Dig Out Your Joes

By Jay Kerner

I didn’t know diddly squat about digital anything when we started the Joe. I had delusions that I could put words together and naively thought that would be my main contribution. Months in, I was doing everything. (Almost all of it, at barely amateur levels.)

I learned what little I know from late-nite Youtube tutorials.

Back then, we saved everything on an external hard-drive for safety. Always cutting edge like that on the tech stuff.

Turns out it wasn’t as safe as we thought.

Lost a bunch of digital stuff we thought was backed up but wasn’t.

But we have a lot of paper copies. Not all, but a lot. Most of the early stuff. And we have everything in the cloud since the hard drive bit it.

So, I’m working on a montage of our covers. Lots and lots of covers. Some clever. Some lame. Lots of very bad Photoshop.

Early on, we did a lot of “art theft”, placing our cup in famous paintings and so on. Stayed with it till we ran it into the ground. Mixed in a little politics. A skater, pre-assault. Our first “Joe Of the Year.” Holidays, famous birthdays and stuff.

So I’ve finished year one of what we have, and am posting it here. Hope they tickle you like they tickle me.

I’ll be working on future years as I see how many (or how few) care to watch the first one. I can tell you that the next 12 years has some great stuff in it. It wasn’t long before we switched to laying our cup logo over shots of local Joes. It was a formula we stuck with, right through the last issue.
Issue after issue of St. Joe mugs, gracing our covers! You’ll know some, we promise!

Regular readers will remember lots of them. Others may have missed quite a few.

Anyway, we hope you enjoy this short teaser for the longer project.

And please dig out any old copies you have in the basement. As I go year by year, I’ll post the issues we’re missing.

Please forgive us our spelling errors, our graphic gaffs, and our sometimes pathetic attempts at humor.

Just as you have, every issue since the first, in 2007.

As always,

Thanks for reading!