If you enjoy HG’s teary-eyed musing about New York of yesteryear, you’ve got to read the masterpiece of this genre. HG refers to Pete Hammil’s 1987 article “The New York We’ve Lost” that appeared in New York Magazine. An amazing bit of writing that weaves an entire history of New York into only a few brilliantly written pages. These are the journalists who wrote well about the uniqueness of New York’s people and places: E.B. White, Joseph Mitchell, Jimmy Breslin, A.J. Liebling, Meyer Berger and Pete Hamill. Of them all, Hamill is HG’s favorite because of his eye for detail and wide range. Who else but Hamill could remember the Bushwicks and House of David baseball teams and the Brownsville gym where Al “Bummy” Davis trained under the eyes of Murder, Inc.?
Pete Hamill