LAFF

From WikiFur, the furry encyclopedia.

Lake Area Furry Friends (also known as LAFF) is a regional social group and mailing list focused on the northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and northwestern Indiana, including the Chicago, Milwaukee, and Madison metropolitan areas.

1 History
2 The present
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] History

LAFF came into being in 1996 as a more regionally-oriented mailing list than its predecessor, the ChiFur mailing list, which was focused around Chicago. It has since become the dominant furry group in the region and has branched off into cyberspace to LiveJournal and MySpace communities, moderated by Artemis and Ash M. Cairo respectively, to the Second Life group, founded by Sema JayHawk and helped moderated by Blazger and Steel the Warrior. Its main website was created in 1998 by Aureth on his Cornwuff Press site. Artemis took over as webmaster in 1999; he revamped and ran the site on catbox.com until 2007 when, under the direction of Ash M. Cairo, Ken Redtail and Zel, a new website was created using a wiki format, that was later redesigned and reformatted by Timoran.

[edit] The present

Currently, the community is based around the "LAFF mailing list," which is hosted at catbox.com by puma. The mailing list is primarily used to organize social functions, including two monthly bowling outings (organized by Timoran, Rayven Wolffe and Blazger), which features karaoke and followed by multiple after-bowling parties, including SliderCon (organized by Blazger), as well as monthly softball games in the summer (organized by Stevie Maxwell), and the annual trip to Noah's Ark Waterpark in the Wisconsin Dells (organized by Hakeber). The year culminates in a grand New Year's Eve party in northern Illinois. In past years, that's been organized by various furries, including Linnaeus and Riley West Wolf, but in 2007, the party split up into various parties, including two main parties located in northern and western Chicagoland. Numerous weekly events also take place, as well as one-off outings organized by community members. Many members of LAFF also volunteer their time for Midwest FurFest as staff members, gophers, or support their hometown convention by being a sponsor.