my own sites and discuss them ad nauseum, alas. Thanks for dropping by. (You can use the button below to subscribe, but if you do have a Yahoo membership, logging in and registering on their site is probably a better option). If you don't see our webring's navbar below, you can click here to get to the hub page for the webring version of the Chicago Downtown and Northside ring, here for the Ringsurf version", or here to get to one of the webrings we belong to.

Contact information: If you need to get in touch with me, use the mailform below and an associate will forward any messages (relevant to the business of this webring) to me. This being a low traffic webring, I usually just pick up my messages on the first Tuesday of the month; that's when you should expect to see webring applications acted on.

The graphic below is fed off the provider of this mailform. If you don't see a Bravenet graphic, their server is down and you should not attempt to use this form, as your work will go to waste if you do. Please DO use this form or the mailing list that I mentioned above if you have applied to my ring. In theory, the webring system should send me a notification, however other ringmasters have reported problems with that system in the past.