Lots of conflicting emotions this week, upon hearing the news that the SF Weekly newspaper is coming to an end. For those of you under 40, weekly newspapers were the ears to the ground of every major city in America. You picked one up and immediately got a sense of local politics, culture, nightlife, endless classified ads, and you heard voices of your community not represented in the daily papers or glossy magazines.
I started writing a column for SF Weekly in 1990, for the humble sum of $35 a week, which is about two cocktails in today’s SF. The office was on Ritch Street, above an auto repair shop, and smelled like it. I didn’t have a modem, so I’d go down to the office and type my column into someone’s giant beige computer. When it moved to Brannan Street, suddenly there was a lot of room, a lot more staff, a lot more of everything. The paper kept growing and growing, and although it wasn’t quite the size of the Bay Guardian, it had excellent arts coverage, and everyone was under 40.
I was never really part of the inner circle, of people who actually had jobs there, I just filed a column once a week, and if I didn’t have enough items I would just decide, ok, this week it’s going to be completely fiction. I devoured old Chronicle columns by John Wasserman, and 1001 Afternoons in Chicago by Ben Hecht, a collection of his early newspaper pieces, picking apart their styles, studying the form. Why not just make it up once in awhile? After one such column was filed, one of the editors asked, “Are you on mushrooms?”
I would drop by the SF Weekly office every week to pick up mail, and one day received a bottle of Skyy vodka, which had just launched and was looking for press. I thought, I’m not going to be bribed by some PR flack. So I wrote a column item about receiving the bottle, and how it unfortunately was not enough for an appropriate field sample, and so I wouldn’t be writing anything about Skyy vodka in my column. The next week, a full case of Skyy vodka showed up at the office. I opened it up and started handing bottles to anyone who walked past, and I clearly remember editor Andrew O'Hehir shaking his head and saying, “I can’t believe that worked.”
I often referred to the readers as “Johnny Bonghit” and “Susie Burrito,” which is the SF Weekly audience I witnessed around the city. People hanging out in bars, chomping food while scanning the pages. Pretty much the opposite of the staff at that time. This era of SF Weekly was brainy and intellectual, and occasionally the high-minded mission didn’t necessarily resonate with the readers. One infamous Cinco de Mayo cover of the paper depicted a Virgin de Guadalupe image holding a burrito. Somebody thought that was a great idea. The readers were furious. Definitely tone-deaf and in poor taste. But when you’re doing a complete paper every single week, sometimes stuff like that happened. I once wrote a snarky column about Kurt Cobain, and an enraged fan actually mailed me an envelope of dog shit. On another occasion, I made fun of a nightclub owner, and he retaliated by pulling all of his advertising out of SF Weekly for the rest of the year. After an uncomfortable meeting with the publisher, we ran a sort-of correction and advertising resumed for his all-important nightclub.
As the 1990s rolled on, the paper was sold to the New Times chain out of Phoenix, and most of the staff was fired. For whatever reason, I was allowed to continue my stupid little column. Jack Shafer was brought in from DC as editor, and kept a large axe in his office. The New Times changed the design of the paper, and the SF Weekly name was now rendered in a sinister gothic typeface we called “Gestapo Oktoberfest.”
The paper moved offices again to Berry Street, and suddenly everyone had desks and computers and office cubicles. I finally took them up on the offer of full-time employment, but was still allowed to work at home most of the time. As always, the group of writers and reporters was excellent if underpaid, and circulating in their midst was like going to journalism school, which despite over ten years of working in the business, I had conveniently overlooked. People won lots of journo awards. And the cover designs by Darrick Rainey were superb.
The editors were generous with my offbeat story ideas. I traveled to Lowell, Massachusetts, to research the literary estate of Jack Kerouac. I went on a wild boar hunt in Sonoma. I did features about boxing in Marin, an Eagles band member impersonator, and online sports gambling on the island of Antigua. I interviewed Julia Butterfly, the activist who lived in a tree in Humboldt County, and rock singer Sammy Hagar. I burrowed deep into legal archives, following the trail of a horrible landlord, and unearthed SF’s longest running court case, between the landlord and her former partner, the notorious “Dr. Feelgood” rock and roll party doctor.
Everyone who worked there has their own memories of moments in their careers. Some of it was excellent journalism, some of it was half-baked. But that’s what these papers were for. I always considered SF Weekly as the Bonneville Salt Flats of newspapers. Bury the needle, see where it goes, and if the wheels fall off, so what. There was always next week.
Those were the days eh Jack? I arrived after New Times bought it, but we still did some damn fine work and had a bunch of fun!
Ah, the SF Weekly. I knew her and loved her. She was a beauty in her time.