BRISBEE, Texas -- There are curtains in the communal outhouse, and a froufrou coffee shop on the square. Things just aren't the same here as they used to be.

The fictional cyberspace village of Brisbee was once a dinky little forum, an almost unknown newsgroup dominated by a couple of crusty old characters -- guys mostly. What little action took place did so down by the still.

But now Brisbee is the fastest growing spot on StarText, the Star-Telegram's online information service.

A forum, for those who don't spend a lot of time surfing the Net, is a place where people with similar interests meet to talk back and forth.

The Internet is filled with forums, and local services such as StarText almost always offer one or two. But Brisbee has gone national. It has regular visitors from Wyoming, Florida and Missouri. Anyone with access to the Internet can easily pass through town.

"It has really taken on a life of its own," says StarText's Gerry Barker, one of Brisbee's founders. "It was launched in earnest the later part of 1995 and in the space of 12 months, Brisbee became the No. 1 most populated newsgroup on StarText. It has more messages than any other area, and more activity than any other area."

Brisbee had 12,000 messages posted in the past 12 months. In the last quarter, it has averaged an estimated 1,500 postings a month, giving it about a 3-to-1 advantage over StarText's next closest forum -- Soapbox.

"I have never run across anything like this," Barker says. "Brisbee is unique on the Internet as far as I can tell. It is all self-generated. We don't do anything but provide the framework, then just sit back and watch."

The idea of this fictional town where residents could talk over their backyard fences originated a couple of years ago, when Barker and StarText subscriber Ron Hawpe began talking about Hawpe's travels around the state. Hawpe had discovered a community called Bisbee, and often referred to it in his messages to Barker.

"He would evoke Bisbee in his postings," Barker remembers. "He would talk about the barber shop or the various colorful personalities in Bisbee. I always thought it was like a mystical, fun place, different from anywhere else. I always encouraged Ron to do more of that.

"I told Ron, `You have a great thing going with Brisbee, you ought to keep going.' He pointed out to me that I had misspelled the word -- made Brisbee out of Bisbee -- and he said he really kind of liked it because he felt uncomfortable using a real place."

Hawpe became the reluctant mayor. Another StarText subscriber, Charles Marsh, decided he'd move to town under the name of "Swampy." He runs the Brisbee still and the hair restorer business.

Another resident runs the coffee shop, one set up a grape jelly business, another patrols the streets at night and tells everyone when it's time for lights out.

Pat Crowley, a retired graphics artist who lives near Poolville in Wise County, found Brisbee by accident. She read someone's comments about "skinning a cat" and responded. Her own cat, Scrappy, has now become the town mascot and even has a forum of his own.

"It is a mixture of fantasy and truth in Brisbee," she said. "It seems there are very creative people in the forum. Besides just acting silly, we post experiments -- visual graphics -- and we find it to be an outlet for fun."

Crowley says one of Brisbee's most endearing qualities is that it is a friendly place where no one attacks you for your point of view, or politics.

That's primarily why Brisbee was created, says Hawpe, the town mayor.

"I sensed a great need for a forum of that kind," he says. "The weaker writers, and by that I mean not very aggressive, were being stomped on. Women were being left out all together. We needed a place that was friendly. A place where people could begin to write and get help."

Barker says Brisbee has now attracted a lot of female users. Some of them were drawn by Hawpe's playful role as an old coot who didn't want the town spoiled by frilly, lacy, girly things.

"One of the first things the women did was open a coffee shop on the town square," Barker remembers. "They also decided to hang curtains in the outhouse. They established a library and a bookmobile. They put paintings on the wall in the saloon."

Betty Pantazis, a StarText subscriber from Dallas, is one of the town's female residents. She never thought of herself as a writer, but being an active member of the Brisbee community has forced her to try her hand.

"Never in my life did I write," she says, "until I got into this Brisbee thing. I thought it would be a good place to test myself as a writer. I was overwhelmed at the response; I couldn't believe it."

Pantazis created two major events for Brisbee: First, she crafted a daily story about a lost gold mine in the area. It was a daily soap opera that ran for nearly a month.

Then, last spring, she decided the town ought to have a rock festival, so she created Brisbeestock. Janis Joplin came to town for the event, but she stayed tanked most of the time and slept under the psychedelic bus the town had painted. Most everybody camped out at the town lake.

"There is a place out there for kind of role-playing forums," says Barker. "Places where we can create characters and you can maybe adopt a personality to be online. It is kind of cyber-acting."

Barker has met most of Brisbee's residents personally. He finds the characters are far more uninhibited than their creators.

"What people tend to do behind the computer screen in their home is usually larger than life," he says. "In person a lot of them are more quiet and more reserved."

Brisbee is their playground. The town motto says it all: "Brisbee -- where time don't matter and age don't count."

Art Chapman has been a featured Star-Telegram columnist for over twenty years. His articles are featured online in Texas at Large.

This article originally appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on January 25, 1997. Reprint courtesy of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and with Art Chapman's permission.

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