By Tim Redmond

tredmond@sfbg.com

Yes: The paper looks different this week.

I could give you the press-release version – we've done a redesign, it's a big ol' round-number anniversary, and on and on – but I've never been good at the press-release version.

So on to my normal rambling:

When I turned 40, my friends arranged for a drunken party at the Double Play, where, along with a hat that said "Old Fart," somebody gave me 40 little airplane bottles of Jack Daniel's, just to ease the aging process. I think they lasted a week.

And when I woke up the next morning (well, the next afternoon), I remember feeling somewhat amazed that I'd actually made it past 39.

Of course, as we all know, 40 is the new 30 (and 30 is the new 20), so in the modern era, I'm actually kind of going backward. A 47-year-old with two kids is supposed to be an upstanding, responsible member of society, but somehow, it isn't working. In fact, now that I have kids, I'm feeling free to be truly immature.

I mention all of this because the Bay Guardian turns 40 this year.

For the alternative press, that's a few lifetimes, at least. The industry this paper helped create has evolved, so to speak: It's now a big business, and the venture capitalists and chains are trying to take over. But the Guardian has survived, intact and unchanged: We are the longest-lived independent alternative newspaper in the country.

Despite pleas from many quarters, I didn't cut my hair when I turned 40 (so now I look like a balding hippie old fart). But the Guardian is taking on a new look, a new design that's both far more modern and in keeping with the historical mission of this newspaper.

When our design consultant, Kat Topaz, first arrived in the building, Guardian editor and publisher Bruce B. Brugmann started showing her back issues (40 years of back issues) to give her a sense of where we've been. She was immediately struck by the logo that sat on top of the Guardian's front page back in 1966. "It's so modern," she told us.

Oddly enough, I don't think it seemed at all modern back in '66, when big balloony letters, wavy lines, and bright psychedelic colors were becoming all the rage, but there it was: A piece of our history that had, somehow, come full circle into the 21st century.

So that's our new logo, once again. Forty is the new 30, or maybe 1 is the new 40, or something.

What it really means is that the vision Bruce and his wife, Jean Dibble, had when they started the Guardian is still what we're about today: Printing the news and raising hell. We've learned a lot over the years, and I think we've gotten better and better at this gig, and we've never lost our sense that part of our mission is to realize this is a wild city, and we ought to be having fun writing about it.

What you're getting in the Guardian this week is more of everything: more news, more arts picks, more features, more work by local artists, more of the strange and wonderful flavor of San Francisco ... more of what has always made us different. Let me know what you think; you always do.