The Fashion Issue

Posted on September 8, 2011 – 2:56 PM | by Admin
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I loved the idea of going with a Fashion theme for this issue.

The Sactorialist and Small Medium Large are two of our most popular regular features, and we usually get plenty of feedback on articles about style and designers.  My own fashion sense is about an inch think, so I was happy to turn over the direction for the issue to our contributors. They came up with some great ideas, including a profile of Midtown’s Ed Castro (the original ‘Mad Man’), an interview with designer Caren Templet, and a look at some of the most stylish folks in Sacramento’s art scene. And, last but not least, we got Ann Tindall, maven of the boffo Annimal House fashion blog, to give us her Glamrock picks for Musical Chairs.

We inadvertently ended up with a historic sub-theme to the issue as well.  Bill Burg noted that this month would be the one hundredth anniversary of one of the most important elections in the history of Sacramento – and California: a vote that not only expanded the city’s borders, but also gave women the right to vote and added the ballot proposition to the state’s arsenal of democracy.  He brings us a look at the electoral passions of that pivotal year and the changes the election wrought.  Author and history nut Ed Hunter contributed a companion piece – a rundown of local news culled from the archives of the Sacramento Bee and Union from September 1911.

Capping off our unplanned foray into local history is Tim Holt’s essay on the development of Midtown. I’ve waxed nostalgic in these pages before about Holt’s Suttertown News, which he published for nearly 20 years, starting in the mid seventies. I first fell in love with Suttertown when I moved Downtown in 1987. Holt’s mix of hyper-local news, cultural coverage and thoughtful commentary struck a chord with me immediately – it was a perfect reflection of the Downtown/Midtown community of the time.  I thought of Suttertown News as my paper, and it’s been a touchstone for Midtown Monthly since day one.

You can imagine how stoked I was when Holt agreed to speak about his Suttertown News days at the Sacramento Living Library this summer.  His talk covered more than just Suttertown – he wove the history of the paper into the history of Midtown itself, seamlessly blending the two and bringing in Natomas, Portland and Gregg Lukenbill just for good measure. I’ve been to nearly every edition of the Living Library since it began, and Holt’s lecture was the best of the bunch.

In fact, it was so good that I thought it needed a wider audience.  I asked Holt if he would let us print a version of his remarks and he happily agreed to put them on paper for us. When the text came in I sent it over to Associate Editor Becky Grunewald who had the same type of reaction I did: “This could be our manifesto….”

Our manifesto, then.

Thanks again to Tim Holt for letting us run the piece, and for bringing us the Suttertown News for all those years in the first place.

-tim

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