Perhaps it’s my age, but I’ve been doing a lot of lamenting lately.
Not grieving—that’s for personal loss. I’m talking here about the inanimate things that we have lost since I was a kid, in particular the objects and places that made San Pedro such a special place to live.
Not that it isn’t special now, but think of some of the things we’ve lost over the years, not just to progress: Beacon Street; the Carnegie Library; Marineland of the Pacific; Ports O’ Call Village; the SS Catalina; Fermin Lasuen High School; Paseo del Mar when it was whole; the canneries; Old Fort MacArthur Days; Lochmann Farms; DiCarlo Bakery; the Fishermen’s Fiesta; Union War Surplus; the Mazzini Club; the Hacienda Hotel; so many restaurants like Ante’s, the SS Princess Louise, Crest Café, La Conga, Papadakis Taverna, the Majestic (the original one), the Green Onion, Walker’s Café, Cigo’s, El Taco, and Dancing Waters, to name a few. You get the idea.
What I’m lamenting most, however, is the loss of the News-Pilot, which was absorbed by the Daily Breeze in 1998, and not just because I used to work there (first as a teenage sports stringer and later as a copy editor). I miss it the most because I miss it every day. Every day I read the risible Daily Breeze (e-edition), which pretends to be a local newspaper but is nothing like one.
San Pedrans want to read about what’s happening in San Pedro, not in San Gabriel, the Valley, Long Beach, or even the South Bay. I continue to get the Breeze because, thanks to reporter Donna Littlejohn, my former colleague at the News-Pilot, we still get a little local news, but she can do only so much.
And who connected to the miserly Southern California News Group will give a rip about San Pedro when Donna retires?
An entire generation has grown up without knowing what it was like to have a real local daily (except Sundays) newspaper. I’m talking about a paper that published every birth and death, listed every crime, printed stories about every wedding and anniversary brought into the office, wrote obituaries with photos (for free), and reported the results of nearly every local sporting event, from Little League and Biddy Basketball to bowling leagues and semi-pro football and soccer. High school and community college championships made the front page; they don’t even make it into the Breeze sports section nowadays. If you want local sports results today, you have to go online. And you still might not find them.
Whatever happened in San Pedro showed up in the News-Pilot, good or bad (and sometimes misspelled). The beloved “Fish Wrapper” (I mean, what else were you going to do with yesterday’s paper?) not only kept San Pedrans abreast of local events and left ink stains on their fingers, but it also provided generations of kids (I was one) with their first real paying job. Folding that paper into a neat little square you could fling onto a porch from a moving bicycle on the sidewalk took real skill.
Facebook may be popular, but the more I read on pages like San Pedro Born and Raised, the more I miss the News-Pilot. We might get plenty of pretty pictures of the places we love and plenty of opinions, but not much you can cut out and put in a scrapbook. Social media will never replace newspapers, and Silly Putty just doesn’t work on smartphones (if you know, you know).
IN MEMORIAM
San Pedro native Mike Stamm, an Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer who was inducted into the Sportswalk in 2009, died in Costa Rica in June at age 73.
Stamm, born Michael Kostich, was adopted by his stepfather after the family moved to San Diego when he was nine. Before that, he had already demonstrated his swimming skills as a member of Joe Bird’s Los Pescados Swim Club. He went on to an All-American career at Crawford High in San Diego, breaking every school record.
In 1970, Stamm set the world record in the 200-yard backstroke before enrolling at Indiana University, where he became an NCAA champion during the Hoosiers’ swim dynasty under James “Doc” Counsilman.
As a member of the U.S. swim team at the 1972 Olympics, Stamm won silver medals in the 100- and 200-meter backstroke, then swam the leadoff leg for the 400-yard individual medley team, which won gold by four seconds in world-record time. That race gave teammate Mark Spitz his then-record seventh gold medal.
Stamm was living in Costa Rica at the time of his death. spt
San Pedro native Steve Marconi began writing about his hometown after graduating from high school in 1969. After a career as a sportswriter, he was a copy editor and columnist for the News-Pilot and Daily Breeze for 20 years before joining the L.A. Times. He has been writing monthly for San Pedro magazines since 2005, and in 2018 became a registered longshoreman. Marconi can be reached at spmarconi@yahoo.com.
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