Spring has sprung, and all kinds of new ideas are popping into our heads around the offices of The Stranger. It's like the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, only instead of cherry blossoms, the air is full of the fruits of our brainstorming! This is our 1,066th issue of The Stranger, and it's a testament to the journalistic diversity of our weekly offerings: From art reviews to music reviews, from historical pieces to this-just-in news breaks, each of this issue's winning articles represents its own particular slice of genre. From the down-and-dirty truth-telling of Savage Love to our exhaustively comprehensive (and exhausting to produce!) spring arts edition of our quarterly magazine A&P, I know you'll find something sweet in the pages ahead.

About four months ago, an infection resulting from a perforated eardrum started catching up with me, possibly caused by scratching the inside of my ear with an unclean pen cap. While my doctor, who happens to be one of Seattle's 107 best otolaryngologists, was vacuuming out my ear one afternoon on First Hill, we were talking about the unceasingly critical Public Editor column that usually runs in this spot, and he said, "It's like pouring negativity directly into readers' minds." That pretty much took all the credibility out of the Public Editor column for me (thanks, Dick!). Ever since then, I've been thinking about how I can help readers get their fix of introductory text to a given issue without being so darn Gloomy-Gus-ish. Not that we're averse to kicking up a little controversy now and then!

Of course, Seattle is well-known for its panoply of quality print publications—for a whiff of the way Seattle media is lighting up the literary map, just take a stroll through the Editor's Notes that kick off the content in Seattle magazine, Seattle Metropolitan, City Arts, or D-List. That cutting-edge copy clicked on a lightbulb in my head: Every great publication has an Editor's Note—except The Stranger! After running the idea up the flagpole to see if it would stick, every member of my staff said that only an Editor's Note would be able to stir the passions and challenge the cultural assumptions people make about The Stranger. If you're hungering for more of that "Stranger tone" you're used to instead of my own upbeat take here, don't worry: This issue, like every other issue of The Stranger, is a tantalizing journey into the lives and opinions of our writers. After all, our content creators are really what make this paper tick.

I hope you enjoy our new issue and this new side of The Stranger. Get ready for a great spring, and don't forget to buy an extra pair of party pants. You're going to need them.

Christopher Frizzelle
Editor, The Stranger