WESTOPOLY

Every year, during the first week of July, West Of publishes our Summer Double edition. This issue stays on the racks for an extra week and is our annual “Guide To West Ashley Living.” Each time there’s usually some fun but nonsensical theme that goes throughout the entire issue. We’ve used everything from plundering pirates to super heroes, from wild west outlaws to circus sideshow freaks, and even created a West Ashley Zodiac one year (my personal favorite).
At the heart of The Almanac was a calendar, which began in July of the current year and ended in June of the following year. Admittedly, this was not the most logical calendar cycle. But the issue was always our most popular of the year and readers loved the calendar, even if it was slightly hard to follow.
This year, instead of doing the calendar-based Almanac issue in the summer, we decided to move it to our special Winter Double Issue, coming out in late December/early January. Imagine that, a calendar that starts in January? Crazy, we know. But what would we do for our Summer Double Issue, which had become our most creative and fun issue of the entire year?
Without further ado, we’re proud to introduce Westopoly! Inspired by the classic board game Monopoly, Westopoly isn’t an actual game, but more just a fun way to illustrate our annual “Guide To West Ashley Living.”
Because at its core, a traditional Monopoly board is a snapshot of a community, it lends itself to highlighting those businesses and organizations that make West Ashley special. The other iconic imagery, from the money and tokens to the Chance and Community Chest cards, are also a playful way to relay to our readers interesting offers and useful information about living in West Ashley.
It has been a lot of work to put together this Westopoly issue, but we think the end result is worth it. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we did putting it together.

Westopoly 2014