A billionaire venture capitalist with a long-standing grudge against Gawker Media has succeeded in bankrupting what will go down in history as one of the most remarkable iterations of online journalism in the new millennium. After 14 years, Gawker will shutter next week.

Everyone in the news business has probably loved Gawker for (at times) saying things no one else is willing to say, almost as often as those in the news business have trashed Gawker for (at times) choosing to say some pretty stupid things. But what shakes out for Stranger staff is a deep and lasting respect for Gawker writers who have experimented boldly with a medium no one can quite figure out how to monetize, for dragging the rich and powerful with unrivaled perseverance, and for sharp social critiques that still make us want to vote.

Here are some of our favorite pieces, assembled in no particular order and derived from multiple Stranger writers' comments in Slack:

1. "My 14-Hour Search for the End of TGI Friday's Endless Appetizers," Caity Weaver, 2014.

When The Stranger compiles its monthly traffic reports, we take out Savage Love and look at everything else separately. This is because Savage is a celebrity and the rest of us are not; his traffic is at another level. A similar comparison could be made to Caity Weaver, a writer who has published some of the funniest, smartest, and best-est writing on Gawker. Weaver deserves her own column, her own Gawker traffic reports, her own "Best Of" lists, and her own "beautiful New York City penthouse of horrors." She deserves everything.

But until she gets everything, you should read about the time Weaver went to TGI Friday's and tried to discover the end of the restaurant chain's endless appetizers deal. CW: You may never want to eat a mozzarella stick again.

2. "Is Donald Trump's Hair a $60,000 Weave? A Gawker Investigation," Ashley Feinberg, 2016.

This 3,679-word story was accompanied by diagrams of Donald Trump's alleged weave, photographs of Trump's alleged hair, and little red boxes and arrows pointing us to evidence of both.

3. "'Baltimore Is a Shithole': Undisturbed Peace at the Maryland Hunt Cup," Colette Shade, 2015.

Just days after the death of Freddie Gray, writer Colette Shade wrote a surreal account of the Maryland Hunt Cup from a parallel universe within the same Baltimore County.

4. "Hey," A dog, 2014.

A dog's first post was about the "prospect of Republicans gaining control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections," in which a dog simply listed his favorite flavors of jerky. The posts by "A dog" only got better from there.

5. "Everything's Not Good," Hamilton Nolan, 2016.

Hamilton Nolan has consistently been publishing some of the best political writing on the internet for years. His dispatch from the DNC was just one of the latest examples.

6. "Seattle Blogger Wages War on Shameless, Filthy Middle Class," Richard Lawson, 2010.

From time to time, Gawker would indulge The Stranger in a little shameless, filthy, promotional linking. But in this piece, Richard Lawson describes Charles as "some sort of weird hybrid of Marie Antoinette and a class-destructing communist." We're upset we didn't think of that line ourselves. (Still, here's Lindy West's response.)

7. "Gravy Boat: My Week on the High Seas With Paula Deen and Friends," Caity Weaver, 2014.

Just read it.

8. "Unmasking Reddit's Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web," Adrian Chen, 2012.

Adrian Chen was one of the first journalists to explore social media as its own serious world of reporting, and not just fodder for the next internet trend piece. Chen's exposé of Reddit's notorious Violentacrez is a fine introduction to the genre.

9. "Who Wants to Remember Bill Cosby's Multiple Sex-Assault Accusations?" Tom Scocca, 2014.

A year before New York Magazine started publishing stories about Bill Cosby's 35 accusers, Gawker was reminding everyone that Woody Allen is not the only celebrity accused of sexual abuse.

10. "This Is How Hillary Clinton Gets the Coverage She Wants," J.K. Trotter, 2016.

An unmasking of how the Clinton campaign colluded with journalists, down to getting them to "in your own voice describe [Clinton’s speech] as ‘muscular.’” In a time of conspiracy theories about the media’s treatment of presidential candidates, this is substantive, straightforward, and—right on brand for Gawker—humiliating for the reporters who took part.