At the gritty City Paper — which was getting littler, as were most publications post-9/11 — belts were tightened. Comics Red Meat and Rusty Brown met their makers. And striking a balance between local and national coverage was a delicate dance as much of what happened nationally carried local implications. So Jenn Carbin's story about a "Hedgehog Underground Railroad" (wherein local hedgehog owners, fearing their illegal pets would be killed by the state, set up an escape route) ran a week before Howard Altman's "Chasing Shadows," on attempting to track down America's shadow government in of all places Waynesboro, Pa. We ran Ted Rall's scathing 9/11 anniversary piece and an expose into the "Awesome Powers" of Inky restaurant critic/man of mystery Craig LaBan.

In other news, Gwen Shaffer wrote about how we still didn't have public access television. New staffer Deborah Bolling began her CP career with a piece on seniors getting cheap meds from Canada. Bruce Schimmel wrote about the strange resurgence of Lance Haver as a basil farmer. And the staff grilled both Ed Rendell and Bob Casey Jr. as they politicked for governor. Daniel Brook wrote about Babette Josephs' race against young turk Andrew Hohns and we headlined it "Harold vs. Maude."

In arts, Ainé Ardron-Doley wrote "She's Due" about Black Lily Jaguar Wright's impending album and child. A.D. Amorosi wrote about Jazzy Jeff. Brian Howard covered producer Brian McTear's debut as Bitter, Bitter Weeks. Debra Auspitz explored the burgeoning Movement Theater movement of Pig Iron, Headlong and New Paradise Labs. Patrick Rapa put ?uestlove's Tasty Treats night on the cover of the music issue. David Warner, making his triumphant return from Columbia (University), covered, with Auspitz, Shelley Spector's "Philly: People, Places and Things" wherein 18 local artists mused artistically on Philly. In Fringe pun news, you got "New Fringetier."

In CP's biggest ad controversy since Milkbar, we ran ads for Saint Jack's that depicted the king of Thailand in hip-hop regalia. The government of Thailand threatened to protest and called the feds. Once it all blew over, we ran the ad on the cover of our What Happened Next issue.

Nancy Armstrong started coming around, as did future Paper Doll Ashlea Halpern and number cruncher/ball-buster Cindy Studley. Lori Hill came back (again). Marketing manager Rachel Furman got naked (behind an umbrella) with classifieds production man Nawi Avila on the cover of our style issue.

But the big story in 2002 had to be Rick Valenzuela's ongoing coverage of the city's plans to skate-proof Love Park. With the X-Games in town for the second year in a row, and skating's economic impact super obvious, he took a stand. We ran a color spread of Rick V. and 30-some skaters in front of the Love sculpture flipping off the camera (and ostensibly the city). We railed against the decision on our guide to the X-Games. And, grand gesture of all grand gestures, we put beloved skate supporter Edmund Bacon on a deck at Love and helped him break the law.