An Interview with Pete Hamill at NYU's Journalism Institute

As novelist and newspaperman Pete Hamill reads from his 2004 book “Downtown: My Manhattan,” a cultural and personal history of New York below Times Square, his voice comes out heavy and sincere, as if every detail is the most important one in existence. Hamill visited my The Beat: Reporting Downtown class at NYU on Wednesday, to be interviewed by 15 students. He slowly and lovingly sounds out his written words like it is his favorite book to read, although it seems that he feels this way about every book he has written, or has ever read. I want to love what I write as much as he does.

“How full of marvels was the world!” Hamill reads from the last chapter of “Downtown,” and after interviewing him, it’s clear that this is how he views life. He has a warm, easygoing manner, and delivers grand pauses between his sentences that make me think. Every interest in his life refers back to his greatest passion: writing. Whether he speaks about sports (“Basketball is beautiful- you see Michael Jordan and you say ‘Wow, I wish I could write like that”) or jazz music, it all ties in to being a writer (what he says is “being guilty with an explanation”).

Hamill is 74 years old, but looks very youthful, like he has never lost his intense curiosity and compassion that according to him, come with the best reporters. He says he will not stop writing until he is carried off to his grave. However, writing was not the first profession that appealed to him. He went to college in Mexico City on the GI Bill, and was so intimidated by the Mexican artists of the time that he says he “failed into writing.” He was attracted to writing because of “the sense of possibility of seeing the world,” which led to him choosing the navy instead of the army in his younger years.

Hamill is currently working on a novel, a mystery revolving around the current recession in New York City, that is due to come out in late spring of 2010. He has been a Distinguished Writer in Residence at NYU for four years now, and says he loves meeting out-of-town students who are seeing New York “for the first time in a real way.” Undergrads recount these experiences in Street Level, a publication that Hamill runs.

Pete Hamill has had an exciting life, and in the way he describes the joy of sports (as an “unscripted drama”), one sees his passion for spontaneity and surprise that comes with reporting and writing.



Pete Hamill's 2004 book "Downtown: My Manhattan"

Trip to the Fales Library at New York University's Bobst

I saw something a few days ago that changed my life. On Wednesday in my Beat reporting class we visited the Fales Library & Special Collections, NYU’s accumulation of rare books, artifacts, and other unique literary objects at Bobst Library. I’ve never found libraries boring, and this field trip renewed my desire to work with books. Apparently there are at least 15,000 rare titles or editions!

The head librarian at Fales who talked with us about the library’s most interesting (I think) asset, the ”Downtown Collection,” has my dream job. His name is Marvin Taylor and he gets to wear Converse sneakers to work. Fifteen years ago he started this collection of art, music, and literary materials created during the '70s, '80s and '90s, all coming out of downtown New York. Apparently no one else was taking this scene seriously, as something important to preserve.

Marvin has collected Patti Smith’s diary, original photos of the Ramones, and this wooden orange box full of writer David Wojnarowicz’s oddities, including a monkey skull painted Klein blue. He made sure we knew punk rock was invented in New York, not England, and had a few of us read excerpts aloud from punk diaries and artists’ screenplays.

I haven’t seen someone recently so completely passionate about his job, and so tender with the materials that he works with. He quoted someone, I forget now who, saying, “A thing (as in an artifact) is just a really slow event.” I think that’s pretty amazing.



The many floors of NYU's Bobst Library

A free podcast tour of Lower East Side

I'm always a little iffy about walking tours with guides - it can be hard to hear them, to catch up with them, and taking the tour at a leisurely pace is next to impossible. So finding a free podcast tour of the Lower East Side, that I could download onto my iPod, might have been less personal, but it was definitely more satisfying.

Although the Lower East Side runs east from Bowery all the way to the Williamsburg Bridge, it starts for some at the Eldridge Street Synagogue, fitting for the neighborhood’s rich Jewish immigrant history. Imposing and beautiful, Eldridge’s Star of David engravings contrast sharply with Chinese bakeries across the street. It’s what the Lower East Side, nicknamed the “gateway to America”, embodies: a mélange of cultures just a few sidewalk steps apart. This is what the tour provided by the Lower East Side Business Improvement District emphasizes. Different cultures, time periods, and creeds are all explored with equal depth and clarity on this fascinating walking tour.

From Eldridge, the tour takes a right on Canal and crosses Allen, an eight-lane street that used to have an extra row of tenements - cheaply made housing for immigrants - through the middle. It turns left on Orchard Street and goes north. A street wealthy with the new and old, Orchard houses almost everything the LES has to offer, starting with surviving tenement buildings.

During the late 19th century, this area used to be the world’s most populated: there were 240,000 people per square mile. Now, Orchard is quiet in many parts, peaceful. The street is closed on weekends for pedestrian traffic, and storeowners lug their wares outdoors. This is the Bargain District, where garment sweatshops used to rule; now fancy boutiques stand next to mom-and-pop shops.

Further up, the tour suggests a spicy pickle at Guss’ on the corner of Orchard and Broome. And the few Jewish delis that remain require a visit, with the menu at Katz’s still partially in Yiddish. When the tour gets to Houston, the LES has officially ended, but one can still find fresh knishes at Yonah Schimmel’s a few blocks west.



The Eldridge Street Synagogue