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This week, we published our 1,000th issue, and took a walk down memory lane with our 50 best and worst covers. And in looking back, we realized there were quite a few things we called from a mile away (yes, we're patting ourselves on the back a bit here). These were some of our best:
1996: In our first-ever Future issue, we predicted that Times Square would get Disneyfied. Any Spider-Man taking photos with tourists will back us up on that one.
1996: In the same issue, we suggested Williamsburg would one day get fully gentrified and too expensive to live in. Boom.
1997: We named now-retired Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera one of 97 to watch in '97 (it was his second season). He only went on to be one of the best pitchers who ever lived. NBD.
1998: We put a "newly employed talk show host" named Jon Stewart on our cover. (Don't go, Jon!)
2000: A review heralded Upright Citizens Brigade (with Amy Poehler) for "passing out joints to audience members and preaching devil worship in Times Square." Poehler later graced the cover of our 2013 Parks issue.
2000: "It's two hours since I saw the Strokes for the first time, and all I've been able to do is play their three-song CD over and over," wrote Mike Wolf. Their first EP came out a month later, and then that whole garage-rock revival thing happened.
2002: As the musical Urinetown became popular, we predicted a future full of similarly spoofy and irreverent musicals. And indeed it is. (Looking at you, The Book of Mormon and Something Rotten!)
2007: Before their releases, we gave the films Zodiac and There Will be Blood six stars (this was back in the days when we had a six-star rating scale), saying they'd eventually be called masterpieces. Check.
2011: We noticed a new wave of wood-burning ovens popping in the kitchens of hip eateries. The New York Times called them the newest trend two years later. Now even Mission Chinese has one.
2012: We featured Gotye a week before his U.S. debut. "Somebody that I used to know" later hit #1.