Nirvana's Nevermind album was released 20 years ago this September (that baby on the cover is also around 20 years old now)—and SPIN is celebrating the anniversary a little early with a tribute album. You can download the entire thing right here, it features covers by Meat Puppets, Amanda Palmer, Titus Andronicus, Surfer Blood, and more. Hey: Nirvana's Nevermind album and downloading MP3s (and MP3s!)... all things we didn't have 20 years ago. more ›

Last April, an 18-year-old woman was behind the wheel of a passenger van when she jumped a curb, drove the vehicle into a house and killed the 69-year-old homeowner who was working on her home's landscaping in Hempstead, Long Island. Kayla Gerdes, allegedly high on Oxycontin and Xanax at the time, turned down a plea deal yesterday that would have put her in prison for 10 years. The pre-trial hearing also revealed what Gerdes told a cop about victim Rebecca Twine Wright, "She looked up at me at the last second, but she was too old to get out of the way." more ›

NYC’s oldest citizen died yesterday, after telling the Post last month, she “wouldn’t want to do this again.” In her 111 years, Jane Gilsenan, known as Jenny to friends, lived through the Depression, saw her brothers fight in WWII and—most amazingly—paid $16/ month in rent on the Upper West Side! Aging experts are baffled by Gilsenan and her fellow centenarians. One said she “inherited a lucky set of genes” just like her mother who lived to be 99 and her older sister who died at 102. Besides daily doses of vitamins A and D and the occasional glass of cream sherry, Gilsenan denied having any aging secrets. "I have none, and I wouldn't give them away because I wouldn't wish it on anybody," she said. Unlike another recently deceased old-timer, she had no kids. more ›

They're really going through with this thing! After auctioning off everything that wasn't nailed down, and chasing away the vultures, crews are busy demolishing the old home of the Bronx Bombers, piece by piece. For the Yankee Stadium demolition completist, there is a whole website dedicated to the topic. But for the layperson and the casual destructoporn enthusiast, perhaps these recent aerial shots from WCBS's helicopter will suffice. Do these images make you nostalgic, or make you wish you were licensed to operate a wrecking ball? The sooner we get this thing down, the sooner the Bronx gets another park!
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These are tough times for the high-end dining industry, and the seafood restaurant Oceana could have made a cool $275 just for tossing a septuagenarian lobster into a pot of boiling water. Because lobsters' age can be determined by weight, the Oceana owners believe the 11 pound crustacean, nicknamed "Peter," is approximately 70 years old. This guy was old enough to bite a infantryman's foot at Omaha Beach; does that make him too old to eat? more ›

With the wind blowing down trees out there today (seriously, watch out, one "city-owned tree" just hit a house in Queens), and the 600-year-old tree being torn down before it rots out and falls over, CityRoom asks where the oldest tree in the 5 boroughs is. more ›

Who doesn't love a good old dog story on a gloomy Friday? We may have just lost 21-year-old Chanel (the world's oldest dog), but this past week New York City's oldest canine turned 20, with a cake-filled celebration in midtown. NY1 reports that the dachshund is named Paco Sosa, and his master is Bernadine Santistevan—who credits his longevity to a combination of exercise and diet (he eats organic and takes holistic remedies). His favorite hobbies include eating (!) and walking around Central Park (though we'd guess any park would do). Daily Intel is suspect of Paco's sudden press, saying "Chanel was barely in the grave ten days before Paco seized the opportunity to start hogging the limelight." more ›

With all this rain it may not seem very much like summer out there lately, but hopefully by the 4th will be all sunshine and fireworks. Here are some old images of New York City on Independence Day, courtesy of LIFE's photo archive. Man, people really packed on to those beaches! more ›

We've seen New York City in the 1930s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and just about every other era. Here are some more images, this time from the 1940s (see the full set here); and guess what, one of the bars in this gallery is still open for business! more ›

An elderly bartender who spent 27 seasons behind the bar at the Yankees' Stadium Club says he was rejected for a job at the team's new home because he's just too old. 73-year-old John Vendikos—who has served legends like Joe DiMaggio—says that when the Yankees' food service company began hiring for the new stadium, he was instructed to re-interview for his old job. He tells the Post, in an article headlined Boo-ze for the Yanks, "I had to wait in line for three hours, and when I got in, the guy said to me, 'Why should I hire you? You're an old man.' At first, I was sure he was being a wisenheimer. But then I realized he was dead serious." Vendikos is filing a complaint against the Yankees with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and says, "This never would have happened before Mr. [George] Steinbrenner became sick." more ›

This daguerreotype by an unidentified photographer, likely taken in October 1848, can be yours for $70,000, give or take a few grand—at least, that's how much it's expected to go for when Sotheby's auctions it off on Monday. The image depicts a country estate somewhere around the equivalent of today's Upper West Side near Bloomingdale Road, 'a continuation of Broadway' which, after 60th Street, wound northwestward through farmland by the Hudson River. more ›

As an old building at 117th and Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem gets renovated, some pieces of the past are surfacing. Joe Schumacher recently discovered these three old posters, one for a supreme court judge election in Manhattan and the Bronx, another unidentifiable one, and finally one for British Invasion band the Dave Clark 5's performance at the now-closed Paramount Theater. What a nice urban archaeology find! Allegedly the DC5 played the Paramount around the time of one of their many appearances on the Ed Sullivan show in early 1964, just before the theater closed—making these posters about 45 years old! more ›

The Cheyenne Diner, one of New York City's last streamlined railway car-inspired diners, is one step closer to its relocation to Birmingham, Alabama. On Sunday workers removed the Cheyenne's neon signs in preparation for the move, which is to take place within the next few weeks. Last April, owner George Papas (who also owns the nearby Skylight Diner), closed the Cheyenne, which was built in 1940, and prepared to demolish it to make room for a nine story condo. more ›

Rent-controlled tenants living in the artist studios above Carnegie Hall received eviction letters last week from the state, but at least one of the six remaining holdouts remains defiant. 96-year-old Editta Sherman has been fighting to stay in her $530/month rent-controlled, 800 square foot studio apartment ever since the concert hall announced its expansion/renovation plans last year. The Carnegie Corporation has offered to relocate the remaining tenants "to equivalent or superior apartments in the neighborhood, paying any differential in rent for the remainder of their lives," but Sherman tells the Post, "They'll have to drag me out. They'll have to use their bare hands." Unless, of course, the corporation can come up with the $10 million figure she floated in October as the price of her evacuation. more ›

Starting in January, some of New York's top restaurants and chefs will take turns offering menus inspired by 19th century banquets, as part of Zagat's "NYC Vintage Dinner Series." Each chef will host a one-day-only event where, according to Tim Zagat, guests can enjoy an "unforgettable dining experience with dishes that have largely disappeared in the last 100 years." The series was unveiled at a press conference at Le Bernardin this morning. more ›

According to her driver's license, the 76-year-old woman who was recently busted for stealing a wallet from a Fairway shopping cart is named Charlotte Petrovas. She's been arrested 73 times over the years under dozens of different aliases, and the assistant DA says they've had trouble verifying her identity because she "virtually burned off the fingers on both hands, which makes fingerprinting virtually impossible." In an interview with the Post, she explained that "my father died when I was young, so I had to go to work. I was a model in the Fashion District. I did that for years, but then I had an accident and broke three bones in my back and went on disability." She says she's not a "career criminal" but stole "just to get the things I need." more ›

It turns out that senior citizen who was deemed a "pickpocket terrorist" by an unidentified cop after her wallet-snatching arrest at Fairway is pretty hardcore. The Post reports that the 76-year-old ex-con cannot be fingerprinted because she burned all her fingertips. Experts (or anyone who's seen Se7en) say that to permanently remove fingerprints one would have to use corrosive acid, burn them, or get plastic surgery. It's not known how the woman got rid of hers, and because of her penchant for aliases, even her lawyer can't figure out her real identity: "She keeps bouncing addresses. She moves here and there every few months. To be honest, I don't even know her real name." This is getting creepy! Maybe tomorrow we'll find out she has no DNA? more ›

A 76-year-old ex-con who's been arrested some 37 times over the past three decades is behind bars again after being caught in a sting operation at the Upper West Side Fairway on Broadway. Responding to complaints about pickpockets working the aisles, undercover cops left a wallet in a shopping cart and arrested the woman after she allegedly stuffed it into her bra, sources tell the Post. The suspect, who goes by many aliases—the most current being Katherine Kelly—most recently did a year at Rikers after being caught thieving while on parole. more ›

After his mother died from cancer, Dr. Robert Jackler of Stanford University worked through his grief by searching out print tobacco ads from the '20s through the '50s. Appearing in publications like Life and the Saturday Evening Post, the ads featured such cigarette-smoking luminaries as Rock Hudson, John Wayne, Joe DiMaggio, Ronald Reagan, and Santa Claus. And of course there were plenty of models hired to pose as doctors and dentists for ads with slogans like, "38,381 Dentists Say, ‘Smoke Viceroys.' They can never stain your teeth." Because if it was only, say, 38,300 dentists, nobody would have bought it. more ›

Even back in 1984 there was mainstream media attention on the ever-changing landscape of the Lower East Side and East Village. Real estate was "exploding," chain stores were popping up, and galleries were abundant. The New York Magazine cover story on May 28th of that year was titled: The Lower East Side -- There Goes the Neighborhood. more ›

Books can be the perfect place to stick an orphaned piece of paper; bills, to-do lists, unsent notes often get discarded in between pages -- so it's not a surprise when an unknown scrap comes floating out of a used book. Adam Tobin, owner of Unnameable Books in Brooklyn, has now created a display inside his store for just such found objects.

“It’s a motley assortment,” he said. “We’ve been doing it for about two years since opening the store. The display quickly took over the back wall and now it’s spreading to other places, and there’s a backlog of stuff that we haven’t put up yet. There are postcards, shopping lists, and concert tickets but my favorites are the cryptic notes. They are often deeply personal and can be very moving.” more ›

Preservationists and Greenwich Village community members are reporting that their efforts to stop NYU from demolishing the historic Provincetown Playhouse have paid off – to a certain extent. Andrew Berman, Executive Director of The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, tells us that NYU plans to preserve the facade and structural walls of the theater, but he says many issues remain unaddressed. more ›

Say goodbye to the maddening ear-poison of Kool Man’s “Pop Goes the Weasel,” and harken back to the more civilized jingle of a bygone era: the gently ringing bell of the retro Good Humor ice cream truck. On Sunday Adam Kuban got the scoop of the week when he happened upon this atavistic enabler of sweet teeth outside the Museum of Modern Art. more ›

The 125th birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge will be observed this month with a five day celebration from May 22nd through May 26th, Mayor Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz announced earlier this week. Completed in 1883, the bridge opened with a “People’s Day” celebration; for a penny toll the general public was permitted to traverse its span. (A few days later, on Memorial Day, 12 pedestrians were trampled to death when the crowd believed the bridge was collapsing and panicked.) more ›

The historic – but not landmarked – Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village could be the next building to make way for NYU’s ongoing expansion, which will devour six million square feet of space in New York in the next 25 years, if all goes according to plan. The theater is widely regarded as the birthplace of 'Off Broadway.' more ›

A Wired reporter bemoaning the pizza backwater that is San Francisco rang up Mario Batali to find out why New York Pizza is so magnificent and got an intriguing theory out of the celebrity chef: New York’s old pizza ovens “capture the gestalt of beautifully cooked pizza.” A food development consultant believes Batali’s abstract ‘gestalt’ is, to scientists, vaporized ingredients that become “volatilized particles and attach themselves to the walls of the baking cavity. The next time you use the oven, these bits get caught up in the convection currents and deposited on the food, which adds flavor." more ›