Nothing's ever as good as it once was; a eulogy for the Bold Italic.

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via the Bold Italic: "Since our launch, The Bold Italic has strived to faithfully serve San Franciscans near and far, whether born and bred here or having just arrived in the city. We have a great passion for the Bay Area and all that it has to offer — and have had a lot of fun sharing our enthusiasm with you. Together we have built a strong community of followers, contributors, and partners. However, we have made the difficult decision to cease operations. It’s been a great run and we supremely thank everyone who has supported us along the way." 

Any good San Franciscan can tell you that nothing in this city is ever as good as it once was. It's a rite of passage for us transplants; we become local only when we can remember the old times, when things were great. Before you got here and ruined it. 

Back then we used to drink beer at Lucky 13, make vague plans with friends to get dinner at The Empress of China, and get our soft news and upcoming events from the Bold Italic. 

I was a pretty loyal fan of the brand for a good 5 years. I made plans based on their suggestions and took Maria (co-owner of this site) on dates to their Microhood events.

When we launched this site, we both cited the Bold Italic as inspiration. We attended The Sum together and developed our current business model over drinks in Hayes Valley that night. We frequently resolve design questions for the site with "Let's see how Bold Italic does it..." 

The story behind the shutdown is fascinating. If you want the well-oiled details, I'll leave that to this piece from Nieman Lab. But my general understanding of it is that the Bold Italic was unceremoniously halted by the massive corporate media entity which had created it (and fine-tuned and tested it to exploit my precise and exact demographic.) 

And that's ok, I guess. I felt a bit squidgey about it at first. I felt like maybe I had been Lana Del Rey'ed all these years. I worried that maybe my authentic San Francisco experience lost value-- lost sincerity-- because I had unknowingly sourced it from corporate America.

But it didn't. And that's because while Gannet (who may be perfectly benevolent for all I know) may have bankrolled the operation, it was run by a bunch of badass 'Frisco blogger people. I met a lot of them  and they were always hustlers.  They put out a great product and curated my late 20's and early 30's. They inspired me to go get my piece of the pie in the blogosphere. 

Thank you to everyone who worked on the Bold Italic, and good luck. San Francisco used to be cooler back when you guys covered it.

Click here to get your piece of the pie in the CTOB RedBubble Store...

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