Editor’s Note

Considering the abundance of great stuff in the county, creating our annual Best of the County list is a herculean task. A Big List

Putting together our annual Best of the County feature is no easy feat, but this year we had help.

IF YOU LIVE here in Marin, you know our county is filled with overachievers. The businesses that serve this active and curious clientele go all out to offer the latest in health, fashion and food. And on the flip side, if the business is run by one of the aforementioned overachievers, excellence is already in its DNA. For Marin consumers, this is a win-win. Considering the abundance of great stuff n the county, creating our annual Best of the County list is a herculean feat. We looked high and low for the best, and we also asked readers for their input. And we got it, with more than 1,100 responses. In the section, these reader picks are appropriately called out by California’s state flower, the poppy.

I was thinking about the challenge of paring down the list last Sunday when I found myself back in Susan Hauser’s class at NOW yoga in Corte Madera. I first met Susan when we were both pregnant and floating in her inlaws’ pool in Hopland. Fast-forward 16 years and I am one of 100-plus people packed into her class. NOW only offers power yoga, which is good for high-strung ADHD folks like myself — think crunches to “Stairway to Heaven” or holding a Warrior II pose through the entirety of the Eminem anthem “Lose Yourself.”

However, if you are looking for a more restorative yoga experience, you might want to try one of the other studios — Yoga Works or Wendy Wilkinson’s class at Marin Power Yoga — listed this year in Best of the County. If you really want to relax, try a trip out to the float tanks at Conscious Drift in Fairfax, also listed.

While our picks for best food, drink, shopping, recreation and wellness options incorporated ideas from the entire editorial team, this year we tasked former staffer Calin Van Paris with writing up the results, a tradition we hope to repeat. A few highlights include quotes from bartenders on why their margaritas are superior and from chefs touting their burgers.

The list this year contains the tried-andtrue categories and a few new ones. In a new staff avorite called “Lunch Under $10,” Calin applied her gift for humor by calling out my obsession with the Harmony lunch special. This was almost as funny as the stunt she pulled one time by submitting a dating profile for me on farmersonly.com; there, Calin, who also writes for Vogue and other national outlets, put her wordsmithing to true creative work, doubtless leaving more than a few brokenhearted rural Romeos out there to learn AgGurl84 was not real.

Like that dating profile, Marin sometimes also gets a bad rap for not being real — a point I’m going to disagree with. I went to high school in Newport Beach, California — The Real Housewives of Orange County captures it perfectly — and I’m always impressed by the high level of natural beauty most Marinites seem to possess. Sure, there are a few outliers in our midst, but generally the people I encounter are maximizing the glory of the bodies they were given at birth. To that end, peruse our Best of the County list for top “life enhancer” spots like spas, hair salons and nail boutiques.

Congrats to all those selected as 2017’s Best of the County, and as always, if we overlooked one of your favorite local businesses, please let us know.

Mimi Towle, Executive Editor