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Lisa Lisa is performing at Yonkers Riverfest tomorrow, and nobody is charging you a dime to see it.Riverfest runs noon t...
09/18/2026

Lisa Lisa is performing at Yonkers Riverfest tomorrow, and nobody is charging you a dime to see it.

Riverfest runs noon to 7 at 1 Larkin Plaza. The Lady Gaga Experience featuring Haus of Monsters goes on at 4:10, DJ Frankie Cutlass takes over at 5:20, and Lisa Lisa closes it out at 6:30. Three stages, 140 plus vendors, and nobody takes a ticket at the gate.

Organizers credit the City of Yonkers and Mayor Mike Spano for getting acts this size down to the water. He calls Riverfest one of the best days of the year in Yonkers, and tomorrow is the one to prove it.

Who are you bringing down to the waterfront?

The full story is in the comments.

Everybody in Yonkers knows The LOX came out of Yonkers. Almost nobody knows how they got in the door.Jadakiss, Styles P ...
09/18/2026

Everybody in Yonkers knows The LOX came out of Yonkers. Almost nobody knows how they got in the door.

Jadakiss, Styles P and Sheek Louch were high school kids calling themselves the Bomb Squad, then the Warlox. Mary J. Blige, who grew up in the Schlobohm Houses, got hold of their demo tape and handed it to Puff Daddy at Bad Boy. Not long after, all three of them were on "It's All About the Benjamins," and their first album went platinum.

Yonkers put Yonkers on.

Photos: Eddy Rissling for The Come Up Show, dephisticate, Amber and musicisentropy via Wikimedia Commons.

Who else from Yonkers deserves their own post?

Link to the full story in the comments.

A kid from Roosevelt High School has been to space twice.Ron Garan was born in Yonkers and graduated from Roosevelt in 1...
09/16/2026

A kid from Roosevelt High School has been to space twice.

Ron Garan was born in Yonkers and graduated from Roosevelt in 1979. He joined the Air Force, flew F-16s in Desert Storm, and came home with a Distinguished Flying Cross for valor. NASA picked him in 2000.

He flew once on a space shuttle and once on a Soyuz the Russians named Gagarin, off the same pad in Kazakhstan that Yuri Gagarin used almost fifty years earlier. Across both flights he spent 178 days in space, circled the Earth 2,842 times, and went outside on four spacewalks.

In March 2024 the Hudson River Museum brought him back home, with Mayor Mike Spano in the room. What he keeps telling people is that we are all riding through the Universe together on this spaceship we call Earth.

One Yonkers high school. Two spaceflights. Seventy-one million miles.

Link to the full story in the comments.

Jamaica on August 5. Ecuador on the 11th. India on the 18th. Three countries had their flag raised at Yonkers City Hall ...
09/14/2026

Jamaica on August 5. Ecuador on the 11th. India on the 18th. Three countries had their flag raised at Yonkers City Hall inside two weeks.

It is not just a summer thing either. One March it was Ireland on the 5th, Ghana on the 7th and Greece on the 25th. Italy, El Salvador, Jordan, Portugal and Puerto Rico have all had their turn, and so have Juneteenth, Disability Pride and Vietnam veterans. And that is nowhere near the whole list.

Every one of them goes up because a community here asked for it. Read it back and it is basically a portrait of Yonkers.

Photos courtesy of the City of Yonkers.

Whose flag do you want to see up there next?

Link to the full story in the comments.

The second oldest marathon in America starts at the Yonkers train station. Only Boston has been running one longer.The 9...
09/13/2026

The second oldest marathon in America starts at the Yonkers train station. Only Boston has been running one longer.

The 99th running is Sunday, September 20. It starts at 8 AM at the train station on Buena Vista Avenue, climbs up through the hills and comes back along the Hudson. There is a full marathon, a half and a 5K, and they all start together.

The first one was on Thanksgiving Day in 1907. Johnny Hayes won it, and the next summer he won the Olympic marathon in London. From 1938 to 1965 the Yonkers Marathon was the national championship. Fred Lebow, who founded the New York City Marathon, called it one of his favorites. The reason is the hills. Yonkers is a city of them, and the course does not go around them.

The City's Parks Department runs the race. Veterans run any distance for free, and Mayor Mike Spano opened registration back in March. Next year is the 100th.

Historic photos from the Library of Congress, Bain News Service. Station photo by Anthony22 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Have you ever run the Yonkers hills?

There is a farm floating in the Hudson off downtown Yonkers, it is free to walk onto, and it shuts for the winter after ...
09/12/2026

There is a farm floating in the Hudson off downtown Yonkers, it is free to walk onto, and it shuts for the winter after October.

The Science Barge has been docked there since 2008. It runs completely off the grid on its own solar panels and wind turbines. The hydroponic and aquaponic systems grow vegetables and herbs using Hudson River water filtered right on board, and every year the harvest gets donated in the community.

Open weekends, noon to five, last tour at 4:45. Five minutes on foot from the Yonkers Metro-North station. Then it closes until June.

You have a handful of weekends left.

Photos: Salim Virji, ajay suresh, HamTech87 and Jim Henderson via Wikimedia Commons.

Have you ever actually been on it?

Link to the full story in the comments.

Get married at Yonkers City Hall and the city will marry you again in fifty years.Mayor Mike Spano officiates the ceremo...
09/10/2026

Get married at Yonkers City Hall and the city will marry you again in fifty years.

Mayor Mike Spano officiates the ceremonies himself, usually right out on the steps. The City's own photo archive has them going back to 2023, plus one from this summer. And every Valentine's Day the council chamber gets a heart made out of balloons and fills up with couples renewing their vows. Fifty years of marriage is the only requirement.

Same building, same balloons, almost certainly a different mayor by the time you get back.

Photos courtesy of the City of Yonkers.

Who do you know in Yonkers that has hit fifty years?

Link to the full story in the comments.

Oktoberfest is coming to Cross County Center this Saturday, and the whole thing is built for families.The Green turns in...
09/09/2026

Oktoberfest is coming to Cross County Center this Saturday, and the whole thing is built for families.

The Green turns into a b**r garden from 1 to 7 PM, with grilled brats, potato pancakes, pretzels with mustard and local b**r. There is a DJ, dancing and games running all afternoon, and kids are welcome the entire time. Walking in is free, and you have to be 21 to drink.

Rain date is Sunday, September 13.

Full details are in the comments.

Who are you bringing?

Yonkers cut the ribbon on an Italian restaurant in July. Before that a pickleball club, a juice bar, a shawarma counter,...
09/08/2026

Yonkers cut the ribbon on an Italian restaurant in July. Before that a pickleball club, a juice bar, a shawarma counter, a barbershop and an indoor ninja course.

And nine parks. Four of those reopened inside two weeks last May. Trinity Plaza and Buena Vista on the 16th, Ragone-Muscente on the 22nd, Andrus Park on the 30th.

We went through the City's own photo archive and counted 29 ribbon cuttings since 2023. Mayor Mike Spano is in most of the pictures holding the big scissors. We checked every business on this list too. All of them are still open.

Photos courtesy of the City of Yonkers.

Which one of these did you not know about?

Link to the full story in the comments.

In 1853 a widow from Switzerland got on the wrong ferry, and Yonkers has been living with the result ever since.She was ...
09/06/2026

In 1853 a widow from Switzerland got on the wrong ferry, and Yonkers has been living with the result ever since.

She was trying to reach Boston. Her husband had died crossing the Atlantic. She got off in Yonkers instead, and a family named Dyckman opened their door. When she moved on to Boston, the childless couple asked if her six-year-old, Julia, could stay. Julia grew up on that farm, took the Dyckman name, and in 1869 married John Emory Andrus, who went on to become the 22nd Mayor of Yonkers and one of the ten richest men in the country.

When Julia died, he kept a promise he had made her and turned her childhood home into a sanctuary for orphaned children. That was 1928. Andrus is still up on North Broadway and it reaches more than 5,000 children and families a year.

All of it because somebody got on the wrong boat.

Photos: the Andrus archive at andrus1928.org, Bain News Service via the Library of Congress, and an 1867 Beers map of Yonkers.

Did you know that place had a story like that behind it?

Link to the full story in the comments.

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