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3/29
2002'
18
'TN
Darman' JEWILIE JEWS
A Writing Legend
Danny Raskin's weekly columns ...
have been a 60-year mainstay ... at the Jewish News.
0,7
ALAN HITSKY
Associate Editor
t didn't start with his famous ellipses ... but
they appeared in his first "Jewish Youth's
Listening Post" on March 27, 1942 ... in an
effort to make his column easier to read.
It was Vol. 1, No. 1 of the Detroit Jewish News.
And as the newspaper celebrates its 60th
anniversary, Danny Raskin keeps rolling along as
a featured local columnist and senior account
executive.
His columns have appeared in every issue dur-
ing those 60 years.
Young Raskin, then 23, had some newspaper
experience when Philip Slomovitz called him in
1942, and asked him to come to work for
Slomovitz's new Jewish News. Raskin had worked
as a sports reporter at the Lansing- State Journal
and as a cub reporter on the midnight beat at city
hall for the Detroit News.
It wasn't full time at first. Over the years,
Raskin had a recording company and an advertis-
ing. agency on the side. But Jewish News advertis-
ing manager Abe Brasch asked Raskin to help out
in his department, as he says, "because I knew
people." The paper's offices were in downtown
Detroit's Penobscot Building in those days.
"Knowing people" led to a second weekly col-
umn in 1949-50: "The Best of Everything" high-
lights people and places in the restaurant and
entertainment business around Detroit.
"The Best of Everything" and "Listening Post"
were combined in the early 1990s. The weekly
column remains one of the most popular features
in the Jewish News, according to periodic
Simmons Research studies.
.
Raskin has one golden rule of writing: "I never
knock the restaurants. Some of these owners have
their mortgage in these places. I will tell the
owner privately if I don't like something."
Raskin, at 83, continues to visit three or four
restaurants each week — "I don't write about
them all" — and has no plans to retire. His read-
ers always ask, but he says he doesn't have a
favorite place.
"I have a favorite food of the moment, but I
don't have a favorite restaurant," he says.
With all those meals, how does he keep only
175 pounds on his 6-foot-2-inch frame? "You
have to learn to push yourself away from the
table," he says. "And you have to stay away from
sweets and pastries."
He has seen his share of characters over 60
years, and many consider him to be one. He lost
giant bags of candy in the Jewish News fire Jan.
27, goodies he liberally distributed to fellow
Danny Raskin's "The Best Of Everything": page 84
Danny Raskin
at the temporary
Jewish News o zces
in Farmington Hills.
staffers at the paper.
He recalls with genuine affection Roy Andries
De Groot, the blind restaurant critic for Esquire
magazine. De Groot could tell by feel and smell
the different foods on his plate. Raskin does not
consider himself a restaurant critic, but always
remembers De Groot's advice: . "If the food isn't
good for you, it won't be good for the next guy."
A blind Detroit restaurateur is also high on
Raskin's list of characters. Max Spiegelman owned
the Alamo restaurant and was always stationed at
the cash register, "and he never made a mistake in
making change." The Alamo was a favorite
because "all the boys used to hang out there —
the Purples [Purple Gang] and others."
Raskin values the work of Carl Rosenfeld, who
was talked into opening the Grand River Chop
House in Detroit near his automobile tire business.
When the working partner skipped town in the
middle of the night, the tire dealer was stuck with
a business he knew nothing about. But it didn't
take long for Rosenfeld to develop the renamed
Carl's Chop House into a Detroit legend.
And who could forget Harry Boesky's, with
Boesky leaning over your dinner with his cigar's
ash extending several inches, to ask, "How's your
food?"
Danny Raskin won't soon forget ... 'All the
records went up in smoke [in the Jan. 27 fire] ...
except the ones up here," Raskin says ... tapping
the side of his head. ❑