It started back in 2000 with a message board known as “The Salsero’s Corner”, which was a yahoo group. It began as a central source for people to discuss the most common aspects of the Salsa community. Piero, from Washington DC, was the moderator, and we had our regular members that would chime in on topics ranging from “On1 vs On2”, the meaning of Clave, NY and LA style, competitions, quality of teaching, basically the same stuff people spend time talking about now. This was before Facebook, myspace, and other social networks. This was before youtube and even before iMambo.tv. This was just a room full of people shooting the breeze through their workdays. Certain personalities rose to the top of the message board, notably a character known as richie_rumbero, who had a passion for Salsa music, artists, and the underbelly of Salsa that so many people miss out on nowadays.
The great thing about Salsero’s Corner is that there were no pictures, no videos, no 140 character limitations. Advertisements were controlled, so there was no spam. All of a persons personality had to come through their writing. you could pretty quickly see if a person was an idiot, or insightful, or worth the time to read.One day we started getting posts from a screename known as “On2”. his response were more thoughtful than the norm, and he would talk speak as intelligently about motorcycles, or search engine optimization, or housing refinancing, as he did about dance shoes, timing, or turn patterns.
Then came a little day known as September 11, 2001. This was a day that changed the course of the world, and that salserocorner user “On2” was in the middle of it all. His next post on the Salsero’s Corner was “Survived the World Trade Center Attack” and we all were stunned by what America had gone through, and what he had witnessed. Shaka Brown began talking more with him, on the message board and eventually off, and ended up finding so many parallels in their lives that it was beyond remarkable. That was the beginning of a lot of ideas that came to fruition, and a friendship that has continued to this day. That’s it in a nutshell.