3 years and 36 issues ago, this magazine was started by a guy who knew nothing about photography, graphic design, writing, or fashion. Me. In fact, if you were to grade my feelings towards grammar they would tend towards a passionate dislike of the subject (and not that it really matters, but my penmanship is horrific, approaching the level of an 8-year-old). I did not own a camera, point-and-shoot or otherwise, had no previous experience with any sort of page-layout software. I had worked for years at one of the largest, most stifling banking organizations in town. I did not talk to any experts in magazine publishing. Hell, I didn’t know any. In fact, I really didn’t talk to too many people about the idea at all, simply because I didn’t want anyone to dissuade me from putting something together.

What I did have was a little bit of money from selling an online cell phone business, some unemployment checks coming in from Uncle Sam, a couple of credit cards in good standing and, most importantly, a wife who married a banker and ended up with a magazine publisher, but loved me anyway. All of those things were very important, but in retrospect the most important was a pure and uncompromising hatred for my life in corporate America. I disliked everything: the phones, the clothes, the carpet on the cubes, the tiles on the ceiling. Even today I have a phobia of conference room tables, and an intense sleepiness comes over me when I walk past one. I had to get out, I had to make “it” work and the best idea I had for my “it” was starting a magazine.

That first year was impossible. Impossible in that it had little to no chance of working, highly likely that I could have fallen directly on my oversized forehead. Looking back, I can’t believe it did work, still can’t believe it did, that some folks actually bought advertising in a magazine that didn’t yet exist from someone who just walked in their front door. That was pretty much it, a trainload of no’s and a sprinkling of yeses to cover some of the costs of the first few issues. That and handing out issues in tents set up at Trade and Tryon with a pallet worth of free ice cream, and personally delivering about 90,000 lbs of magazines in total, and writing and taking pictures, and laying out the magazine, and selling some more and, and, and…

Now the startup dust has settled and we’re only getting bigger and better; we have 10-15 fantastic contributors every month, we’re in every room at the Westin, Omni and Blake hotels, in hundreds of relocation kits going out to parts unknown, and paying subscribers all the way out in California. Most importantly, we have fantastic readers such as you who pick up and enjoy the magazine every month, right here in our jewel of a city.

Thank you to everyone for making the first 3 years of Uptown Magazine a fantastic roller coaster of heart pumping, top-of-the-lungs screaming highs and want-to-crawl-back-into-bed lows. It’s all been worth every step.

~Todd Trimakas
Editor