The announcement to trounce all previous announcements!
First I would like to extend effusive, almost overbearing greetings to our new subscribers, and especially our longtime readers. The latter may notice that Marin Lately looks a little different today, which I hope is only a little bit traumatizing – like when mom came home with a new haircut, but not like when dad brought home an entirely new mom.
That change is related to the first bit of news today, which is that Marin Lately has moved to a new platform where everything will be better, effective immediately. Having a comment section alone, which this does (and much more) will enliven things significantly, as many of you are funny/clever/insightful in a way that I find threatening.
The second piece is that Marin Lately is now a reader-supported organization with a monthly subscription fee of $6. Ideally, you will complete this transaction as frictionlessly as you do for any of the other absolute necessities in Marin – a handful of mushrooms from Good Earth, say – to which its price favorably compares. Because:
You want Marin Lately to continue to exist, and I have run this publication for free for as long as I possibly can (eight months, some of the best years of my life!)
You want to be part of its future, which is not just as a robust cultural institution in Marin, but as a mirth-based lens through which to understand the wider world.
I’m being a bit coy here as I try to tease out the end-game without completely spelling it out. Let’s just say, paying subscribers will get unfettered access to not just an expanded Marin Lately – with new coverage and features based on reader feedback that I cannot wait to unleash – but reporting on other “affluent enclaves” that are overdue for an inspection. Some of them quite nearby…
Now: For those of you who do not want to support yet another local artisan – I get it; once the landscape designers and breath-work consultants take their cut, there’s barely enough left for the Stinson rental. So I promise that your experience as a free subscriber will still be extremely enjoyable. So much so, in fact, that you will eventually buckle.
Finally, change is a good thing. Marin Lately will always do what it has always done, and be what it has always been, but better. In other words, dad didn’t bring home a “new mom.” That is mom! They’re called bangs.
Transformatively,
Patrick Heij
That’s the funniest pitch for dinero I’ve ever heard. I paid up but it’s coming out of your allowance.
Signed Mom
How crass! In Ross we don't charge for such things -- and for your information I know because I grew up here during the peacock-feathers-and-hot-tubs era, when I acquired my disability during an enthusiastic Rolfing session at the back of a fern bar in San Anselmo. One must consider a longterm view when spending out of one's legal settlements. Little "subscriptions" tend to add up and result in tragically unforeseen consequences. I mean, imagine if I subscribed to your Substack! It would have to come out of my sweet puppy's nanny's vegan macaron budget! And I might lose them to some new money tech mogul in Belvedere! [Posting for a friend.]