City Paper Choice '09

We Can See For Miles: The Big Vision Issue


	print	email	reply

Published: Sep 23, 2009

This wasn't a normal year.

We just couldn't wrap it up with a normal 'City Paper' Choice issue.

In the past, our annual celebration of the best of the city featured page after page of short, clever bursts of praise — little bits of cinnamon, as a friend once called it — for just about every single thing that tickled our fancy in a given year.

Not this year. Not anymore.

Besides, with the preponderance of awards — everyone's got a best-of issue, or an award site, or a vote-for-your-favorite-this-or-that troll poll — aren't we all suffering from trophy fatigue?

So this time around, we got really choosy. No idiosyncratic award names. No props without results and a plan. We're calling CP Choice our Big Vision Issue, focusing on people, groups and institutions who've had a killer year, and whose trajectories portend bright futures for themselves — and for the city.

In excruciatingly long meetings, we mapped out categories and the people/places/things that should be nominated in each. We then put it all to an editorial board vote. The write-ups that follow represent the results of this process.

Behold, the chosen ones. Behold, the new normal.