Voting is open for the Bay Area Reporter's readers' poll known as the Besties.

In closing our yearlong celebrations of the Bay Area Reporter's 50th anniversary, our twelfth online panel on April 7 will focus on five decades of the newspaper's history, with several current and former editors and writers.

This is the final 50 years in 50 weeks of the News section looking back at the Bay Area Reporter's half-century of covering the LGBTQ community.

For our final arts and nightlife-themed 50 years in 50 weeks tribute, we'd like to share our April 1, 2021 64-page special edition, which included more than a dozen expansive features on the Bay Area Reporter's five decades of coverage.

The 50 years in 50 weeks feature is from 2020 when the Bay Area Reporter examined a trove of Harvey Milk's naval records.

Listen to the sound of endurance. In December 2020, our first year of the pandemic reached its end, yet artists found ways to endure, including musicians cloistered in home studios.

The November 21, 2019 issue contained big news: the National AIDS Memorial Grove announced that the San Francisco-based nonprofit would become the steward of the massive AIDS Memorial Quilt, which started in San Francisco in 1987.

As we reach the end of our 50 short tributes to the Bay Area Reporter's five decades, let's take a moment to talk about sex, particularly the B.A.R.'s coverage of it, in abundance.

In our nearly final yearlong celebrations of the Bay Area Reporter's 50th anniversary, our eleventh monthly online panel, set for March 10, will focus on fifty years of arts coverage with former and current editors and writers.

A year after the death of Gilbert Baker, who was widely credited with creating the iconic rainbow flag, a Southern California woman went public that she and another man actually helped Baker create the very first rainbow flag in 1978.

When Big Freedia comes to town, we bow down for the Queen of Bounce. The New Orleans singer, TV star, cook and author performed at Mezzanine in April 2017, and writer Cornelius Washington shared a fun Q&A.

It was August 2017 when San Francisco activists and officials got word far-right Patriot Prayer group planned to hold a "free speech" rally at Crissy Field.

While probably not the most historic article of 2016, for this writer, it was a red-letter day to interview Shirley Manson, lead singer for the band Garbage.

It was a sunny day in the Bay Area on Sunday, June 12, 2016 when news broke that there was a terrible mass shooting inside Pulse, an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida.