Arts Editor's Note: I sent Michael Yockel an e-mail asking about how the original "My Favorite Year" came to be. Below is his response and the original issue.
To the best of my recollection, we--the editorial staff of City Paper--based "My Favorite Year" on no existing model. We created it. While virtually every other print publication, both mainstream and alternative (remember: Al Gore had yet to invent the internet), busied itself with analyzing, categorizing, and regurgitating the events and issues of the 1980s, City Paper thought it more interesting to distill the decade through personal journalism, on which the paper had always, for better and worse, prided itself.
So we asked approximately 20 contributors--almost all based in Baltimore, plus a couple of outlanders, and ranging from a wide-eyed college coed to a somewhat crusty retired daily newspaperman--to write short, sharp essays that drew upon individual experience to ruminate on, and, maybe, with luck, illuminate the previous 10 years.
