SI's complete story archive going online

There is lots of George Plimpton that I'd like to sit down with.

 

First thing I want to find is the story about the classic Nicklaus-Watson battle in the British Open. Maybe the first golf story i ever read that I gave a damn about.

 

The site will be si.com/vault

I read something that said it'll be active around 6 p.m. today.

 

This morning I couldn't get it to work, but I can't wait for 6 p.m.

 

Thats a good point. If its all free at the Vault, why subscribe to the magazine? I guess they are trying out the newspaper business model with its online access.

 

I just opened the vault.

OK, not really ... but the vault is now open!!

EDIT: Beggers can't be choosers, but the punctuation, etc., is all messed up in several of the articles.

 

I love that you can read the articles in regular text, but also, if you want, view the entire issue as it was published. Some pretty sweet ads back in the 70s. and whenever I look back at the old issues, I'm always struck by how few pictures there used to be - not to mention how many stories on track and field and swimming there used to be.

Another bug: when you read the stories in regular form, it looks like the first graf has been dropped from many, if not all of them. oops. They're all there obviously if you read it in the view that shows the original magazine, but hopefully that gets fixed fairly soon. After all, there's probably some pretty memorable ledes that you can't see right now.

 

A treasure chest, but try finding a story from way back if you don't know the precise headline. You'll wade through a long list that, by date or relevance, appears to be in the same order. Best to go to the covers and filp through until you find the approximate date.

 

I've read many threads on this board that praised the early feature work of Reilly and Rushin, but both were already writing their columns by the time I became a subscriber. I'd love to hear what some of your guys' favorites were so I can find them in the vault.

 

"Can you hear the singing?"

 

I might be losing some SJ time to read old SIs. This is simply amazing.