Looking Back: Start the Presses

Jim and Nikki Wood, first press check

Photos taken at the first press check, clockwise from top left: (left to right) cofounder Jim Wood, first art director Trpti Todd, cofounder Nikki Wood; the team going over proofs; (left to right) cofounder Lisa Shanower, Nikki Wood, Trend’s vice president of sales, Jeff Thompson; a box of the first signature is ready to go into the bindery for final production.

IT WAS A Friday, March 18, 2005, more than 10 years ago, when the first issue of Marin Magazine came off the press. The printer was Trend Offset Printing in Los Alamitos, California, which still prints the magazine. The issue was assembled (and still is) in offices at One Harbor Drive, across from Mollie Stone’s Market in Sausalito. That first edition was dated April/May 2005, which, in an oversight, was left off the front cover. Issues continued to come out every other month until December 2005, when the magazine, as planned, became a monthly. Feature stories in that initial issue included the opening of 142 Throckmorton (now Throckmorton Theatre) in Mill Valley, the mission of what today is called the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, and a historical piece on “The Crookedest Railroad in the World,” which took tourists to the top of Mount Tamalpais and back from 1896 to 1930. Among Marin Magazine’s first advertisers were Evo Spa, McGuire Real Estate, Robert Green Fine Arts, Coldwell Banker, the Village at Corte Madera, Town Center Corte Madera and Pacific Union Real Estate, all of whom are still advertising — 119 issues, and counting, later.