>Unfortunately it lost one of the most compelling features of the classic BBS culture: location bias.

I was thinking about trying to recapture this with a non-internet wifi or mesh networking setup in some way.

Maybe one could abuse the captive portal feature.

It would not have the broad regional aspect unless it was a federated mesh, but it would certainly have the local bias. I don’t think there are enough techy people in my immediate vicinity to pull something like that off and have the community sustain itself, though.