Since The Best of Santa Fe issue is all about superlatives, we also set ourselves maxi-goals for the 2006 edition: to garner the most reader participation and put out the biggest Best Of issue ever.
Done and done.
The edition you're reading isn't just hefty enough to mercilessly slam a giant fly into its insect afterlife, it also represents the views of thousands of readers who took the time to take our online über-survey. These pages reflect readers' choices for the first, second and third best our city has to offer in areas ranging from music to food to shopping and much more.
With such a high level of participation, we wondered if we'd see upsets from some of the decade-long incumbents. Yes and no. There were upsets and nail-biters and close calls.
(If only political elections were this much fun!) At the same time, many of our reigning champions continue to rule. We also
offered several new categories this
year and were pleased to see readers respond enthusiastically to pick winners in areas such as best female singer (hint, she's on the cover) and best guitarist (hint, he's been on the cover before). As always, we also
asked for your thoughts on new categories and will work to incorporate these suggestions into next year's contest. Finally, our staff also weighed in with picks for some of our favorites in the city.
Aside from Bigger and Better, the other theme of this year's edition is "Everybody Is a Star" (because we have a weakness for Sly and the Family Stone). To cap off that theme, we invited all the winners to an Oscar-style awards ceremony at The Lensic July 25 in advance of this issue. By the time you read this, with any luck the trophies will have been disbursed and the speeches made. And all we'll have left to do is start planning the 2007 Best Of.
On second thought, maybe we'll make sure there isn't any champagne left first.
