Google has put the complete archives of the Village Voice online, going back to 1955. So go while away the hours by traveling back to a New York with a fascist mayor, a groundbreaking music scene, and closeted gay people.

There are still some blind spots—our searches didn't turn up any coverage of Norman Mailer's 1969 campaign or the Stonewall riots, which the Voice dubbed "the Great Faggot Rebellion" at the time. And there's not much on Rudy Giuliani's mayoral bid. There is this hilarious 1956 farewell column from Norman Mailer after he got fed up with all the typos Voice editors were inserting into his copy, but there doesn't seem to be a way to link to it:

Voice editor Tony Ortega recommends an Andrew Sarris profile of Herve Villechaise; we recommend James Wolcott trying to argue in 1975 that New Wave was fundamentally a conservative movement. Good times.

Full disclosure: The Village Voice does too still matter, because your blogger's wife works there. But still—nothing is what it used to be.