Cannabis Cuties Anchorage Press Managing Editor Matt Hickman It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat in this town without hitting some media entity doing its particular take on readers’ choice awards. I don’t blame any of them for doing it.

It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat in this town without hitting some media entity doing its particular take on readers’ choice awards.

I don’t blame any of them for doing it. It’s an easy way to grow a short-term digital audience, cozy up to advertisers, and a way to be cool for a hot minute. But in any city you go, the standard-bearer for such an effort is always your local, friendly alternative weekly newspaper.

For pretty much all of the 25 years the Anchorage Press has endured under that handle (‘twas the Anchorage Bypass the two years before that), Press Picks have been a staple each fall, and the alt-weekly awards remain the most coveted awards to win in this, or any other city.

1) Because alt-weeklies are distributed free of charge and don’t operate at the whims or complaints or standards of decency and modesty that curmudgeonly, entitled subscribers inflict on daily and community newspapers.

2) Because alternative weeklies are uncensored and make a point of being pointedly fucking so.

3) Because alternative weeklies don’t play by the stodgy rules of other journalism, while still delivering a trusted printed product everyone touches with their fingers, eyes, souls.

5) Because of all that organic base, alt-weeklies know and reflect what’s cool, what’s bullshit, and where the best buys are in between.

b) Long before your mother decided she was into edibles after all, and further decided CBD oil is helping the family dog’s arthritis, alt-weeklies were championing the cause of normalized, legalized and recreational marijuana. Alt-weeklies stood against and flaunted the idiotic laws of prohibition, even at a time when that same mother of yours would taken away your skateboard if she so much as found a joint in your laundry.

What thanks do we get for all this pioneering, all this bravery, all this being on the right side of history? Not much, really.

And so, after two weeks of collecting more than 10,000 nominations in our nearly 200 categories, we are going live with Press Picks voting starting today at anchoragepress.com.

That night — it’s a Thursday, by the way — we’ll kick things off with networking hour at 6 p.m., followed by a Red Carpet-style awards show hosted by our own RJ Johnson and his friends, including 2018 Best Drag Artist/Best Educator winner Hank VanDickerson and Midnight Sun Brewing Co. Beer Ambassador Darcy Kniefel. That goes till 9-ish, but stick around for another couple hours of drinking and networking with the coolest people in Anchorage, even as the city’s funkiest band, Boogie Shoes, plays until the good people at the Hard Rock kick us out.