The San Francisco Bay Guardian released its 44th Anniversary Issue this week with a series of articles about “young people trying to survive and make their way against all odds in an increasingly hostile city and a bitter, harsh economy.”

Introducing the issue, executive editor Tim Redmond recalls his early 1980’s arrival in San Francisco and says that the economic reality of the city today makes it increasingly unlikely that young, creative types would be able to pull off the same feat in 2010. The Guardian, he writes, has fought to keep the city affordable and thus vibrant:

From the start, the paper was a “preservationist” publication — both in terms of environmental issues like saving the bay and in the larger political sense. The San Francisco Bay Guardian was out to save San Francisco.

The city was under assault — by the developers who were making fast money tossing high-rises into downtown; the speculators making fast money flipping property, ducking taxes, and driving up rents; the unscrupulous landlords who were letting their buildings fall apart while they charged ever higher rent. For the Guardian, fighting this urbicide meant protecting San Francisco values, preserving the best of the city from what Bruce liked to call “the radicals at the Chamber of Commerce.”

In an email to staff, Bay Guardian founder and publisher Bruce Brugmann calls the reporting in this week’s issue, “the Guardian at its best, going into its 45th year of printing the news and raising hell–for righteous causes.”