Often, when you’re conceiving, designing and producing a content-rich whatever – like, say, a 200-page magazine – discrete but unmistakable patterns and themes emerge that you’re not even aware of until it’s almost finished.
So, as I grab a quick moment here at the 11th hour of the PHOENIX mag production cycle, with this May/June issue about 97 percent finished, I’m ready to identify two “secret themes” that are standing out to me like cowlicks on my kid’s head. Actually, make that three. (All in addition to the overt, all-caps theme on the cover: Summer Getaways.)
The first: music. Flipping through the galleys of the issue, I was surprised to see how aggressively we leaned into the aural arts this month – first with Niki D’Andrea’s edifying business profile of Pure Imagination Music Festival founder Candace Devine; then with Jimmy Magahern’s media piece about local efforts to out-Nashville Nashville in the country music biz; and finally with Jason Keil’s preview of Valley jazz-club options this summer in the Curator section. I remember helping conceive all these stories, and approving them for assignment, but – like a barfly with an open credit card – forgot to stop ordering.
The second and perhaps more meaningful theme: the idea of spiritual travel, finding fresh perspectives in familiar places, and peace-ing out. It’s the central premise of associate editor Maddie Rutherford’s soulful and eye-pleasing Seven Special Spots in Arizona feature, but you’ll also find wisps of it in my news-travel profile of Colorado City, the former polygamist stronghold on the Arizona-Utah border that’s recasting itself as an outdoor-adventure hot spot; and maybe even in our industry-leading 2025 Staycation Guide. Do you need to travel halfway around the world to find the renewed spiritual vigor that we commonly associate with travel? Won’t our backyard do as well, sometimes?
Finally, my just-realized bonus theme: Arizona winemakers. Two of them have milestones that we acknowledge in this issue – our talented and affable wine columnist Pavle Milic, who celebrates 10 years of writing for the magazine in 2025; and longtime friend of the mag Sam Pillsbury, one of the very first modern winemakers to foolishly/brilliantly plant a vine in Arizona soil, who recently announced his imminent retirement from the wine game.
The indefatigable New Zealander was the first winemaker I ever wrote about, in fact, way back in the early 2000s, shortly after he bottled his first vintage. Every couple of years, we’d catch up with him in the magazine. Always good for a great quote, a cheeky take. It was a recurring theme I’ll deeply miss.
