The blood, of course, is the ink. Thumb through enough pages of old newsprint and the ink begins to coat the skin of your fingers, no matter how careful you are. That's ink a quarter century old, soaking into your flesh, sinking down past the seven layers of skin. Slowly, entering the bloodstream.

At least, that's how I imagine it.

Because as weird as it sounds, going through our back issues, having that ink hit blood — for me, at least — led to a kind of mystical experience along the lines of a peyote trip.

I was transported back to 1981, a time when Center City had the exact same boundaries but somehow felt a little smaller. When it wasn't weird to have a local newspaper whose publisher doubled as its dance critic. The Philly arts scene was alive and well, and politicians were causing trouble as always, but there was no Old City as we know it. No gleaming blue Liberty Place towers, either; just the red glow of the PSFS sign, burning through the sky.

But it was OK. Because I had voices guiding me through it. Voices that were passionate and deeply engaged in this city, and its ideas. It was all there, right in that first issue.

After I spent one marathon session with the back issues, Bruce Schimmel happened to walk into my office.

I looked up at him with a dazed look on my face. "Man," I said. "I feel like I've had your voice in my head for the past few hours."

Bruce just smiled.

He told me that in the early days, the staff would gather around the paste-up boards, shoulder to shoulder. "You could smell each other's sweat," he said. Bruce didn't mean that to sound gross; rather, it was a visceral, communal experience.

That's not to say we have it easy today. Let me not sugarcoat it: Putting together a 160-page anniversary issue is a serious pain in the ass. The issue you hold in your hands is one of the biggest we've ever run. In a slick wrapper, no less. And all of this meant we had to ship the paper a full day and a half early.

But I wouldn't trade this week of production hell for anything.

It's worth it to bring you a little hit of Crazy Bruce's Wild Peyote.

We've been giving you little hits for 24 weeks now in the form of "Paper Trail," which was lovingly compiled each week by Brian Howard and Patrick Rapa. They wanted to stay anonymous, but tough shit, guys. You did an awesome job. (If you missed an installment, visit CityPaper.net/25.)

And now it's time for a full dose.

This issue is not meant to be CP's Golden Greats (available now from K-Tel Records) or a "Best Of" or our Oscars or anything. Rather, it's an idiosyncratic mashup of 25 years of city journalism. We've selected 25 "memorable" stories, from investigative epics to little goofy items that made us smile. We wanted to re-create the experience of sitting in our office, checking out the back issues, leisurely, randomly. Twenty-five years' worth of words. Voices. Photos. Illustrations. Headlines. Captions. Jokes. Insults. Tears. Sweat. And most of all, ink.

Newspapers, Bruce is fond of saying, should be a tangible experience. The feel of rough pages, the glorious expanse of a well-designed spread. It's something that can't be replicated anywhere else. That's what excited Bruce about City Paper when he founded it with Chris Hill back in 1981.

I've spent two years as the editor in chief, so maybe I've been hitting the ink too long.

But goddamn does it still excite me, too.

(duane@citypaper.net)