the red hook
HOWARD GRAUBARD EXPLAINS THE ORTIZ LOSS page 13
STAR REVUE
SEPTEMBER 2020 INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM
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This One’s For You, Pete By Joe Enright
P
ete Hamill was a poet disguised as a reporter disguised as a novelist disguised as a memoirist – there is such a word, I assure you, but Pete would never have used it. It sounds too phony. Like the pre-recorded cheers they pipe in for the radio and TV gasbags at COVID-emptied ballparks. Remember Pete’s columns in the New York Post and the Daily News? Back when us old folks learned about City happenings and occasionally the world across the Hudson while riding the rails back and forth to our jobs every day, trying to create a little island of space among other straphangers to read those tabloids? The News on the way in, the Post on the way home. Sure I started with the box scores. Checked the TV and movie listings, of course, then skimmed the news. But if I saw Pete or Breslin had a column, well, that was my treat for the day. I always thought of him as “Pete”—in a way that I never called his dearly-departed brother-in-prose, “Jimmy.” That guy was always Breslin from Queens, who made you laugh, who gave us the funniest book about baseball ever written, "Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game." Sure, Breslin could tug at your heart-strings now and again, and he was more of a reporter than Pete. But Hamill’s writing had a knack for tearing away our hard masks and making us feel empathy for other poor slobs just like us. To do that he had to let
you into his own inner world and over time, you came to feel so close, well he was a pal, he was Pete, not Hamill. And if you were from Brooklyn, and also from a big dirt-poor Irish family, well, so much the better. Snow in August… All those glorious New York short stories…"A Drinking Life… " In the early 1970’s I lived on his block in Park Slope, in a carved-up studio a few brownstones away from him, but I didn’t know it at the time. It was a rent-controlled dump and when my sisters moved out they pre-dated a year’s worth of checks for the absentee landlord. I paid them back in cash every month, naturally, and almost as a Pointing to Manhattan from his Familiy’s 7th Ave Rooftop. Photo taken in value-added extra to apologize for the 2012. roaches, my sisters told me I’d never have to worry would have had an answer for that: Carey was as about my jalopy getting plowed-in on the garage- corrupt as the day was long. And how did you know barren streets below. Because the Right Honorable that, dad? Because at Our Lady of Refuge Church at Governor Hugh Carey lived on the corner and when Foster & Ocean Avenues in the 1950s, when Hugh snow was in the forecast, an army of sanitation guys was President of the Holy Name Society, me dad with shovels would run around catching the flakes was his Veep. And Hugh would often call the night before a meeting and complain that he had to work before they even hit the ground. at his brother Ed’s gas station on Flatbush Avenue But whenever I passed that big building on the again, so “could you step up again, Marty?” In 1968 south side of 2nd Street and Prospect Park West, I’d when Hugh ran for Governor, there was some conwonder how Carey could be running things up in troversy about his brother, Ed. Turns out Ed was an Albany if he lived on my block. Of course, me dad
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THE STAR-REVUE RULES BROOKLYN
I
started the Red Hook Star-Revue ten years ago this summer. The main reason was that I like the newspaper business; a second reason was that I found Red Hook a challenging and interesting community, which I suspected had lots of stories to tell. A third reason was that beginning in the 1970’s, when I worked first for The Villager, and then with Brooklyn’s Phoenix, I loved going to the annual NYS Press Association’s spring convention in Albany. The centerpiece of that weekend was always the Better Newspaper Contest. My boss, the late Mike Armstrong, who we memorialized a few months ago on the front page after his tragic Covid death, made frequent walks to the dais, cigar in hand (you could smoke them inside in those days), picking up lots of first place awards in categories such as coverage of local government, best spot news reporting, photography
by George Fiala
and so forth. Occasionally he let me go up to accept an award. In between the award luncheons and dinners we attended newspaper seminars, and at the end of the day we all retreated to various bars and rooms stocked with liquor, to talk newspaper talk and get drunk with people who did the same things that we did in various parts of the state. It made one feel like professionals, which I guess is what we all were. I was very excited to have the StarRevue accepted into the organization a few years after our founding, and except for one year, we have won awards every year. It kind of tells me we are doing ok. Convention weekend was supposed to be the end of this past March, but of course, by the middle of March all conventions were cancelled. The contest results were not announced, as the press association staff was hoping that sooner or later we could have a
real convention. Well, sooner didn’t happen and later would be too late, so like a lot of things, including school, we ended up having a virtual awards celebration. No booze, no hobnobbing, simply 4 half hour youtube video presentations, mimicking the award dinners without the food and drink. It was still exciting to watch the videos, presented two a day at the end of August, one at lunchtime and one at dinnertime. For the last one I drove up to Port Chester to be with my friend Richard Abel, publisher of the Westmore News, in his office, with his staff. If there were no Covid, these would be the people I’d be sitting with up in Saratoga Springs. I’m quite excited to announce to my faithful readers that we did quite well – our best year yet! We won six awards in total – four first places, one second, and one honorable mention. I take a bit of pleasure in noting that
This story was among those honored at the State Press Association's annual awards.
of all Brooklyn’s community newspapers, including the Couriers and the Brooklyn Papers and the Eagles and the Stars, the only other award winner was the Bay News/Brooklyn Graphic, which took a first place in the design of an advertisement. We six, they one, everybody else nil. The contest was dominated by The Express Newspaper Group, publishers
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