Celebrating 75
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ver the span of 75 years, San Diego Magazine has produced more than 800 covers. From early illustrated classics of the ’40s and ’50s to fever-dream Photoshop nightmares of the early ’00s, we’ve run the gamut from timeless to outright cringe. Our editors have spent a lot of time in the archives as we celebrate three-quarters of a century of SDM , and looking back at old covers has become a favorite pastime in the office. Some we love so much we might use them as tattoo inspiration, and some we’re downright embarrassed by. But good or bad, all of them are a part of the long, strange, dynamic history of this magazine and this city. And they’re really fun to explore. So in an effort to show our blemishes and our beauty over the years, we asked our editorial staff to name a high and a low from our cover archives. SDM ’s covers over the years have come in many shades of quality The Good, the Bad, and the Hideously Ugly BY DANIELLE ALLAIRE, MATEO HOKE, JENNIFER IANNI, TROY JOHNSON, SAMANTHA LACY, NICOLLE MONICO, COLE NOVAK, AND AMELIA RODRIGUEZ
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September 1963 The early ’60s brought a spate of beautiful, stylistically experimental illustrated covers at SDM . This one stamped bold, sketchy lines over a reproduction of, according to the cover blurb, a “delicious, bouncy nude” ( oof ) by François Boucher. Fascinatingly, I can’t find this particular Boucher anywhere . Cue the research rabbit hole. –AR
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October 1968 Surely all our milestone years were commemorated with the same jubilant decadence captured on our current cover, right? Uh, no. We rang in two decades of SDM with the excitement of eating dry toast while perusing a microwave user guide. Lots of blank space, some dudes’ names… yippee , I guess. Could’ve at least added a balloon. –AR
88 AUGUST 2023
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