Today Is My Last Day as Editor of North Hollywood-Toluca Lake Patch

I began my job as editor of North Hollywood-Toluca Lake Patch on Aug. 30, 2010, a little under two years ago.

After my two-week vacation, which begins today, I will take on a new role at Patch as an associate regional editor, so this will not be too long of a goodbye because I am not going too far. My new duties will include helping manage and supervise 15 Patch sites in the Los Angeles area, including North Hollywood-Toluca Lake Patch. I will be continuing to contribute to the site in many ways, and my byline will still be showing up. I also still live here. 

your new editor, . Arin has been the editor of Calabasas Patch for over two years. Calabasas was only the fourth Patch site launched in California, so Arin is one of our most experienced editors on the entire West Coast. With Arin at the helm and me giving him support and guidance, today is the beginning of a new, improved and more potent North Hollywood-Toluca Lake Patch.

I owe a special thanks to Mike Szymanski, the editor of Studio City Patch, who has been my partner in crime from the beginning. Mike has been a joy and an inspiration to work with and his support has been invaluable to me.

I also owe a great deal of thanks to each and every member of this community that I have gotten to know, and to each and every reader and commenter.

This has been without a doubt the most challenging, difficult, exciting and rewarding job of my professional journalism career, and that is because the communities I cover are among the most fascinating, diverse and unique in the entire world.

I'm a midwestern boy raised in Minnesota who went to college in Chicago. North Hollywood, Toluca Lake and the entire San Fernando Valley will always be a slightly surreal place to me, a place where the ordinary and the extraordinary dance together in the moonlight. I joined the dance, and it's been the adventure of a lifetime.

I am now off to Minnesota to visit family and friends for two weeks. Despite my two years of intensive study of this place, which has I believe made me one of the world's leading experts on the greater North Hollywood area in regard to it's history and current issues, I probably will always understand the Midwest better. This Valley, with its movie studios, sun-scorched boulevards, ex-porn stars on the PTA, dreamers, superstars and rivers either too empty to too full, will always be a wonderland to me. But it has also become a place I love, and place that is truly home.