Dear you, person on the Internet:

As these things often do, HEAVEmedia started just under seven years ago as an excuse for a bunch of college kids to not have to give up on their pipe dreams once they graduated. In 2007 Amy Dittmeier, Ryan Peters, Collin Bourdage, Wes Soltis, and Everett Salyer figured that becoming bloggers and starting a website talking all things cool, with a focus on music, would be a great way to keep doing the fun parts of college on the side while doing all the stuff that most people eventually have to do when the time comes. Over the years, Heave has become a lot of different things. A great many people have come and gone, as editors or writers or just well-wishers trying to help a business starting from scratch. The one commonality through all of Heave’s phases, through its transition out of an outright music blog into a home for the well-articulated, super-specific interests of a bunch of Chicago-based (and elsewhere) nerds, was its existence as a labor of love for all involved.

For about the past month, we (this meaning the editorial staff of Heave from here on in) have been driven by one simple bit of phrase: “It’s business as usual until it isn’t anymore.” When we made the incredibly difficult decision to close our doors, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t just peter out. Frankly, that’s why we’re doing it: the remaining Heave management has reached that point in their lives, the one we used to tease older friends about. We knew plenty of people who got married or came into better job opportunities or whatever and started doing all the things that stop you from running a web-based pop culture compendium, but we didn’t see ourselves becoming those people so soon. And so, rather than watch as the remaining editors and writers were whisked off by larger life obligations one by one, we decided to end on a planned note, and go out on terms we could take pride in. So here we are.

Our aim was to never half-ass anything, right up through this week’s wonderful collection of staff lists that you can find at the top of the page. And it’s been so truly heartening to hear from people we’ve never even met about how they’re sad to see Heave go, and to know that this meant as much to other people as it always has to us. But now it’s no longer business as usual, and this is the last thing that’ll be going up on the site. It won’t disappear entirely; in addition to being visible in the smiles of every child, we also need the work to stay online for the sake of everyone who’s contributed material of substantial quality to the site over the years. At the end of the day, that’s why Heave mattered to us. It was never necessarily about ending up rich; we got into the wrong business for that, man. It was about building a home for people who had stuff to say that didn’t quite fit elsewhere. And if that home couldn’t be the best possible one, it was time to call it a day.

And to close as we must, we want to thank everyone who’s written for us over the past years. Without the writing staff we’ve had the privilege of knowing and working with, none of this ever happened. The voyages to SXSW, the anniversary shows, the festival trips, none of it. Though Heave has lived on too many servers over the years to necessarily retain every name, we’d like to profusely thank Meghan Bongartz, Dominick Suzanne-Mayer, Frank Macarthy, Matt Brassil, Chris Osterndorf, Priyu Kulkarni, Anthony Hoffman, Marissa Morales, Ramsey Millison, Mike Alexander, Desiree Mitchell, John-Franklin Dandridge, Josh Watkins, Jonathan Mondragon, Alex Borkowski, Mike Haverty, Joe Anderson, Chuck Rios, Max Alborn, Calhoun Kersten, Michael Roffman, Leah Pickett, Alyssa Vincent, Aileen Morrissey, Will Schneider, Trent Zuberi, Shelby Shaw, Tom Harrison, Nico Lang, Huma Rashid, Patrick Gill, Kyle Thacker, Johnny Coconate, Shelby Mongan, Mike Stern, Adam Cowden, Ben Kessell, Patrick “Quinn” McGee, Cory Clifford, Dan Chruscinski, James Medley, Justin Gainer, Carly Heiser, Tracy Lytwyn, Chloe Stagaman, Sam Willett, Dylan Peterson, Rachel Angres, Andrew Macinder, Anthony Sanders, Matt Consolazio, Mark Jaeschke, Alex Drumm, Adam Himebauch, David Carter, Eric Freeman, Jack Preis, Beth Yeckley, Ben Wadington, Jim Hanke, Elliot Abel, Adam Dittman, Lew Ojeda, Tyler Pistorius, Jake Karlson, David Sitrick, Mark Steffen, Lara Wagner, Miguel Harvey, Ryan Schenkel, Selden Paterson, Tim Munroe, Seetha Sankaranaryan, Steve Groom, and every single other person who’s ever contributed to Heave in some way, shape, or form.

It’s time to go drink about this. It’s been business as usual since 2007, and today it’s not anymore. But it’s been a damned good time, so thanks for all that.

Regards,

The staff of HEAVEmedia