Just a thought. A new Sanddog?

[1969ivan1]

Barb and I are in.

[SurfLung]

Count Me In!

Sorry I didn't respond sooner! AND let me know if I can be of help in any way

[8dust]

Guess I picked just the right time to pop my head up out of the sand! I'm absolutely in!!! Would love to see everyone. Figure on me and a +1.

Fredo

[USdiver]

I'm always up for some vintage diving in the Florida springs. Count me in.

[SurfLung]

Let's do it THIS year and set a date to start working on it?

[simonbeans]

Eben,
WE ARE. Stay tuned.

[SurfLung]

Oh Man... Allan you just made my day, week, and month!

[Ron]

Since you guys asked:

The main problem with vintage diving people, and divers in general really, is that they are opiniated and kind of abrasive jerks (me included.) Doubly so in this group in my experience. Ten years ago, I warned everyone that we needed to get people my age interested in this. I made a vintage diving course approved by PADI even. I got so much bullshit for it that at one point I didn't even log in here for over a year. Sam Miller, who is now dead, called it "A shameless cash grab." Which at the time was hilarious because I was making 350 bucks an hour in my day job at that point and literally only charged the price of the C card for the course during a time period in which I bought at least 5 Rolexes. In fact I think 3-4 people here have the C card from me.

This is the end result of being curmudgeons. Now there are 20 of you left, and nobody does this anymore. The forum metrics indicate that this place is not even dying...it's dead. Besides hackers and spammers there are about 25 people who browse. I mean you guys aren't dumb, you see what vintage scuba gear does on Ebay now. It sits there. Even by Bryan's old store metrics the high point of this was about 2012. It wasn't the Phoenix or the Argonaut Kraken who killed this off. It was old age, heart disease, etc. We have lost at least ten of the people who use to drive conversations here.

A thing I have learned at 44: Nobody younger than you cares how you did it. Example: If you paid 12 grand for your house, or if you raised 5 kids off a trucker's salary back when America wasn't a failed state and you owned 3 houses on a 50K salary. They also don't care for how you want them to do things. They care for how they want to do things. You can adjust, or die. You can be Blockbuster Video (who?) or Netflix. The VFW and American Legion are presently learning this lesson in spectacular fashion as posts all over America close due to lack of membership. The VFW complains, but nobody my age wants to sit next to an alcoholic chain-smoker who beats his wife and calls everyone Asian racist names. So instead they complain and get smaller.

https://www.cbs17.com/news/vfw-works-to ... ince-1992/

If you want there to be a vintage scuba diving, then you need to figure out what guys in their 20's like about it and do that. That's called market research. you cannot do the same stuff over and over again and expect to win. There are less people here talking because you are all dying off. Such is life. You need to find guys in your 20's to replace you or it's going to be me, Rob, and Chris here in 5 years. Most of you that do post don't even dive anymore. Which is fine mind you, but again proves my point.

To summarize:

The path out of this it to grow the community of people who participate, by figuring out what those people would like and doing that. Otherwise roughly less than 20 of you will go to whatever events we hold, and each year it will shrink until then there are none. If you want a good example of that, look at Martha Stewart. She went from a billionaire to an inmate, back to a billionaire, reinventing herself for the social media generation in spectacular fashion and making herself rich again.

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/sto ... th-finesse

You have to adhere to the Stockdale Paradox:

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” — Admiral James Stockdale.

The brutal facts of this are that it's dying, because we are failing at keeping it alive. The good news is we can fix that, if we choose to do so. But we are a group of people with no centralized leadership function so that probably won't happen.

I shall go back to the depths of the website now.

[swimjim]

Well Ron you are quite correct. We are dead in the water right now. That is why I instigated another Sand Dog. It's an attempt to keep Vintage Diving alive. I have attempted to raise awareness and recruit divers into to getting into the Vintage side of diving. The guys I dive with from Minnesota have been doing the same thing. We have had our successes! I remember your posts about recruiting younger divers to "grow" the sport". I am behind you 100 percent!
I'll do what I can, but I am officially an old fart at this point of my life. I hope all is well with you. I really appreciate your efforts to keep this forum afloat! THANK YOU FOR YOUR EFFORTS!

Swimjim

[SurfLung]

Hey Ron, good post. Lots of truths there. Here are some thoughts I have had on the subject...

1. New people seem to use Facebook, X, and such instead of forums. Our friend Sheriffdiver Ron has started at least two facebook groups for diving at Fortune Pond and Wazee... And darned if that isn't where the new people find out about us vintage guys and joins us. And that plays directly into your comment that young people don't care to hear about our old ways. Facebook posts just scroll into oblivion... there isn't a handy 12 year history to reference all of the handy posts like we have here... But the new people don't care about that.
- The last Fortune Trip had a HUGE turnout but most were modern style divers that learned about the dive spot from Rons Facebook groups.

2. Vintage Events - We've been scheduling our vintage diving trips and posting the schedule for years. In many cases personally contacting people who have expressed interest. But when it comes right down to it, they'll always have some conflict that prevents them from coming. The one reply that really urks me is, "I'll try to make the next one..." Geez how do you know we'll HAVE a next one if nobody comes to THIS one?
- Over on the other forum, I saw one guy posting, "Why aren't there any vintage events to go to?" To which I responded, "There ARE... Why don't you come to the events we've been posting here?" His response was that I was too "Harsh"... I will admit maybe I was sarcastic

3. Promotions, etc. SwimJim and Ron have put on veritable FEASTS of chili and brats with all the fixin's and every diver there, vintage or modern, was welcome and well fed. Ron has even been offering door prizes... Really fun especilly for younger divers. They have to find a numbered golf ball and turn it in to Ron for a prize... And the prizes... Some have been a Double Hose Regulator and some have been Chicken in a Biscuit crackers.

4. FaceBook Successes - Ron's Facebook efforts have drawn many divers who basically were sold on our Fortune Pond and Wazee locations. Our Fall Colors Trip had actually too many divers... SwimJim mentioned that he had never seen the entry point silted up so bad. But these weren't there for the Vintage diving. We HAVE gained at least one dedicated new vintage guy... goes by Michigan Diver on the other forum. VERY into rebuilding his original overpressure reg and recently acquired Bryan's triple tanks... So there's a "win".

- Like you I have been frustrated. I'd spend a bunch of time editing a video and posting a dive report, etc. And the response is crickets. But I realize that doesn't have to frustrate me. A lot of people don't dive simply because they don't have a buddy. I have 4-5 regular and active diving buddies and we all dive vintage to some degree when we get together. And I enjoy show and telling about it... even if my buddies are the only ones that read it!

- As for Sand Dog... I'm tentatively planning a fun trip... to include Sand Dog, a visit with my son and his wife in Texas, and maybe a swing up to see Bill and Francie Tucker to do some more winter diving with AntiqueDiver and SeaWolf!

Here are a couple of photos SwimJim took of me and Ron at the Fall Colors dive last month. Note the pristine "Jack the Frogman" tanks on Ron. Note the cool "charcoal gray" wetsuit I'm wearing to be like Sea Hunt!

[Ron]

Yeah I mean to be fair I still dive vintage gear fairly often. I live close to the water so sometimes I go right after work even and just dive solo. I just don't really post about it because I don't really care that much.

I mean you've certainly hit on it. Divers are asses man. Especially older divers. I think as you age, there comes this presumption of experience and wisdom. That's not always true. As an example, I got a lecture from some boomer the other day at work and then had to explain to him that I own my house and everything in it, and he has like 3 home equity loans and is poor, therefore he shouldn't give me advice about money because...he's an idiot with money. I think part of being a continuous learner is to value knowledge over age. I know a lot of old, poor, dumb guys with no health care. I think with the amount of things you can do now, a lot of people don't have time for that. Like I'm not going to argue on the internet anymore. 25 year old me did that. 44 year old me? Eh. As the bible says, "Do not cast your pearls before swine." The sin of the old dude is that old dudes think they've earned the right to be listened to, and in most cases that simply isn't actually true. That's why they get ignored into oblivion, and their organizations die out. People vote with their feet. People even do that with relatives. I have relatives nobody visits, because they are asses. Ain't nobody got time for that.

I think we could figure out where younger people gather, which according to ChatGPT is YouTube and Instagram. Facebook is primarily for older GenX and Boomers. For example I don't even have a Facebook. Pretty much nobody I know in my age range does. It's a place for Boomers to complain about politics. We could build up YouTube and IG. We could draw people into vintage diving by creating things that gather attention. We could keep the forum as a sort of flight log of the history of vintage diving, to your point. In sales training, you call this AIDA. Attention, interest, decision, action. We do not draw a lot of attention, and therefore we do not create a lot of interest. This place is, and always should be, the logbook for the 5% of guys who are super into vintage diving. In the same way most divers never use Scubaboard because It's strictly for crazy people.

Things like videos of people vintage diving are cool. If I type #vintagescubadiving into Instagram, I get a bunch of weird equipment videos about hard hat diving gear and some double hose displays, but nothing of people actually...diving. The part that makes diving vintage equipment cool is that you feel like you are Pete Gimbel about to cut a hole in the Andrea Doria when you do it. I think if we created a lot of attention, we'd get interest. Interest leads to decisions to participate, and actions to buy. Not a lot of videos of people diving vintage gear on YouTube and Instagram.

I've never gotten a person to wear vintage gear and had them not love it. They love the minimalism, the adventure, the sense of flying, and the history. It's not like we don't have an interesting sport here. I mean I think you guys probably love it for the same reason. You feel like you are about to go put a satchel charge on some Italian merchant ship, which is awesome.

I think it we had good socials, and then we had a sort of cottage industry linked from here with people who made stuff (harnesses, labels, repair parts, etc) and that cottage industry made up enough of a breath and depth of equipment that a guy could buy stuff and it would be serviceable to use, then people would do it. That and training. I thing that 3 pronged approach of socials, gear, and training would be a good start.

Check out this page from Section Hiker. It shows you, in one place, where to get all the things you need to ultralight backpack:

https://sectionhiker.com/cottage-gear-m ... directory/

Pretty cool right? It's a one stop shop for stuff you need. In fact, I used it myself.

To end this rant:

-Socials for attention
-Cottage industry landing page for purchases
-Equipment and training for divers

I'm sure I missed a bunch of things, but those 3 stand out.

[BigSwell]

Trying not to hijack this thread too much but... this is too damn funny. I don't use social media for anything, I mean zippo. I may look at f8Kbook and instaf8gram once in a while for the purty pictures of dive gear and chicks diving in bikinis acting like the water isn't cold (their cans say another thing) as a 'lurker' without having an account... but to keep up with stuff, are you kidding? Seriously now... and to think the guy who runs the show at those 2 dinosaurs is younger than all of us? His yacht was down here in the Sandy Eggo for a month or so recently getting a retrofit of some sort, and he never came down to see it. That thing is HUGE, like longer than a football field. How often do you think he or his family use that????? Not enough to justify the daily operational expenses, I can tell you that with 100% certainty. As they say, The difference between a man and boy is the size of his toy... or something like that. And the stupidity of what they spend their manchigo on. Now the Atomic's yacht is something to see and be seen on, the dive locker alone on it is a work of art and it gets well used. I think even U-Tube is starting to fall off with the younger crowd, something call Tik-Tok, Tik-Tok, BOOM is taken all the fun out of the interweb, that is until it gets banned here. What ever happened to MySpace, Netscape and NCSA TelNet BTU???? And I'm a ripe-olde 54yo! ;{}

https://www.boatinternational.com/yacht ... superyacht