Things were getting messy around the world, but they were just getting dirty around here. Our newly minted news editor, Howard Altman, sent the staff digging through the trash—Ed Rendell's, John Stanfa's—for stories. Emboldened, he sent the staff out in search of free money (to be donated to charity). Anita j. Michel posed as a panhandler; Gina Bittner hit the slots; Altman himself took to the highways and byways with a metal detector. (Total haul of $5.13.)

In the department of "the more things change": Vance Lehmkuhl depicted new prez Clinton as a waffle. Mubarak S. Dahir wrote about employees' medical privacy rights at Strawbridge's. In a feature on memorable musical moments, photographer Mpozi Mshale Tolbert (who passed away on Monday) nodded to a promising young hip-hop crew called the Square Roots. David Warner interviewed a 22-year-old M. Night Shyamalan on the eve of his Praying With Anger. We ran a cover story on the White Dog Cafe. Oh, and we held a "scaBENger hunt" where Flash Rosenberg challenged people to find (mostly bad) Franklin art around the city.

We welcomed so many people to the fold. Tonino Montella, who delivers our paper to this day, and once and future circulation manager Mark Burkert both jumped on board. The addition of reps Stephen Lockett and Gail Berger surely fueled the paper's burgeoning page counts. Southern gent and eventual general manager Hugh "slipperier than deer guts on a door knob" Gibson sold classifieds. Eventual art director Jennifer Linden started drawing boxes in Quark or Pagemaker or something. And in a bit of turnabout, future music editor Neil Gladstone's picture (with his band Mothra) appeared in these pages before his byline did (he later joined our expanding list of interns). Jane of all trades Kristine Cesare had been bouncing around the masthead for a few years at this point.

We also said hola to Jonathan Valania, who wrote about Andy Kaufman but most notably a letter to the editor about why his review of Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville was not only killed, but then rebutted in a column by music and style editor Margit Detweiler. The exchange on the letters page (in which we printed the original review) was bitchy cat-fighting at its finest. Turns out they both liked the record.

In other correspondence news, a fella named Duane Swierczynski wrote to complain about the misspelling of Eden Jacobowitz's name; other letter writers included Ramona Africa and Teller (an irate missive denying a.d. amorosi's claim that he and Penn were once mimes).

The story of CP 1993, however, can be summed up with three cover stories. We put naked, and not particularly taut, asses on our summer fun issue; we put John Kruk on CP Choice with the headline "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"; we put John Street on the cover with the headline "The Man Who Would Be Mayor." Because that's our job here: showing you the things you don't necessarily want to see.

We're counting down (or up) to our 25th anniversary. Next week: 1994! Hookers! Schoolly D! Restaurant Row! Uhuru Furniture! Tommy: A Dock Opera!