I’D HAVE BEEN HAPPY WITH 13 MONTHS!

After ten years working for a Brooklyn community news-paper 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 type-writers with desktop computers.

My boss at the paper, the late Michael A. Armstrong, envisioned a digital ofice 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 barter 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 every-thing 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 lo-cal 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 de-vice 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 re-sumes, 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 ad-vice 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