In 2008, the Brooklyn Bridge turned 125 years-old, a modern age marvel of engineering most prime, and in its day the largest suspension bridge in the world. Fascinated and terrified of it were the People. . .

It was 150 years ago that St. Patrick’s Cathedral laid its cornerstone on 5 AV, across from Rock Center’s art decoid Atlassolini; Macy’s Department Store turned 150, the old whale-trapper R.H. Macy staggering arch consumers with the Moby Dick of U.S. retail; King Kong turned 75; and the Temple Emanu-El on Fifth Avenue turned 80, the Oz of NYC Germano-Judaic benchmarks, the Germans having bestowed NYC with the Brooklyn Bridge, the NY Times, Belmont Racetrack, beer hall kulchur pre-the Irish, the Headless Horseman and the pretzel.  .  .  .  And WFMU, the epochal razzmatazz free form radio station of inland urbo New Jersey, turned a stand-out, bucked-up, class-act 50 years-old.

In 08, the restaurant Florent closed. . .

Burritoville closed, and David’s Bagels closed but reopened up 1 AV at 19 ST, which as yet the author has not tried. Scores closed, the famed swankskank, ladmaggy strip club, which event is incomparably non-tragic to the sad day in the 1990s when Billy’s Topless on 6 AV in Chelsea shuttered its superb NYU co-ed boo-tay.

Folk crooner Odetta Holmes died; and arabesque Yma Sumac; bravura Hollywood leading man and philanthropic culinarian Paul Newman; bibliognost H.N. Friedlaender, 70s country-fried songwriter/actor Jerry Reed, and muckraspy cross-dressing NYC sightseeing guide Stan Thomashaw, who, after forbidden by the company to wear his dress on the tour bus, always swore that the grungy pink shorts that became his costume were really a “cut skirt;” Lollipop Building schmancer Huntington Hartford, the A&P supermarket heir who spent his fortune bombastically, once advised against building an arena for chariot races at his Bahamas resort; and George Carlin, the Master.

Obama was elected President without precedent, in a campaign that seized the American imago like no other has in recent past, political action has been granted an infusion of esteem, glamor, class and an ingratiating sense of steadfastness.

And Bergdorf Goodman in the grand tradition showed its finest of holiday windows:

. . . . readers are urged to comment else upon any birthdays or bygones hereto. . . .