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. Although none of......

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......

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......

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......

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......

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. Luckily, someone recently scanned the entire article, which could almost read like it was written today, if......

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......

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. Founded in 1918 by Eugene O’Neill and other trailblazers, the Provincetown Playhouse was......

Photo: Ed Levine’s Eats. 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. The vintage customized Ford pick-up is just one......

Brooklyn Bridge circa 1896. 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......

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.' The local community board is open to NYU’s proposal (see renderings here), but some preservationists are trying......

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......

New York has lost another vintage factory built diner: The Cheyenne, a popular all night eatery near Penn Station, will close its doors on Sunday after 68 years of operation. And the owner of a rival diner – the bigger Skylight Diner nearby – is to blame. Skylight owner George Papas also owns the narrow 20-by-100 foot site the Cheyenne currently occupies and he plans to build a nine-story apartment building on the property. Forgotten-NY’s......

This ad for Pakistan Airlines is real. And in the history of advertising, it really takes the creepy cake. Even worse than babies endorsing cigarettes! Seriously, if Nostradamus ran an ad firm to warn the world about blowback, this would have been in his portfolio. It appeared in the March 19th, 1979 issue of Le Point (and surely countless other publications). Yes, the shadow is in pretty much in the same place as where......