Popular Sacramento food blog Cowtown Eats went quiet last month, and it’s going to stay quiet for a while. Potentially a very long while.
Darrel Ng operates the website, which started out as a hub for happy hour information and grew into a one-stop source for local restaurant news. For years, he’d spend hours every night scanning news sources, scheduling tweets and sometimes breaking his own stories. But recently, his life changed in a huge way. Ng sent SN&R the following statement to explain:
Times change. Life changes and priorities change.
I started Cowtown Eats in January 2009 when I had a lot more free time. I worked for the state and I was single.
Seven years and nearly 3,000 posts later, things have changed. I’m married, I have a house and I have a much more demanding job. On top of that, my wife and I had our first child late last year.
I tried being good at my bill-paying day job, good at Cowtown Eats and a good husband/father, but there weren’t enough hours in the day. I had to prioritize. On their death beds, nobody ever says they regret not spending more time on their food news/happy hour Web site. I decided to cut back on Cowtown Eats.
So what does that mean for the future of the site? I’m not too sure yet. I definitely won’t be spending 10+ hours a week on it anymore, but I still have things I want to share and write about. It’ll just have to be when I have a little more time.