PUBLISHER’S MESSAGE

Worth doing

It seems like only yesterday that I was going door-to-door, neighborhood-by-neighborhood with a small army of Cal Poly students to hand out the first issue of SLO LIFE Magazine. Like most start-up ventures it was exhilarating, enlightening, and, quite frankly, scary as hell. This publication marks our third year in business, and I have met quite a few people along the way who have asked me some variation of the question, “Why in the world did you decide to start a magazine?” My answer usually begins with a basic recap of my resume, including my stints with both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. During my years at the Times, I relished the hours I spent with the old guys in the “Decomposing Room” on the 9th floor of the aging headquarters anchoring Times Square. Since the Grey Lady was a union company they were unable (and unwilling) to fire the obsolete employees who had spent their careers meticulously doing pre-digital work, such as hand-composing newspaper stories with hot lead type. But, as computers took over, they spent their days “decomposing”—mostly by talking to impressionable newbies like me, who hung on to every word of their stories about newspaper circulation battles on the streets of Manhattan back in the day. Those are memories I would never trade, but the truth is, it was the lessons I learned working with a much less well-known media company, the Chinese Yellow Pages, which still stick with me to this day. When our paths crossed, Mark Jaffe, a former carnival barker, and Matt Davis, a dive bar tour operator, were then two very colorful thirty-something San Francisco entrepreneurs, who saw a need for an in-language Chinese version of the yellow pages in the Bay Area (despite the fact that they could not speak or write the language). They went on a wild ride and brought me and a dozen or so other souls along. And it’s those experiences that give me so much respect and appreciation for the small business people I meet locally every day as the publisher of SLO LIFE Magazine. According to Matt and Mark, the reason we all got along so well, was that I was the one and only person who had ever asked for a cash advance… before I was even an employee, during my first interview. At the time, I was truly broke. I had not lived in San Francisco long when I was down to one meal a day: two bean burritos and a glass of water at the Taco Bell on Market Street. As it turned out, my new employers could relate to my struggle because they weren’t doing much better. Privy to the tenuous state of the business, we were all blown away when we saw Matt roll up to the office one day, not in his banged up Toyota, but in a new Rolls Royce. While scrambling at the eleventh hour to make payroll, Matt found himself lying awake the night before wondering how he was going to hold the company together. For some reason, he decided to open the classified section of the local paper where he found an ad that read, “I will give you $5,000 take over the payments on my car!” It turns out that some old rich guy had gotten himself into a bind and was unable to sell his car before leaving the country. And with serendipitous timing, the transaction gave Matt just enough cash to cover payroll. Our checks cleared, the boss had a sweet ride (which he sold at a profit two months later), and, together, we lived to fight another day. I have a friend who likes to say, “Something is worth doing if you end up with a good story to tell after you’ve done it.” And, I see it as our mission to discover and share those stories that have been “worth doing” with you. It’s a reflection of the people living here in this incredible community that, in three years of reporting, we have not even scratched the surface. I would like to take this opportunity to say “thank you” to everyone who had a hand in producing this issue of SLO LIFE Magazine and, most of all, to our advertisers who have made this publication, and our third birthday, possible. Live the SLO Life!

Tom Franciskovich tom@slolifemagazine.com