The second issue of The Sunday Paper already shows the strain of putting out a weekly newspaper with inadequate (or inexperienced) staffing. While John Bryan and his team had several weeks to prepare the first issue, they only had days to prepare the second, and it shows. There are paste-up errors, spelling errors, and even upside-down words in this issue. But for the most part, these shortcomings can be overlooked and scarcely detract from the messages being delivered in the content.

One of the articles alerts the public to the efforts by San Francisco's big daily newspapers (the S.F. Examiner and S.F. Chronicle, which had a joint operating agreement at the time) to monopolize street vending machines and prevent the alternative press from using such machines. John Bryan himself describes how he'd been hassled, had his machines vandalized or moved, and even had his life threatened when stocking his machines with alternative weeklies. Bryan declares "The small alternative newspapers do not intend to let the Ex-Chron kill free press in San Francisco, a very literate and independent thinking kind of a place.... We have no intention of letting the newspaper monopoly get away with it."

Another article features street artists lobbying the local government to protect their rights to perform and sell merchandise without a business license (we learn they were successful in a later issue). There's a long article about the "Dope Air Force" that describes the fleet of aircraft and the independent smugglers and money men who sneak weed into America, including an extensive interview with two people who work in the field.

Martin Russell offers brief reviews of several films, including The Last Picture Show and Summer of '42 (likes the former, meh on the latter). Warren Hinckle provides a hilariously indignant critique of a local guidebook to drinking establishments in his "Drinking Notes" column (a regular column that sadly disappears in later issues). Hinckle's column is on the same page as a brilliant cartoon about heroin from Jim Himes and an ad from Last Gasp promoting the recently released The Tortoise and the Hare.

There's an article about the San Diego Police Department preparing for the 1972 Republican Convention in August. The Sunday Paper wouldn't be around for it, but three months after this article the GOP would hastily move the convention to Miami, Florida, trying to avoid a campaign scandal involving a lobbyist.

We also get the second part of "Inside Employment Agencies," which exposes the deceptive tactics of the agencies with both job seekers and business clients. The employment agency article certainly paints a dark picture of the industry; I think we've all heard about horrible places to work, and an employment agency in 1972 would apparently be one of them! Although I don't doubt the veracity of the article, it seems over the top in several places. I know I used an agency to get a job less than 10 years after this article was written and I was never exposed to any of these ruthless or deceptive tactics. But that's just one man's story.

Other articles include Chester Anderson teaching us how to make home-brewed beer; "A Night Inside a Japanese Bath House" (there were 23,000 of them in Japan at the time of writing); and a couple about smoking weed, with one citing a British study that shows smoking pot shrinks your brain and the other (facetiously) stating that smoking pot makes you live forever.

A couple of this issue's comic strips continue stories that began in the first issue, including "Speed Queen" by Trina Robbins, which has a pretty tense second episode! Willy Murphy's mocking strip about health food fanatics is quite appropo (to me, at least), and both Bobby London and Bill Griffith contribute solid comics. The only problem is there's so few comics in each issue, you're done with them practically as soon as you've started them.

Despite it's production flaws, The Sunday Paper #2 is a good follow-up to the first issue. It doesn't have anything as impressive as John Wilcock's article in the first issue, but most of the content provides thoughtful opinion or insights that you wouldn't find in the mainstream press.



HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES:
It is currently unknown how many copies of this newspaper were printed. None of the seven issues were reprinted.

COMIC CREATORS:
Bobby London
Bill Griffith
Larry Todd
Trina Robbins
Willy Murphy