Jacksonville Furs

Jacksonville Furs was a group of furry fans living in the Northeast Florida area, also know as the First Coast, primarily the greater metropolitan area of Jacksonville, Florida. The group was often referred to as the JaxFurs for short. As of January 2020, the group appears to be defunct. However, the furry community in Jacksonville is still active.

Founding
The JaxFurs started out as a small group of friends hanging out on a regular basis. After a while, that group realized there must be a lot of other furs in a city the size of Jacksonville. Celestial Fox and FuzzWolf set up a meet at a local Denny's which was posted on the Florida Furs mailing list. The turnout, over 20 people, surprised the two organizers and ended up taking up nearly a quarter of the Denny's restaurant. E-mail addresses were collected from everyone who attended, and on April 10th, 2000 Celestial Fox created the first mailing list for the community on eGroups, which later became Yahoo Groups.

Events
Jacksonville had a loose-knit group of furry fans, who got together weekly for meets at the area's malls, as well as other informal get-togethers from time to time. The major get-together for the region was the Annual JaxFurs Spring Picnic, usually held in late-April, at K.A. Hanna Park near Jacksonville Beach.

Jacksonville hosted its first furry convention in March 2007, when Megaplex 6 was held at the Wyndham Jacksonville Riverwalk downtown. This was the first time one of the major furry events in Florida had been held somewhere other than Orlando. Megaplex 7 returned to the Wyndham on 28-30 March 2008; however, the convention had announced a move back to the Orlando area in 2009.

Weekly mall meets
The community had a furmeet each Saturday at 6 PM, and the location rotated around the three area malls in Jacksonville. The location for each week's meet was found on the calendar of the group's mailing list.

The mall meets were originally devised by FuzzWolf and started out as Weekly Coffee Meets where the group would meet in front of Barnie's Coffee every Wednesday (later changed to Tuesday) at 7pm. Due to the Jacksonville area's sprawling size and the far-flung locations of some regular group members, the strategy of moving the meet location to another mall in a clockwise rotation was used to allow furs in different parts of the city to have a meet close to them at least every three weeks. The first Weekly Coffee Meet was held at the Regency Square Mall on 4/14/03. As time went by, the meets became less about meeting for coffee and simply about meeting in the mall for dinner, window shopping and conversation in the food court.

Due to declining interest and a very close poll on the mailing list, the meets were suspended after the 10/11/05 meet at the Avenues Mall. Their planned replacement was to be a series of parties held each Saturday night at an individual fur's home. When the weekly parties failed to become a regular event and several complaints were raised to the current and prior moderators about the lack of activity, the weekly mall meets were reinstated by DracoFur. The new meet time and day was chosen by popular vote on the mailing list and the first Saturday mall meet took place on 3/11/06 at the Avenues Mall. Attendance and interest had returned to previous levels and the weekly meets averaged at least 10 to 12 regular attendees.

Annual events

 * Annual JaxFurs Spring Picnic
 * Megaplex (2007-2008)

Mailing list
The Jacksonville Furs mailing list had served as the primary means of communication and event planning for the group since its founding.

Primary moderators

 * Celestial Fox 4/2000 - 8/2000
 * FuzzWolf 8/2000 - 1/2005
 * Lace Aurora 1/2005 - 5/2006
 * DracoFur 5/2006 - 8/2007
 * Feryl 8/2007 - 09
 * STiTcH 8/2007 - 3/2009
 * Paradox 8/2007 - ?
 * Betamax telegram 8/2006 - ?

Additional moderators

 * Kyrian 12/2007 - 2/2009
 * STiTcH 8/2007 - ?
 * WindChanneller 8/2007 - ?
 * Xander 8/2008 - 4/2009
 * Paradox 4/2009 - ?

List history
The first mailing list was created by Celestial Fox in April 2000. Upon his moving to Austin in August of the same year, he appointed FuzzWolf as the list's moderator. Unfortunately, Celestial Fox later withdrew from the internet and FuzzWolf's moderator status did not allow him to add new moderators to the group. When FuzzWolf moved to Dallas in January 2005 to live with his mate, he moved all his personal mailing lists over to a new Yahoo screenname, changed the password on the mailing list's moderator account and transferred control to his successor, Lace Aurora.

When Lace Aurora moved to Orlando after graduating college in May 2006, he transferred control of the mailing list to DracoFur in the same way as he had received it. In order to allow more moderators to assist with the ever-growing group and his decreasing amount of free time, DracoFur did what FuzzWolf had been reluctant to do and created a new mailing list which would allow him full access to the group's moderator options. This allowed him to assign additional moderators to assist with the group's operation and later transfer the group's ownership to new primary moderators. The new mailing list had the same name as the original with the exception of the "-" in the URL. The original list was still kept active as an archive of information, messages and other files.

In August of 2007, the list's moderator structure changed by moving to having two primary moderators sharing ownership and assigning additional moderators as needed.

In March of 2009, STiTcH stepped down as primary moderator and returned to regular moderator duties due to lack of time, his career, and school.