It’s time for the Best Of Monterey County®. Here’s a little of what it took to get it to you.

Dave Faries here, summing up the Weekly’s annual Best Of Monterey County® issue with an emphasis on brevity. Ready? Writers: 19. Award categories: 309. Words: 31,353.

You can read a portion or all of those words in the issue, which is inserted in today’s (Oct. 8) print edition or available online here. Reading none of those words may be an option…except it’s hard to resist checking out how readers voted for, say, Best New Restaurant or where they prefer to go for the Best Steak Frites.

Putting the issue together starts with readers voting online and ends with assembling, editing, printing and distributing all those words. But in between are a series of steps involving a team much broader than 19 editorial staff and freelancers.

The process starts early in June with Keely Richter, the Weekly’s business development director, who readies the online nomination and voting platform. As this is going on, we settle on a theme—the circus, this time around—and give that to Annie Cobb, one of our graphic designers. She came up with the illustrations, both for the Best Of issue and the ads prompting readers to vote. That process began on July 9 with readers submitting nominations in every category. 

As soon as the nominating period ended on July 26, Richter began tabulating results and regearing the online platform for the final voting period, which ran from Aug. 6-28. I reached out to freelance writers at the end of July with two questions: Are you available and, if so, how many writeups can you manage (staff writers have no say in the matter, it’s at least 15 each). 

Each year after final voting ends, things happen quickly. And each year, we imagine that there is less time between deadlines than the year before. I received the list of winners from Richter on Sept. 3. The next day assignments went out to the writers, as well as staff photographer Daniel Dreifuss. The Best Of Agriculture section writeups were filed a week later, with other sections following over the next six days—just in time for the glossy pages to head to the printer. Our graphic design team had just three weeks to lay out the sections, all while doing the same for three editions of the Weekly.

There are always hiccups. Last year, for example, the Grill at Point Pinos received its awards on the day the restaurant closed. No matter, owner Tamie Aceves won a pretty big accolade from readers this time around. On occasion, the outcome in a category leaves us…um…just how would anyone react when voters give Best Tattoo to a shop that does piercing rather than ink, or nominate a place that opened in the 1960s for Best New Restaurant?

Both actually happened in the past.

We brought in a proofreader, Laurie Gibson, who pored over almost all of the 31,353 words in two days. The pages she hands back to me are always decorated in red ink. (Writers would rather have those nagging perfectionists—meant kindly, Laurie—relent a little when it comes to punctuation, but oh well.)

I’d say that’s a wrap, but graphic designer Kevin Jewell posts the writeups online, and then Richter gets physical star plaques distributed to the winners.

So that’s how we got here. The next part is in your hands, readers—if you’re looking for a place to get a haircut, get your car smogged or eat dessert, check out this guide to the best.