‘Garage King’ Has Trouble Parking at New York Post : Dispute: Tabloid’s newest boss has staff in uproar over firings and bizarre plans. Paper fails to publish.

Over the years, reporters in this town have poked a lot of fun at Abraham Hirschfeld. To them, the millionaire builder was the “Garage King of the city.” New York magazine once said he “occupies a place in public esteem somewhere between a loan shark and a communist spy.”

When Hirschfeld tried to win the nomination for the U.S. Senate in 1974, his most newsworthy act was spitting in the face of a state assemblyman at a Democratic meeting. Even Abe himself considered that particular vulgarity to be something momentous. “The governor and everybody was there,” he boasted. “It was in front of at least 300 people.”

Of course, freedom of the press is best enjoyed by the owner of the press, and in one of life’s great ironies, a federal bankruptcy court last week gave investor Abe Hirschfeld operational control of the New York Post, a brash and sassy tabloid that was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.

Hirschfeld promptly fired Pete Hamill, its editor-in-chief for the past three weeks, and began announcing an agenda of his own: pink slips for 72 staffers, a Hirschfeld plan for international peace to run on Page 2, the poetry of his wife, Zipora Hirschfeld, for Page 3.

Wordsmiths angrily confronted their puckish new boss this past Sunday, calling him an “animal,” a “dog,” a “nut case” and a lot worse. Then on Monday, the Post--which calls itself the oldest continuously published paper in the country--failed to publish. Reporters and editors hinted that they had sabotaged the edition with a “coincidence of computer glitches.”

That may have been just as well for Abe. He might not have appreciated the huge headline that was planned for the front page: “Post staff to Abe Hirschfeld: GET LOST.”

Monday turned out to be busy. In the morning, the Post filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a move to fend off creditors and, possibly, to battle the unions that represent the paper’s 700 employees. In the afternoon, after meeting with union representatives, Hirschfeld agreed to rescind 50 of the dismissals, all of them union members.

Many of those who had been let go had continued to work anyway. Columnist Jack Newfield reported to work at 9 a.m. “A security guard--a guy I’ve known for years--stopped me at the door and said, ‘Jack, you’ve just been fired. You’re not supposed to go up in the building. So go upstairs and write your column.’ ”

That is exactly what Newfield did. He said his column in today’s Post will call the tabloid’s situation under Hirschfeld “a Marx Brothers version of the Hitler-Stalin pact.” He said he called Hirschfeld “a racist Jew” who had hired “an anti-Semitic black” as co-publisher and editor-in-chief. The second allegation was directed at Wilbert A. Tatum, the publisher of a weekly aimed at black New Yorkers. Hirschfeld and Tatum have agreed to jointly operate their two publications.

Today’s Post carries a front page picture of Alexander Hamilton, a tear coming from his eye. Every news story is devoted to Hirschfeld, Tatum and the newspaper’s past owners. “WHO IS THIS NUT?” is one headline accompanying a piece about Hirschfeld. “HATE ‘EM TATUM, READY FOR SLIME TIME” goes with a story about the publisher of the weekly Amsterdam News, which has frequently been accused of bias against Jews.

Most of the Post staff would prefer the return of Pete Hamill, a well-known columnist and author. For years, the newspaper had been losing money and readers, its circulation now down to 438,000. Hamill gave it a burst of credibility in its competition against the city’s other tabloids, the Daily News and New York Newsday. He promised to polish up a product that had focused on gossip, crime, sensationalism. The word “terror” was used as often as the conjunctions “and” or “but.” Headlines attempted to match the Post’s famous front-pager: “HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR.”

“With Pete in here, brief as his tenure was, there was the sense that words mattered and we were doing something honorable,” said columnist Mark Kriegel.

Hamill was the choice of Steven Hoffenberg, a debt-collection magnate who originally had the court’s go-ahead to buy the paper from its bankrupt owner, Peter S. Kalikow. Hoffenberg, like Hirschfeld, was regarded by staffers as no guardian angel. Federal regulators are milling about his business empire like ants at a picnic. As Hoffenberg claimed the Post’s helm in January, its editor, a popular columnist and several other key staffers defected to the rival Daily News. “I cover crooks. I don’t work for them,” said the columnist, Mike McAlary.

To those who stayed behind, however, Hoffenberg did not seem so contemptible. He was giving Hamill a relatively free hand to run things. But there was trouble with his deal to buy the paper. One of his investors was Hirschfeld, who suddenly announced he wanted to acquire the Post for himself. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Francis Conrad was left to choose between the two. “I think I have to choose between two evils,” the judge said, giving the go-ahead to Hirschfeld.

That decision may not be final. Conrad has scheduled a Friday hearing to re-evaluate the situation. In the meantime, several state figures, including Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, are looking for investors who could prevent Hirschfeld from completing his purchase.

“I hope the governor comes up with the money because I don’t know anything about newspapers,” Hirschfeld said.

Abe Hirschfeld, 73, was born in Poland and dropped out of school at age 14. He is a poor boy who made good, beginning in 1956 with a $1,000 investment in an Upper East Side building. He owes most of his wealth to parking garages. He built more than 30 of them, and he became known for his persistence.

When a New York City official once failed to grant him approval on a project, he and three employees marched into her office, slammed the door and held her captive. He had to pay an out-of-court settlement for this transgression, but he did get approval for his new garage.

In the late 1980s, Hirschfeld began to split his time between Miami Beach and New York. He received bad publicity from the Miami Herald while operating a hotel with dozens of building code violations. At an auction to sell the property in 1990, he spat in the face of a Herald reporter, this incident different from the earlier one in that he called his victim a “bastard” after expectorating rather than before. “Nothing made me happier than spitting,” he said at a news conference he called the following week.

Apprehensive Post employees immediately began to speculate about Hirschfeld’s leadership qualifications. “He’s definitely a few herbs short of the special recipe,” said reporter Jim Nolan. “He’s touched in the head.”

Marianne Goldstein, who does rewrite, differed with Nolan, suggesting that Hirschfeld is a cagey tactician. “He plays the role of the befuddled grandfather,” she said. “He tells you a joke, slaps you on the back, tells you that you’re a pretty young lady. I think he knows exactly what he’s doing.”

“No, he’s crazy,” Nolan insisted.

“Crazy like a fox.”

“Believe me, there’s something off about the guy.”