Man, this whole thing started when I was just scrolling through some fan forums early Sunday morning, coffee halfway to my mouth. Saw a thread titled “We Can’t Let This Vanish” buried deep in an old Kobe sub. Clicked it, obviously. Found folks talking about tributes – handmade stuff, digital art, stories people wrote right after the crash. Felt like a gut punch. Realized so much of that raw, immediate grief and love was splintered across social media, old blog posts, even private servers. Poof. Could disappear any day.
The Hunt Begins
Got obsessed. Seriously. Started digging everywhere. Twitter? Found threads years old. Needed web archive links just to see the pictures people left near Mamba Sports Academy. Fans were still posting photos of those mounds of flowers under hashtags nobody used anymore. Reached out cold, just slid into DMs like a weirdo. “Hey, you shared this piece back in 2020… do you still have the original?” Some replied, most didn’t. Honestly, folks will surprise you. One lady had saved over a hundred images folks emailed her for a virtual memorial wall she coded herself. Sent me the ZIP file. Goldmine.
Running Into Walls
Wasn’t all sunshine, though. Hit roadblocks constantly:
- Ghost Towns: Found links to tribute websites that just 404’d. Servers gone. Payment lapsed.
- Platform Wreckage: Instagram pages dedicated to Gigi’s smile? Deactivated when users quit social media.
- “I Lost It”: Heard that way too many times. Phones died. Hard drives crashed. People moved on.
- Private Groups: Big Facebook groups locked their doors after memorial projects finished. Couldn’t access the archives.
Got frustrating fast. Like trying to catch smoke. Almost gave up twice.
Building the Collection
Stubbornness kicked in. Became a digital packrat. Anything I found, I saved. Twice. Downloaded PDFs of heartfelt letters people mailed to Vanessa Bryant fan accounts (who scanned them, bless ’em). Snagged videos of candlelight vigils posted on sketchy third-party video hosts. Contacted local newspapers in Calabasas and Newport Beach – begged for photos they might have taken of memorial sites fans built courtside. A reporter actually dug up raw shots from his personal drive. Spent nights organizing this mess:
- Slammed everything into folders: Art, Letters, Photos/Videos, Fan Projects.
- Dated everything meticulously. Location too, if I could find it.
- Began writing little descriptions for each piece. Who made it, when it was shared, maybe a quote from the creator if they’d said something.
Was juggling screenshots, emails, downloads on my old laptop. Excel sheets got ugly. Upgraded to Google Sheets, color-coded the chaos.
Where It Stands
Took weeks. Accidentally stayed up till 3am more times than I admit. Felt heavy sometimes. Reading those letters from 2020… yeah. But it felt important. Like saving pieces of a massive, shared heartbreak before time erased it. My hard drive holds a bunch of that love now. Rough, raw, real fan stuff. Got plans to back it all up on physical drives too. Maybe even write a basic website guide later, explain how to find this stuff without falling down all the same rabbit holes I did. Learned one thing digging through the wreckage: Fans built way more memorials than anyone remembers. They deserve to stay seen. Still missing chunks, I’m sure. This ain’t perfect. But it’s something.
