Heartbreaking local media news: The San Francisco Bay Guardian, the city's longstanding progressive voice, shut down operations today. San Francisco Media Company, who owns the San Francisco Examiner, SF Weekly, and the the Guardian, said that tomorrow's "Best of the Bay" issue will be its last. 

With 48 years under its belt, the the Guardian covered everything from the Moscone-White assassinations and the AIDS crisis to the shenanigans at San Francisco City Hall and the Bay Area's underground scene. Love it or hate it (each week they managed to churn out wonderfully divisive articles), the alt-weekly is as "San Francisco" as Coit Tower and Dolores Park. Shame to see it go.

Marke Bieschke — SFBG publisher, who began by penning the wildly popular "Super Ego," a nightlife/queer arts column — calls his tenure there "an experience I'll treasure always."

"The fact that a young queer kid could work his way up from nightlife gossip queen to publisher is still kind of incredible to me," Bieschke tells 7x7. "And being able to carry on the progressive fight and light the torch for SF values, especially in these oppressively conformist times, was a true privilege."

In light of today's news, SFBG reporter Joe Fitz Rodriguez posted some images from the paper's indelible past, including covers of an Alice in Wonderland-themed Best of the Bay from 1974, a Dan White-Harvey Milk item from 1979, and a "Gay Freedom Day" from 1974.

While the publication's print and online outlets will be no more, they'll keep their Twitter account active. Be sure to follow them on Twitter at @sfbg.