URNotAlone.com – a Brief History

Posted By URNotAlone Member Nov 30, 1999
Hi everyone, thought it might be nice to tell you a little something about Vicky and I, something about the history of URNotAlone and something about Dan, without whom, URNotAlone would never have become what you see today…

URNotAlone.com – Vicky and Jon

We’re a couple and have been together since November of 1991. We used to live in Boston… downtown… a few doors down from Jacques Cabaret. In June of 2009 we relocated to Hollywood, FL. We’re a typical couple, we love and care about one another deeply and we have a wonderful relationship. We have a monogamous relationship… although, on occasion, we’ll share a playmate together:-)

URNotAlone.com – About Jon

I was born and raised in the Boston area. I was born in November 1955 and I’m 5’8″, 160lbs., with brown hair and hazel eyes. I have a teenage daughter by a previous marriage and see my ex and my daughter often. I love to travel, although these days, most of my work keeps me in Boston and life is pretty hectic so I don’t travel much these days. Some of my favorite things include: Single Malt Scotches, French Food, Cars, Science Fiction Books and Movies, hanging out at Jacques Cabaret (you might say it’s my “Cheers” where everyone knows my name:-), dare I say… Porno… and, of course, TGirls:-) I’m normally a pretty quiet, introverted person around people I don’t know well… it takes me a while to loosen up and get talkative. I’m not really a people person… more of a thinker I guess.

As for my sexual preference, I don’t identify myself as gay, I’m obviously not straight… I like women and I like TGirls, so… I guess that makes me… bisexual? Funny, but I’m always asked about this and never really think about it unless asked… I guess my philosophy on this is, what difference does it make… we only live once, if we can find something that makes us happy… something that doesn’t harm anyone else… we should just go for it… we shouldn’t question it, we shouldn’t care what other people think, we should just be thankful to have found something and someone who gives us pleasure and makes us happy 🙂 Too many people spend too much trying to psychoanalyze themselves and too little time being themselves.

URNotAlone.com – About Vicky

Vicky was born and raised in Puerto Rico and has lived in the Boston area since early in 1980. She’s 5’7″, 130lbs., with brown, sometimes black, sometimes blonde hair and brown eyes. Vicky has been a Performer, hosting Latino Nights in some of the clubs in the Boston area, although she gave performing up a couple of years ago. She was a model for our other site, ModelTS (now defunct), she loves to cook, she’s not into cars… at all:-), she loves dancing, traveling and unlike me, Vicky is very extroverted, a social butterfly and a real people person.

Vicky loves Latin movies, fashion, make-up and educational shows amongst other things. As for Vicky’s sexual preference… she likes men and also likes to occasionally Transform a good looking guy into a pretty girl for both of us to enjoy:-)

About URNotAlone

First let me say that I’m going to use the term TGirl to cover Crossdressers, Transvestites, Transexuals (Pre and Post), Drag Queens and all the other various terms that cover those that are part of the M2F Transgendered Community. I personally feel it’s the most Generic Term that I can use and it’s the term I personally prefer to use… forgive me if you don’t particularly care for this term or don’t feel that it covers what I feel it covers.

URNotAlone was born back in 1996. I wanted to learn how to build a website and was trying to think of a topic that would hold my interest (I’m not good at just playing around with things… I need a goal to get going). I was traveling quite a bit around this time and one of my friends suggested I start a listing of Drag Bars since I seemed to know where to find them in every city I traveled to:-) It clicked and URNotAlone was born as a site to come to if you wanted to find out where the Drag Bars were in the cities you were traveling to. You can still find listings, and submit listings of your own, in the Places section of URNotAlone… I’d really like to see more people submit listings of Transgender Friendly Bars in their areas… they’re not easy to find when you’re a stranger in a strange town.

Within a month, I decided URNotAlone needed to be more than just a site that listed Drag Bars.

A Little Background

Bear with me on this next part, it has real relevance as to what URNotAlone evolved into…

I grew up in the suburbs outside of Boston and didn’t really know where to find TGirls until well after I was already married. When I was younger I did encounter Trans Porno in porno shops and knew… right away… that it was something that I was strongly attracted to… very strongly attracted to… and started buying all the Trans Porno that I could find. Growing up in the suburbs with no knowledge of where to meet TGirls, I honestly thought that they were rare creatures, so to speak, and that I’d never actually have the opportunity to meet one. Since I liked Girls also, I got married and thought I’d be happy and that porno would be enough to satisfy me. It wasn’t… eventually I heard about Jacques Cabaret (a long story) and got up the nerve to go there to meet real TGirls… in the flesh. That was the beginning of the end of my marriage. Once I was with my 1st TGirl I knew that it was what I truly wanted and that I would never be happy unless I could have a relationship, a real relationship, with a TGirl. Eventually I was divorced and shortly after I met Vicky… we’ve been together ever since. The reason I gave you this history, is… the Profiles section got started because I thought it would be a great way to help other Admirer’s like myself avoid making some of the mistakes I did and to try and provide a place for TGirls and their Admirer’s to meet one another. I thought and still think that this would allow fellow admirers to understand that there are lots of TGirls out there, that they could have a real relationship with a TGirl, that they could avoid marrying, then later divorcing and screwing up a girls life… I hope I’ve succeeded, at least in some small degree:-)

The Beginning of URNotAlone.com

I found myself surfing the web more and more often, looking for pages of TGirls that were starting to pop up all over the web. I used Susana Marques TV/CD/TS/TG Directory quite a bit back then (thank you Susanna). I loved her listings and thought to myself… wouldn’t it be nice if the links to different TGirls sites also had a picture and a little something about them along with the link. I started asking girls if they’d like to list their profiles, with a picture, on URNotAlone… mainly TGirls who’s sites I happened across while surfing the web. Nicole Asahi (a real sweetheart), from Texas was the 1st TGirl I asked and the 1st profile that was listed on URNotAlone. Once the Profiles started, it took about a year for the site to really get going.

After the Profile’s section we added a section of Vicky’s pics… then came pics of some of the TGirls I met in the different bars I visited in my travels and then came pics of our Green Iguana (who passed away recently:-(, Mongo. Vicky’s pics were mainly on our other site, ModelTS (now defunct), with the exception of some of her pics in her Galleries on URNotAlone… the pictures of TGirls from various bars I visited around the country has gone away since I don’t travel much anymore and they were getting pretty out of date… Mongo’s pages are history now.

In the beginning, I hand-coded all the pages and after several years of working my butt off trying to keep up I almost threw in the towel around the beginning of 2000. I put an announcement on the main page or URNotAlone that it was becoming too much work, I had too little time and that the site would cease being updated and eventually go away. This was also around the time when Vicky and I were trying to get our other, adult site, ModelTS going and I was living on very little sleep. I found myself spending 20 to 30 hours a week working on URNotAlone, another 20 hours or so on ModelTS and, on top of that, I have my real job… the one that pays the bills:-)

Help for URNotAlone.com

Around this time, Dan, praise Dan:-), sent me an eMail offering his assistance. Some of the TGirls he knew from the clubs in Ohio knew he did web development for a living and asked if he could help me out and keep me from shutting down URNotAlone. We corresponded a bit, Dan showed me a mock-up of what he had in mind… I was ecstatic. He totally redesigned the site, bringing it from a static, hand-coded site to what you see today, a data-driven site that takes all the drudgery out of maintaining and updating it. Now, instead of spending over 30 hours a week on URNotAlone, I spend closer to 20 hours per week… much of it answering emails, approving or not approving profiles, etc. Thanks to Dan, we added an Articles section, a Places section, Galleries, a Chat Room, broke down the Profiles into categories and much more!

Dan and I got together in June (2003) (and many times since that first meeting) and started planning for the future of URNotAlone. Part of what came out of this was combining my other site, ModelTS (now defunct) into URNotAlone’s Adult Content Area. Part of this was to offset the cost of running 2 sites on 2 dedicated servers with 2 different hosting companies. Another reason for this is that quite a few of the ModelTS Members were also active visitors to URNotAlone and many of the Members also have profiles listed on URNotAlone. The main reason we went ahead with the merge is in the hopes that the money generated from the ModelTS Adult Content Section of URNotAlone will allow us to add even more Free Features to the Public Area of URNotAlone… things like Calendars for Profile Owners to let people know where they’ll be, Performer’s to let people know where to see them, Escorts to let people know what City’s they’ll be visiting, etc. We’ve also added a method to list profiles by proximity to a certain area so people can get a list of people in their area by means other than State or Country. We’d like to add a better Message Board (Forums) and lots of other features. Dan left his job to devote full time to URNotAlone… something I’d like to be able to do at some point and we even hope to organize URNotAlone Sponsored Events and Charitable Events in the not too distant future:-)

Let me finish up by saying, we always welcome comments and suggestions and you can Contact all of us at URNotAlone via: admin@urnotalone.com. You can also post comments, suggestions or questions in the Forums.

We wish to thank all of you for your support over the years and for your continued support in the future:-)

June 7, 2012

URNotAlone – Pamela

URNotAlone.com was purchased by Pamela in February 2015. She kept the site going for six years. In a post Pam wrote, “(Footnote: In February 2015 Jon sold URNA to me Pamela. My intent is to build on the work of Jon and Dan. I want to personally thank both of them for all the support they have given our community over several decades. URNA is a very special place.)”

URNotAlone – Lori

URNotAlone was purchased by Lori on November 17, 2021. URNotAlone.com had experienced a database corruption which rendered the site unusable by the members. Lori recognized the iconic status of URNA and committed to devoting the resources necessary to update the site platform. A team was assembled to restore members’ data to allow URNA to continue serving the transgender community well into the future.