Blog smackdown in Ridge

January 27, 2007

By Matthew Lysiak
The Brooklyn Paper

Two rival Bay Ridge blogs reached the one-million-hit landmark this month — and promptly started attacking each other.

The online chat forums — bayridge. com and bayridgetalk.com — just can’t seem to get along.

It all started when John Malloy got kicked off bayridge.com a few times last summer — “for no reason at all,” he claims.

“I wanted to participate in a local online forum and this guy [the site’s administrator] was just banning anyone he didn’t like,” said Malloy, who retaliated by starting bayridgetalk.com and posting a new cyberspace Bill of Rights. That was when the cyber-fur started to fly.

“John, it will NOT work,” the administrator from bayridge.com posted at the time. “I can’t wait to say I told you so (I am one of those). So if [the rest of] you want to curse your ass off, call each other names, use ethnic slurs, just head on over there and enjoy, folks.”

But eight months later, it looks like both sites are here to stay — and one local official has taken notice.

“I like to check both sites,” Community Board 10 District Manage Josephine Beckmann said. “That’s where I first heard about the bed-bug epidemic.”