My name is John Bougiamas and this is the story of this website.
It was way back in 1997 after I had just started one of the earliest iterations of what was to become 360 Consultants when myself and several of my colleagues decided we wanted to find a spot to wind down after a long week as “tech entrepreneurs”.
Having lived in Syosset on and off since 1984 I was very familiar and in love with the hamlet of Oyster Bay where I remember many times riding my bicycle to the village, walking my dog in Roosevelt Park or going to the beaches. Oyster Bay was more than a pitstop to Bayville or Centre Island for me, it was a destination.
We decided on Canterbury Ales as our “Cheers” and spent the next 9 months networking, eating and drinking (one of our party even took part in the CA Satin Jacket Passport, though he never did get his jacket). As the winter turned into spring and fall I rediscovered walking along the downtown of Oyster Bay and the history of this beautiful hamlet and decided to build a website dedicated to the village. Thus this site was born.
At that time (1998) the official government entities (town and hamlet) did not have a official web presences and my site became the defacto source for all things Oyster Bay. Our “news” consisted of links to the Guardian and the Enterprise-Pilot (some things never change) and we did expand our search area to the larger communities of Centre Island, Bayville and Cold Spring Harbor, but ultimately our focus was and continues to be the hamlet of Oyster Bay.
This is the 4th Redesign of the Website. I have the 2nd and 3rd iterations, but no longer can locate the files for the first site. If you look at the wayback machine, this site went live on December 12, 1998. Now I believe we were actually up a little bit earlier than that but for our purposes our anniversary will be every December 10. This coincides with my son Theodore’s birthday and will make it easy to remember and celebrate.
I hope you find this site a helpful resource and if you are ever in town and see me tooling around town in my Jeep Wrangler, say hey there John, I saw your website!
From the desk of John Bougiamas
March 12, 2015