The City and County of Honolulu and The Honolulu Advertiser celebrated milestone birthdays yesterday with music, food and a really big cake — 15 feet by 18 feet.

The daylong party at Honolulu Hale brought out hundreds of people, many of whom reminisced about days of yore in Honolulu and the newspaper that has chronicled life in the city since 1856.

Among the attendees very familiar with both the city and "Hawai'i's Newspaper" was longtime Advertiser columnist Bob Krauss. He recalled Oct. 15, 1951, his first day on the job as a young journalist.

"I looked like I was 16," he said. "Nobody would take me seriously."

During his 55 years with The Honolulu Advertiser, Krauss has become one of the newspaper's most recognized figures. He says he has no plans for quitting anytime soon.

"It's incredible, not only that the paper lasted this long but that I'm still here," he said.

Krauss recalled his early days at the paper in the 1950s when The Advertiser was headed by Lorrin Thurston and was the weaker of the two Honolulu dailies.

"By the time I got here, we were in the same position that the Star-Bulletin is now," he said.

He also recalled the celebration in the newsroom in the mid-1980s when The Advertiser, then headed by Thurston Twigg-Smith, became the leading daily.

Those were exciting times, Krauss said. "Here we had this desperate struggle to survive and we achieved it."

Before yesterday's celebration began, Mike Fisch, president and publisher of The Honolulu Advertiser, and several others from the paper went to O'ahu Cemetery to pay tribute to Henry Whitney. Whitney started the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, which later became The Honolulu Advertiser.

"For any publication or product to be relevant for 150 years is pretty incredible," Fisch said.

As the newspaper enters a new era, Fisch says readers can expect the same quality they've come to expect in the print edition in addition to live, breaking news on the Advertiser's Web site.