I'D HAVE BEEN HAPPY WITH 13 MONTHS!

After ten years working for a Brooklyn community newspaper publisher I started my own business in 1988.

My company, Select Mail, provided, as I dubbed it with my first sign, "Computerized Public Relations and Marketing." This was somewhat of a new idea back then, as businesses were only just beginning to replace typewriters with desktop computers.

My boss at the paper, the late Michael A. Armstrong, envisioned a digital office back in 1979. We were paying $250 a week to a big mailing company on 4th Avenue to maintain our subscription list and print out 13,000 labels a week.

I was the General Manager, and one of my big responsibilities was to bill all the advertisers, collect the money and pay as many bills as I could. The idea that I could keep track of all this with a tool on my desk was quite enticing.

Once we got our IBM PC (a trade for advertising in 1982), it became my job to figure out how to make it do all the above tasks. It was a big challenge, and after figuring out how to program in dBase, I got it all to work.

It turned out that those 13,000 people who received the Phoenix in the mail each week had only ever subscribed once—the paper never sent out renewal notices. Once we had everything in the computer, I asked Mike if I could send out bills to all those people. He was dubious, and didn't think it would bring in much, but in fact in those days people in Boerum Hill, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook actually depended on their weekly local paper, the way people today use their phones to see what's going on. All of sudden thousands of $9.50 checks starting arriving each month, making my job of paying everybody much easier.

When the time came that I felt the need to go out on my own, I figured that if I could do that for the Phoenix I could do it for others. I decided that sending press releases and newsletters and advertisements in the mail for others might have a future. And with a computer I wouldn't need many employees.

I didn't have much money, actually any, and I needed another new device called Laser Printer, with which I could produce professional, typeset copy and create the things to mail. So I went to my mother for the initial capital investment of $3,000, with which I bought a Hewlett Packard Laserjet

It turned out not many people around here had one. I still had my reporter friends from the paper. My first office was actually around the corner from the Phoenix, at State and Hoyt Streets. One day my friend Don Corbett came by and said he was looking to move to another paper. When he saw the printer he asked if I could do his resume for him.

He was so happy with the look of the resume that I thought maybe I could supplant my slow-growing mailing business with a resume service.

I ended up writing hundreds of resumes, offering free career advice along with it. The main thing I always said was that if they really wanted something, be persistent. I said that the movie stars we see in the theaters are not necessarily the greatest actors, rather they are the ones who didn't give up their dream and stuck with it. Really, I was thinking of myself, as my first dream was to be on the radio. I did get a couple of radio jobs, but then got mad when I didn't become famous right away and so I gave up that dream.

The mailing business grew with fits and starts and eventually brought me close to Red Hook at 101 Union Street, near Columbia. It was a large space, and I spent a lot of time driving to IKEA as I ended up creating both an industrial and a music space. By the spring of 2010 I had my mailing machines running as well as a lively weekly music jam.

I had always wanted to somehow get back into the newspaper business.My best friend ran a weekly paper in Port Chester and I missed the newspaper lifestyle that he had–kind of a crazy one but with the idea that your are doing interesting and different things all the time.

Armstrong was also a major influence in my life, and I kind of always wanted to see if I could be a publisher like he was. Driving to IKEA took me right down the middle of Red Hook, a place where in another time of my life I was careful to pretty much avoid, although my original forays to it were kind of interesting. I took the bus to the Kentler Center on the eve of the first Iraq war where Florence had an anti-war exhibit happening. A hairy evening was when my car kept breaking down as I was taking a date to Lillie's, and my favorite story, the time in 1986 when my marriage was on the rocks and I needed to get someplace that was more miserable than I was so I could feel better. That place was the very end of Van Brunt Street, with garbage all over the place and a barbed wire fence at the end. I got out of the car, with Exile on Main Street playing full blast on the tape player, and looked through the barbed wire in hopes that the misery would cheer me up, and lo and behold I saw the Statue of Liberty standing right out there. I remember thinking what the hell was THAT doing there? From that moment on life got better, and now I go right through that fence (now upgraded) every day on the way to work!

In any case, I remembered all the advice I used to give and decided that for once in my life I ought to listen to my own, which was to be persistent and pursue your own dream. So just like I made up the idea of Select Mail, I decided to start a paper in Red Hook, which as far as I could find out, never had one.

I didn't get famous right away, and still haven't, yet here it is thirteen years later and I'm still plugging away with this rag, and guess what—it's the greatest thing ever—for me, for my writers and artists, and hopefully not too bad for the couple of people out there who still pick up newspapers. And if that's you, which I guess it is... THANK YOU!!!! —

George Fiala

Keg and Lantern Award Winners

Red Hook’s Keg & Lantern, located at 158 Beard Street, won multiple awards including the FX Matt award, given to the Best Craft Beer Brewery in New York State, in the 2023 TAP NY competition. Keg & Lantern also won a bronze medal for their Jamm Session IPA, and a silver medal for their Gothic Dark Lager.

The TAP New York Craft Beer & Music Festival 2023 took place on Saturday, May 20, and Sunday, May 21 at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts at Woodstock. It included live music from the Wailers with special guests The Classy Wrecks, and Blues Traveler with special guests Black Dirt Bandits and Vanessa Collier.

Daniel Defonte Way

Defonte’s Sandwich Shop, which celebrated being open for 100 years last year, will finally have their own street naming. The ceremony will take place in front of the store at the corner of Columbia and Luquer St. at 10 am on Saturday, June 17.

Kimberly Price wrote in 2015 in the Star-Revue that the street naming idea began after owner Daniel Defonte passed away. "To honor Danny, Spanky (a former employee) started a petition to rename a block after him. The block from Commerce to Luquer Streets on Columbia would be called Daniel J. Defonte Way. Spanky said he didn’t want it to be street or place because, “it was his Way that set us straight.”

Current owner, “Little Nicky” Defonte was delighted about the idea. “If anybody deserves this it’s Danny. It’s a beautiful thing that they want to honor my father like this.”

The Hook at the Waterfront Museum

Brooklyn’s Brave New World Repertory Theatre will present the American premiere of Arthur Miller’s unpublished screenplay, The Hook, adapted for the stage by Brooklyn-based writer Ron Hutchinson with UK director James Dacre, and directed by Claire Beckman, co-founder and producing artistic director of BNW Rep. The immersive setting will be onboard the barge of The Waterfront Museum moored in Red Hook. Performances are set over three weekends, June 9 through June 25 at 8 pm.

Based on true events that took place on the Red Hook docks in the late 1930’s, The Hook was inspired by the real-life story of Pete Panto, a young South Brooklyn longshoreman who after leading a revolt against corrupt union leadership, mysteriously disappeared, to be found years later murdered by The Mob. Beckman says “The ‘hook’ of the title is Red Hook, Brooklyn. It is also the classic tool of a longshoreman; an extension of his arm, a claw for gripping heavy crates and sacks of goods - or for use in a fight. The play gives a closer look at the tightly knit working class community doing the dangerous work of loading and unloading the ships. Back-breaking work which made New York the world’s richest and most important harbor.”

Waterfront Museum, 290 Conover Street, (718) 624-4719

Photoville back in Dumbo

Photoville NYC 2023 will take place June 3-18 at and around Fulton Ferry Landing. Exhibitions this year take place, in part, in Brooklyn Bridge Park’s recently opened Emily Warren Roebling Plaza.

Founded in 2011, Photoville has sought to populate New York’s public space with perspectives as diverse and international as the city itself. In pursuit of this mission, they launched the Photoville festival, activating public spaces, amplifying visual storytellers, and creating unique and innovative exhibitions and other programming. The festival continues to create a welcoming, safe, accessible space for all artists and attendees. Another Perspective juxtaposes the work of three generations of photographers (Khary Mason, Joseph Rodriquez, Jamel Shabazz) with differing relationships to the criminal justice system.

Another exhibit is Clayton Patterson’s Front Door: Residents and Writers, an exploration of the diversity of the Lower East Side and the markings made by local graffiti writers between the mid-1980s and early-2000s; and Nguan’s All the Dreamers, a collection of candid portraits made on board the Staten Island Ferry between 2014 to 2022.

Charge up people

New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez announced new data on the city’s curbside Level 2 electric vehicle (EV) charging pilot, showing high usage and reliability at plugs across the city in what is the nation’s first-ever evaluation report.

“The data is clear: New Yorkers love curbside Level 2 EV charging and our equitable distribution of infrastructure brought promising usage across communities," said Mayor Adams.

“Providing charging options that are convenient and accessible to diverse neighborhoods is critical to the transition to electric vehicles,” said Raghu

Sudhakara, vice president of Distributed Resource Integration at Con Ed. Curbside Level 2 charging is one piece of NYC’s broader EV strategy, articulated in PlaNYC: Getting Sustainability Done. This strategy also includes transitioning taxis and for-hire vehicles to electric vehicles, supporting a requirement for private parking garages and lots to make EV charging available, and studying and piloting the East Coast’s first low-emission zones.

Get in the water at Valentino Pier!

The 2023 boating season in Red Hook has begun. Since 2006 the Boaters have been paddling inside the protected waters of the Louis Valentino Jr. Pier Park. They provide all the equipment along with paddling & safety tips. You arrive, put your name on a list, and then take a kayak out for a short paddle to explore the cove.

This year's schedule is as follows:

Thursdays 6 pm - 8 pm from June 1 through August 17,

Saturdays 1 pm - 4 pm from June 3 through June 24

Sundays 1 pm - 4pm from July 2 through September

City of Water Day: Saturday, July 15th (closed July 16)

For questions, write them at info@ redhookboaters.org.