Cal fans, what’s your experience been like with California Golden Blogs?

What the experience been like to be part of the California Golden Blogs community?

LeonPowe: The experience? I never really expected to have CGB be that big a part of my life. I may have gone to one Go Bears list-serv meet up (Northside LaVal's Shoutout), but being overseas, it's really helped me stay in touch with Cal sports—and UC Berkeley the university. I've also stayed at CGBers apartments in Taipei, met up with them in Sydney and Ft. Worth, and obviously the CGB tailgate in Berkeley. I've found out what happened to some of my real life Cal friends via CGB (shout out to Seth Fenton and standing in the front of the line at basketball games) and we've celebrated, commiserated, and even mourned real life things together. Here's to hopefully ten more years—assuming that we're not connected by some sort of neural net and have chips implanted in our brains in the next decade.

boomtho: In terms of the community, the thing that struck me instantly—and is still true—is that CGB doesn't take Cal, sports, or itself too seriously. Other sports blogs treat every game like an epic match-up and every loss like the end of the world, but CGB is different—partially by virtue of who the founders were and partially by the very nature of California Golden Bears sports.

Ruey Yen: The best part about writing for CGB is that I had next to no expectation of myself as a writer/journalist/sports-experts, but the CGB community is mostly very encouraging. I have always considered myself to be a big fan of all the Cal sports, but that fandom has easily been kicked up to another level or two thanks to my involvement with CGB. It is also nice to know that now when I do go back to Berkeley for a football game (like in 2014) or basketball game (like earlier this year) or popular road trip like to Austin last year, I will be able to hang out with CGB people in real life before/after the games.

Vincent S: I stayed because of the community. Y'all are incredible people who indiscriminately accepted anyone as long as they loved Cal. I never felt out of place online (despite not knowing anything about sports)—an impression that didn't change when I started meeting everyone in person. Even though I can't make it up to as many games as before, I know that whenever I drop into Berkeley, the people of CGB will always be there. That's a great feeling.