Thirty-Five Years Ago
Since WWII, the emergent “East Coast” style has tended toward a simplified, even primitive, form and a more cerebral content.... The New Yorker always was, and still remains, a great testing ground for artists, such as Saul Steinberg and William Steig, to whom the idea is more important than the rendering. But the California state of mind is less questioning and more accepting; and for the most part, West Coast cartoonists and illustrators have a more open and sensual response to their environment.
— “STARVING ARTISTS,” Walter Neff, October 8, 1976

Thirty Years Ago
What’s the inspiration behind the Party Paper?
I just wanted to do a newspaper about parties because parties are the time when human beings get together and do something universal and timeless, a chance to experience each other without a format. It’s the most free-form experience, the time when human beings get to go to the playground. It’s not just big parties. A party is anytime two or more people who aren’t working get together.
Is that enough to carry a publication?
It probably isn’t.
— “AND NOW FOR SOMEONE TOTALLY DIFFERENT: AN INTERVIEW WITH HAROLD GEE,” Bob Dorn, October 8, 1981

Twenty-Five Years Ago
Critics of the NFL’s new instant-replay rule have needed only the opening few weeks of the season to see nearly every problem they had foretold materialize under game conditions.
It held up play for three and a half minutes in a Jets-Patriots game while the video official anguished over angles. It undermined the decisiveness of an on-field official in a Cleveland-Chicago game when the ref, in that hot split-second when a close call had to be made, decided it was too close to call and deferred to that eye in the sky.... And in one of the worst cases (Sunday’s Raiders-Chiefs game), it failed altogether due to a misunderstood spoken word.
— “THE NFL MUCKETY-MUCKS NEED TO GET ANOTHER ANGLE ON THIS INSTANT REPLAY MESS,”
Stephen Heffner, October 9, 1986

Twenty Years Ago
“It’s like Christian car dealerships,” said a tanned boy in dazzlingly bright white socks. “What does religion have to do with driving? You go to gay traffic school because you figure you’ll get a better deal because you’re gay.”
There were 16 of us that Saturday, sweating it out in an airless (windows closed against distant jackhammer bursts) upstairs room of the Gay and Lesbian Center...one of sixteen locations in the state where “Finally...A Gay Traffic School” holds classes for traffic violators.
— CITY LIGHTS: “BAD COP, GOOD COP, CUTE Cop,” Mary Lang, October 10, 1991

Fifteen Years Ago
Don McLean was born October 2, 1945, which means he’s been around for MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY. If you think it also means you’d better go see him while you can, y’know before he croaks or something, my guess is there’s really no hurry — you’ve got another 20 years to think about it.
— OF NOTE, Richard Meltzer, October 10, 1996

Ten Years Ago
“I like myself a great deal, and I’m afraid that if God gave me arms, my ego would have been out of control,” says Mark Goffeney, the armless guitar player and lead singer of the Big Toe Band.
“It was two in the morning and I was coming home from a show...and was pulled over. I expected the normal ‘Wow, you’re driving with your feet. Do you have a license to do that?’ that I usually get from police. Then he says through his speaker, ‘Put both hands out the window.’”
— “TOE JAMS,” Jennifer Coburn, October 4, 2001

Five Years Ago
I have become alarmed at how dependent I have become on Starbucks just two blocks away, how agreeable I find the music from that chain’s own satellite-radio station. I fear I am becoming slowly conditioned to a near-lobotomized state of mediocre contentment while blowing happily on my latte foam, giggling to myself as I groove on my antidepressants and listen to chick singers who have all been victimized by the same pig or dog of a man.
— “T.G.I.F,” John Brizzolara, October 5, 2006

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1991: You’re Gay, You Drive, You get Special Handling