As you have undoubtedly noticed, the Culver City News is gearing up for the second annual Best of Culver City Survey and Magazine. Last year was an overwhelming success and we were amazed at how many of you voted for your favorite places. Culver City sure has grown up into a fabulous destination city for shopping, dining, theatre, and community living in general.

Culver City Parks walked away with five awards last year! The Culver City Redevelopment Agency won for City Hall’s Music Festival, Artwalk and the Farmer’s Market. A Bed of Roses and Sada’s Flowers tied for best flower shop. Almost 200 local businesses, parks, events and people were honored in 2008, and we look forward to an even greater response now in 2009. If you read The Best of Culver City Magazine last year and wished your favorite place won, make sure you vote this year.

I counted hundreds of paper ballots by hand last year until the wee hours of the morning for an entire weekend. I decided that I needed to have a better way for you to vote and at the same time let me get some sleep. This year we launched our first “Best Of” Online Survey. The online survey will save me from long nights of counting, create accuracy and ultimately help more of you to be able to vote in the comfort of your homes – giving us an even better sampling of fabulous Culver City offerings for our magazine.

We started advertising our online ballot two weeks ago. And thanks to a bunch of enthusiastic early voters that encountered a few glitches, I believe we now have a really great voting site that is very simple to use as well as efficient, user-friendly and quick. Go to: www.CulverCityNews.org/surveys/ now and check it out! We Want Your Votes!

If you tried to vote and encountered any troubles at all, please try again. If you still encounter troubles, please send me an email so that we can fix it. We appreciate your votes and your input will only help us get better each year as we continue to be Culver City’s voice of the community.

Here’s how it works:

Go to www.CulverCityNews.org/surveys/ and VOTE.

You do have to tell us your name, address and phone number, but we don’t pass out that information to anybody else. We just need to verify that you are a real person and be able to contact you if you win one of our prize drawings.

You will be entered into a weekly drawing for prizes when you vote.

You don’t have to live in Culver City to be eligible to vote. You just have to vote for businesses, people and places that are within the zip codes of Culver City.

You don’t have to know the zip codes of your favorites. You just have to enter the cross streets.

You can vote online or on paper.

If you vote online, you save me time and I love you for it … but I love you for voting either way.

You can only vote one time, but you can ask all of your friends and family to vote to help you ensure that your favorites win!

You can add your own category if we missed something important!

Thank you, Culver City, for being a wonderful place to work, play and live. Help us shine the light on your favorites and those who most contribute to Culver City’s greatness.