Questions that Gabe's fans seem to ask us a lot is how we got started and from where we got our information. That, then, is what this section is for, besides stroking our egos a bit :)

To start at the beginning, the Gabe-obssession started (as it seems to with most fans) after seeing Newsies. Missy had a copy of the video and showed it at her birthday party. Well, one of our friends made the mistake of pointing out Spot and saying, "You know, he's kinda hot!" Everyone agreed, and he had been our favorite character anyhow, so after the movie we dashed over to the computer and go online.

Searching "Newsies" through several search engines brought us only one site: Newspaper Alley. However, with the pictures printed from this site, and the knowledge that Spot Conlon had been played by an actor named Gabriel Damon, we went on with party.

Obviously, though, the obssession didn't stop. We looked up Gabe on the Internet Movie Database and were surprised to see that he had been in a bunch of other movies (including The Land Before Time, which we had all loved from our not so distant childhood). This is where the real work set in, because at that point in time, the IMDb had very little information other than the filmography listing.

We stuck Gabriel's name into every search engine we could. Results were few and far between, but we started patching together a bit about him. One day, Amanda found an ad in her Bop magazine that stated if you sent them money (about $5) and the name of one of the actors they had on this little list, they would send you an 8 x 10 glossy picture and a fact sheet. Well, lo and behold, there was Gabe's name on the list with all the other actors. Needless to say, we sent in our money.

Six to eight weeks later, it came. The photo was a black and white picture of Gabe from Newsies and the fact sheet contained a bunch of choice tidbits for us to add to our puzzle (note: the info on that sheet is what we used in the Fast Facts section).

So now we had all of theis information, but the though of starting a webpage had never occured to either of us. That is, until Newspaper Alley was updated. You see, as the owner was updating it, he posted a message about how he was constantly getting emails from fans who wanted to know more about Gabe. However, other than the brief bit he had on the site, he knew nothing. Having found Geocities and acess to free websites, we thought it over. In the summer of 1996, only about five months after that party, the Unofficial Gabriel Damon Homepage was up and running.

Any old fans may or may not remember how it looked back then: plain background with a few cheesy graphics, no pictures and all of the information crammed on one page. We knew absolutly nothing about HTML (this was when Geocities only had an editor for beginners and experts, and we made the mistake of trying the expert one too quickly), so we had a bit of a crash course in the subject. Hey, it was the first Gabriel Damon page, though! Bit by bit, though, things fell into place, and we began adding new features to the site.

Due to all the time and hard work we have put into this site, it is very frustrating to come across all these other Gabriel sites that do nothing but copy ours. We've come across pages that have the same sections as ours, even to the point of almost directly copying the information in the History section, or titling the section containg his mailing address SWAK (Sealed With A Kiss... we've changed it now, but it's still annoying). These sites then slap a couple of pictures on, put no origional content on it, and claim it as theirs. *sigh* Sorry, but we had to get that out.

This site doesn't get updated as often as it probably should, but what with school and all the responibilities thereof, as well as the fact that we really had all the information that there was on Gabe, updates were pretty hard to pull off. We are hoping to do better this time, but I wouldn't hold your breath over it :)