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Honolulu Lite
I wanted to write some kind of going away column to mark the Star-Bulletin's new life as a completely independent morning and evening paper, but those kinds of things always turn out to be sappy and self-indulgent. Finally leaving
this old buildingAnd besides, we aren't going anywhere except down the street to Restaurant Row to a building where the air-conditioning actually works as it should and the roof doesn't leak when it rains.
The historic old News Building has many fine qualities. Comfort, however, is not among them. The newsroom was dim and depressing, barely illuminated by fluorescent lights that created a pale, artificial atmosphere that made you feel like something very bad was just about to happen.
The internal climate was curious, like some sort of diabolical science experiment set up to test the effect of extreme disparate micro-environments on the body. The copy desk area was so cold that editors bundled up in coats and sweaters. But just a short walk away to the features section, portable fans blasted away, battling the stifling heat. Your sinuses were in a constant state of bipolar confusion.
The inside of the newsroom was a clutter of cubicles with chest- and head-high partitions. Looking down on the newsroom from the stairs to the library was like looking at a Clue game board. (The answer: Paul Arnett, in the sports department, with a golf club.)
PEOPLE were crammed together in every nook and cranny. We had three people working in a cubicle for one. The fact that Tim Ryan and I sat within 3 feet of each other for several years and didn't kill each other says something about restraint, or at least mandatory minimum sentencings. The fact that Today section editorial assistant Nancy Arcayna, our cubicle mate, didn't kill both of us says even more.
Contributing to the general gloom of the newsroom is the fact that newspaper writers are notorious pack rats. Most of the desks were heaped with yellowing stacks of old newspapers and documents that were extremely important, in decades previous. Certain desks should have been roped off with yellow "Danger -- Fall Zone" tape.
In a highly competitive field, business writer Rick Daysog's desk was the absolute worst: completely buried in an enormous mountain of papers, magazines and used reporters' notebooks. I was afraid that when they finally brought in the back hoe to excavate for the move to Restaurant Row they would find the body of Jimmy Hoffa at the bottom of the pile. Rick's Everest of trash was truly an OSHA inspector's dream, a career-maker had one wandered by, which, alas, never happened.
The front of the News Building looks pretty classy, with the large stained-glass window, a row of stately palms and a couple of heaps of metal work that I suppose is some kind of art. But the sides of the building are covered with banks of industrial-style windows, which, combined with the oppressive grayish-green paint scheme, give the building the look of a 1950s-era garment sweat shop.
I spent the good part of 21 years in this building. I cursed it when the ceiling tiles, waterlogged from an incessant leak suddenly slammed to the floor like a soggy 3-foot waffle. I hated the heat and the cold and the depressing dimness of the place. And now as I write the final sentence of the final column I will ever compose in this hateful building, I wonder why I will miss it so much.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite