Editor’s Letter
I
14 | houstoncitybook.com
our publication, which I can still say, a half-decade on, is still a locally owned and independently published magazine that’s fully committed to producing smart, beautiful content for and about Houston, and Houston exclusively. We don’t run any content produced in other cities, as some do. No influencers from L.A., no fashion shoots from New York. No thank you. We have more than enough great stories right here in Houston, and more than enough talented people to tell them. This was our plan back in the fall of 2016, when I wrote in this space: “My remarkably committed colleagues and I envisioned a magazine with the feel of a fashionable lifestyle publication that also made room for more serious journalism. We wanted it to be upscale and focused without being elitist or narrow. We imagined a periodical with the look of a beautiful national magazine but that would be, from cover to cover, all local. We aspired to hold up a mirror to a great city, teeming with ideas, rife with ambition, and diverse.” I’m proud we’ve stuck to our guns and built a current, relevant and — per our milestone anniversary — lasting brand in this venerable medium, which I still love. And I’m even prouder we did it in Houston.
JEFF GREMILLION Editor-in-Chief
photo by steven visneau; jacket by zegna, shirt by eton, pocket square by eleveny, jeans by ag, all at m penner; shot at omni houston
’ve been an editor of some stripe for one printed periodical or another for most of the last 30 years, which blows my mind. I mean, at my tender age — 50 is the new tender, right? — I can’t believe I’ve done anything for 30 years. But here I am, still working in what’s become a boutique industry, producing articles and images and affixing them to pieces of paper, with ink, and gluing them together into a booklet. These days, explaining how magazines are made feels a bit like a tour guide at some historical site describing how people preserved food for the winter in olden days. Like salting meat in Williamsburg or burying cabbages in Appalachia. Of course, Houston CityBook also has a website. It’s actually grown in leaps and bounds this year, and my staff and I — all print magazine people, used to having monthly or bimonthly schedules — have evolved into daily journalists, posting dispatches from the city’s culture several times a day. In all those decades of my career, it’s only lately that I’ve had daily deadlines. It was daunting at first, but I’ve discovered that I like it! And yet the heart and soul of CityBook, and of me as a professional, is our magazine. And I’m delighted to note that, with this issue you hold in your hands, we mark five years in print. Houston has embraced
