Covering 75: January

Original cover of San Diego Magazine, 1948

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This month starts the celebration of San Diego Magazine’s 75th birthday. Few media companies live this long. Survival requires rapid evolution, philosophical shifts, toil, tequila, luck, and art. SDM is now owned by local creatives, filled with new blood, new ideas on culture and our place in it. To honor the remarkable milestone and three-quarters of a century of people who built this storytelling house, we’re picking covers from the last seven decades.

We’re asking local artists to recreate them, using icons and voices and ideas of San Diego’s now. On top, the cover of San Diego Mag’s debut issue in October, 1948. It’s a line drawing of the Majestic Hotel, an epicenter of social life in the city at the time.

covering 75, KFish

Illustration by KFish

Above, we asked Encinitas-based artist Kelcey Fisher: where does San Diego gather now? In Little Italy? Or is it, grimly, a smartphone? No, it is absolutely Petco Park. After two years of pandemic isolation, three million San Diegans desperately needed to stand next to thousands of each other and cheer for some common thing.

When they first reopened the gates, there was crying in baseball. Doesn’t hurt that the Padres are on a historical, exciting run. After a global trauma, it’s not hyperbole to say this was the site where public displays of humanity, joy, hope, and fun came back to a city.