Ever wonder what columnist Howard Troxler has been up to since he retired from the Times four years ago?
We did. In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of Creative Loafing's Best of the Bay awards coming up this September, we've been checking up on past winners like Troxler. An indispensable voice of common sense at the Tribune and then the Times, he won so many BOTBs that we moved him into our Hall O' Fame in 2006.
But back in 1991, in the paper's second annual BOTB issue (right), the editors weren't in quite so charitable a mood. The award they gave Troxler? BEST COLUMNIST THAT DOESN'T DESERVE AN AWARD. I guess they were miffed about his move to the Times:
“Gee Howard, you leave the Tribune to go all the way across the Bay, showing either a lack of loyalty or a sellout or delusions of grandeur or an overworked system. Then you let your attire be marketed on the racks and then begin with a couple of useless columns and now no one seems to care."
Well, that "no one seems to care" part certainly changed. (And not sure what the attire-marketing crack was about — what, the Times was selling Troxler Bow Ties?)
But Troxler hasn't exactly retired. Now living in North Carolina, he told us via Facebook that he's still working, just not in the world of punditry:
"Retirement did not last long and now I work from home writing publications for a software company that explain how their software works. When I publish something that says, 'This is what happens when you click this button,' I do not get 100 emails from people declaring that it is not true because their political party or religion tells them so. This continues to be a great relief."
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2015.