[Scan-DC] Fixated on What He Fixes

[Alan Henney]

The New York Times

October 30, 2011 Sunday 
Late Edition - Final

Fixated on What He Fixes

BYLINE: By COREY KILGANNON

SECTION: Section MB; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; CHARACTER STUDY; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 854 words

Peter Guggenheim has worked so long at Stuart Electronics that his feet have worn holes through two layers of tile and an inch of plywood, down to the floorboards behind the counter.

''What do you expect? I've spent my whole life here,'' he said last week at the shop, on Parsons Boulevard in Flushing, Queens, where he has worked since 1953, when he was 13.

The storefront seems frozen in time. Out front, the faded, peeling signs advertise the latest merchandise -- VCRs, answering machines, phonograph needles and cordless telephones; inside, the glass cabinets display miscellaneous sale items that get as modern as the Palm Pilot. 

But certain services are cutting-edge. For one, Mr. Guggenheim is perhaps the city's foremost seller and fixer of radio scanners, which monitor frequencies used by emergency responders like police officers and firefighters. This makes it the go-to place for spot-news photographers, tow-truck drivers, insurance adjusters and lawyers, who scan for local precinct chatter about car accidents and other incidents that might generate work. Also, Mr. Guggenheim -- get this -- actually repairs electronic equipment, an anomaly in today's disposable world. People are always bringing in radios of the ham, citizens' band and walkie-talkie varieties. New York City and many other municipalities buy them here, too.

''These scanners here are going to the N.Y.P.D.'s intelligence division,'' Mr. Guggenheim said on Monday, neatening a pile of boxes on a shelf as a police scanner squawked out its static soundtrack: a running ticker of the latest car crashes, purse snatchings and missing children in New York.

Business takes a back seat to the shop's running conversation among its police and radio buffs. Mr. Guggenheim is buff-in-chief, with a wardrobe of police-insignia shirts and jackets, and his ''undercover'' Crown Victoria sedan, equipped with three scanners that he monitors simultaneously.

By age 11, Mr. Guggenheim was rebuilding Army surplus radios into police scanners. He met his wife, Leni, when he delivered a television to her house in nearby Fresh Meadows.

In the early 1960s, Mr. Guggenheim was part of the madcap news-chasing world, in which photographers drove big sedans bearing their newspapers' names, each with a siren on top and a big bulky radio inside to tap into police calls. He worked nights shooting for The Daily Mirror and drove a big red staff car. Ah, but now there is less crime to cover in New York, and far fewer news outlets responding.

''Back then, you'd have 20 photographers at a car crash -- a car crash!'' he said. ''Now you have murders that don't even make the papers.''

In the '70s, Mr. Guggenheim brought home the first VCR in his neighborhood, along with a constant supply of bootleg videotapes of feature films confiscated by his law enforcement buddies. His sons dissected the films, which turned out to be perfect training for Hollywood moguldom -- all three are now movie and television writers and producers.

''He could absolutely retire, but he does it for the love of the game,'' said the oldest, Marc, 41, whose credits include shows like ''CSI: Miami.'' ''You couldn't script something like this.''

Actually, Marc Guggenheim has tried. When he was a writer and producer for ''Law & Order,'' he wrote an episode broadcast in 2004 about a dispute his father had with the city over his shop's water bill. In the episode, the fictional Queens radio repairman, Peter Rubin, winds up killing a city official. The senior Mr. Guggenheim would not rent out his storefront to film the show.

''For what?'' he says now. ''To tie up my store for days?''

By now Mr. Guggenheim speaks like one of his radios -- jumping abruptly from topic to topic, and speaking in police jargon. He can recite the police's 10-code list and has memorized hundreds of radio frequencies.

''You're not using 470.8375 for citywide emergencies? Are you nuts? Hand over that scanner. No 154.190 for citywide fire?''

So goes the scolding as he scrolls through the digital frequencies and tells you -- oh, geez -- your citywides are mixed in with your borough commands.

He will then reprogram your device to track everything from terrorist attacks to the lifeguard schedules at the local city pool.

His clients' livelihoods depend on Mr. Guggenheim's calibrations, as do the social lives of legions of recreational scanner buffs whose idea of a perfect Saturday night is to obsessively follow the communications of airplane, train and boat traffic in the city.

Then there are dollar van drivers, like the one who walked in Monday seeking to replace a stolen radio antenna.

''You want to buy it back?'' Mr. Guggenheim kidded.

NAME Peter Guggenheim

AGE 72

WHERE HE'S FROM Born in France, he came to America as an infant and grew up in Kew Gardens, Queens; he now lives on Long Island, in Port Washington.

WHO HE IS The go-to guy for radio scanners. Marshall Newkirk, a city morgue worker who had a broken CB radio, described him as ''the No. 1 guy, the last of his kind.''

TELLING DETAIL Mr. Guggenheim works six days a week and has no plans to retire -- he's not related to those Guggenheims, after all.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com

LOAD-DATE: October 30, 2011

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: PHOTO: HAMS: Peter Guggenheim, perhaps New York City's foremost seller and repairer of radio scanners, which monitor frequencies used by emergency responders like police officers and firefighters, in his shop in Flushing, Queens. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JULIE GLASSBERG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) 

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper