In Philadelphia, the dirty little alt-weekly you know and love was getting dirtier (our adult advertisers were getting more creative) and bigger (surely as a result of bringing our current loquacious advertising director, Amy Stoller, nee Markason, on as an account manager).

Tom Tomorrow hitched a ride. Bruce Schimmel hatched a weekly column, sort of a perturbed pistol to today's Loose Canon. Eventual Editor in Chief/Pretzel Logician Howard Altman penned his first words for CP, chronicling in a gruesome, sweat-drenched, blood-splattered cover story the boxing scene at the Blue Horizon. Don Steinberg did a column called Dispassionate Consumer (and in one missive railed rather passionately against the Oral-B Indicator toothbrush). Lawrence Richette interviewed presidential hopeful Jerry in a piece titled "The Browning of America" and Robin Rice reviewed an exhibit of toilet-paper art. Margit Detweiler merged music and style into the first of her Gyrate columns. We saw Larry Platt spread his wings from covering sports ("The Eagles can win the Super Bowl!") to covering media to covering it for Philly Mag. On the eve of the Earth Summit in Rio, cartoonist Vance Lehmkuhl, honest to shit, drew President Bush having sexual intercourse with the actual planet.

Oh, things were happening in Philadelphia in 1992. We covered the first Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema and reported on the "last" of Jay Schwartz's year-old Secret Cinema nights. Sue Spolan took you inside the revolutionary Jimmie's Used Auto Parts (yeah, that one). Platt went behind the scenes at Fox 29's plucky upstart news show. Musically, hip-hop heroes The Goats were just starting to happen as were art-rock anti-heroes Temple of Bon Matin; not coincidentally, we brought you our first music issue ("New. Music. Now.").

But if nothing else, City Paper in 1992 was freaking gay. Maybe it was the changing mores of the time, or the sense that fabulous Bill Clinton was about to take office, but we were letting our rainbow flag fly, tackling issues concerning the gay community with abandon. We reported on "The AIDS Drug Underground" about the lengths HIV-positive people had to go to get treatment (we even framed it as a Kafkaesque struggle). We also devoted a cover to Prevention Point, the city's fledgling and illegal needle-exchange program designed to slow the spread of AIDS among IV drug users. Later in the year, copy editor Jeannine DeLombard delved into just what "don't ask, don't tell" meant.

We were getting hot and heavy. But it wasn't all serious stuff. The bound volumes of CP 1992 are distinct in that they feature more shirtless men in shorts than in any CP annum prior. Which is hot and heavy in its own right.

We're counting down (or up) to our 25th anniversary. Next week: 1993! Buy a judgeship! Are you really an Indian?! Stalking! Italian Market: Not just for Italians anymore! Testosterone! Black Jews!