Editor’s Letter, April 2011

So, The Green Issue.

We’ve done a Green theme in the April before – I admit it, we’re suckers for Earth Day.  This time out we’ve stretched the term a bit – we’ve got Michele Hebert’s article on California native plant specialists Cornflower Farms, Sarah Singleton’s look at Bariani Olive Oil, and Jim Cameron’s profile of architect and urban planner David Mogavero. 

You may be wondering about that ‘April is Earth Month’ tagline on the cover.  Earth Month?  The Earth Month concept came from our old Director of Business Development, Brian Fischer, who argued that after nearly forty years, it was time to give ol’ Mother Earth more than just one day.  We like the concept, and though it hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm, we’re sticking to it.  Thanks, Brian!

And, speaking of Earth Day, I am totally befuddled by the City’s decision the hold their official Earth Day Celebration on April 21, the day before Earth Day. ?? Is there some infield-fly-ball type rule that prevents having an Earth Day party on a Friday?  Whatever.

I have to take a moment to point out the beautiful cover photo that Scott Duncan turned in this month.  Scott always does a good job, so we’re spoiled, but this time he really knocked it out of the park.  I know, I was there.

Planning a cover shoot is generally a complicated affair. There’s the location, the people or person to be in the photo, the lighting, props, etc… with so many components it’s easy for things to go wrong.  Since we shoot on a pretty tight budget it’s really easy for things to get off track.

So it was with this issue.  First was the weather; we knew we wanted to shoot the cover out at Cornflower Farms, but Mother Nature was not cooperating at all.  It’s hard to plan an outdoor shoot when it’s raining every single day. Then there was the model – we almost always use regular Midtown folks rather than pro models, and that means we work around their schedules.  We finally lined up a day when the forecast was clear, but none of our cover candidates was available for the shoot.  The day before the shoot, one of our ad salespeople suggested we call her childhood friend Jenny, an avid gardener who lived in Midtown.   Jenny said she’d give it a try and met us out at Cornflower  the next morning at 10AM.

Twenty minutes later, Scott had the shot in the bag.

That’s how it goes.  We can plan for weeks in advance and have a shoot that goes off so-so, or we can throw everything together in one day and come up with one of the best covers we’ve ever done.  Of course it wasn’t just luck – Scott picked the perfect spot to shoot, and Jenny was a natural.  She’s never modeled before, but I suspect she could have a new career if she wanted to.

You may have noticed that we’ve refreshed the look of the magazine with this issue; credit for the new cover layout goes to Art Director Judd Hertzler.  Once we brought the cover shot in, Judd started a full court press to go ahead with the cover redesign he’d been playing around with for months. He was right – the cover looks much better with the new, cleaner design, and after four years, it was time for something new.

It only occurred to me after the fact that we’d skipped our Fourth Anniversary.  It was March 2007 that we completely redesigned the mag and changed our name from the unwieldy Midtown/Downtown to Midtown Monthly.   I’m a little bit shocked; there have been many times where I didn’t think we could make it another issue, let alone four years.   Somehow we just kept going.

Regular readers will know that we’ve had plenty of changes since 2007, but I think the notable thing is our consistency.  Becky Grunewald still writes our lead food feature, we’re still sporting Michele Hebert’s Wine Picks, Maakies and Underworld still bat cleanup on the last page and we still make a magazine that we want to read.