A Pop Cultural History of NYC: KIM HASTREITER has all the Good STUFF

“Put me in a room with a hundred billionaires and one artist, and I’ll find the artist in two seconds and talk with ’em the whole night.”  – Kim Hastreiter

Full disclosure: Kim Hastreiter, the writer, editor, curator and founder of the seminal downtown publication Paper, is my mentor. I met Kim when I was in high school and became Paper’s first intern. And if my parents hadn’t forced me to find a summer job, I would never have become a writer and then an editor. I learned a ton from Kim—the ultimate NYC insider and style soothsayer who can predict trends in art, fashion and design way before they happen. She’s also a living, breathing pop culture encyclopedia.

Kim has “amazing friends” as she calls her coterie of creative, cultural pals like director Pedro Almodovar (who shot scenes from his latest film A Room Next Door in Hastreiter’s apartment on Lower 5^th Avenue), art powerhouse Agnes Gund and musician David Byrne to name just a few. Post-Paper, Kim has released STUFF: A New York Life of Cultural Chaos, a photo-packed 450-page memoir told through Kim’s collection of well, stuff: art, clothing, objets, furniture and incredible people. – PETER DAVIS

As a teenager at Paper, I not only learned to write, but you also schooled me in everything cool in NYC. Reading STUFF is like an anthropological, historical, first-person account of the city’s cultural high points.

The week I sold Paper, my mother died. It was this crazy week. They said to me: clear out her apartment in a month. So, a month came, and at work they said to me, ‘you have to clear out all your stuff’ (from 32 years of making Paper) in a month. It was intense. I had all this stuff in my house. I gave things away. I sold things. And I realized, oh my God, I have this amazing stuff. A lot of historical things, even the ephemera and of course my art. 

Is that what inspired the book?

First, I was thinking a documentary just about the stuff, not necessarily about me. My friend Alexandra Cunningham, a curator from the Cooper Hewitt came over and said, do a book, and it should be a memoir using your stuff. Bingo! 

That’s a big undertaking.

It’s the history of New York told through the stories of my stuff. I went around to publishers. When you don’t have a definition of what you do—Paper never even had a definition—they always say no, no matter what it is. Every single publisher said, no, you have too many ideas. Nobody’s going to want it. James Jebbia from Supreme came over. He loved the book. That gave me confidence. I needed someone that I trusted to say it’s fantastic. I started a little imprint called Amazing Unlimited with my friend Karla Arria Devoe so we could do the book ourselves, and in the future do other projects. Then randomly I met this smart woman, Eleanora Pasqui from the small family-owned publisher Damiani who stopped by and really loved the book, and it wasn’t even done yet. Damiani proposed to take care of the printing and distribution and be our co-publisher. It was great because they really got it.

It’s a mammoth book. 

Creatives like me rarely make money from books and my book didn’t fit into an existing category. Damiani, most known for their photography books, had never published anything like it. I wanted it to be beautiful and have beautiful photography, but I also wanted it to have words (I wrote 75,000 of them).  Jim Joe, one of my favorite artists, did the two covers. It’s a big deal because Jim Joe has this huge cult, underground following as a street artist. The young skater and art kids are dying for it, as it’s collectible to them and they want the book just because it’s a limited-edition Jim Joe. 

“This book made me realize that I’m an artist and my medium is all this stuff. My whole life has been my single artwork.” – Kim Hastreiter

It really is a history book in many ways.

It was so complicated. The narrative had to be nailed down. I had catastrophes. I had people, art, music, fashion. And I had a memoir. The whole book is geared towards asking how do you keep history truthful? That’s really what the book is about. 

You put it together during the Covid catastrophe.

Partially. It took me five years to finish. I wasn’t allowed to have anybody come into my building during that time. I worked on it for a few years all alone. I must have looked at the book 500,000 times. I would dream about the pages. I’d get an epiphany in the middle of the night about moving something. It was a big jigsaw puzzle I had to figure out. I also called in help from my many smart friends. Kristen Naiman gave me such great advice that I asked her to be the editor. In the end it’s a hybrid. It is beautiful, but it’s definitely not a coffee table book. 

STUFF has it all from John Waters to Bill Cunningham to Jean-Michel Basquiat to 9/11 and the AIDS crisis. You bore witness to so much. 

My life has always been a mix—from people to how I live to how I dress. Life would be so boring if everything was the same. I hate when you go to someone’s house, and everything is in perfect taste or when everything is kitschy. I love a yin yang, high-low moment—a thrift store skirt with a Prada bag. My friends are yin and yang. They’re old, young, crazy, restrained, hilarious and even serious. Everything is better if it’s mixed. That is my whole philosophy of life. Paper was about a mix. Drag queens talking to people in hip hop culture. It’s like great cooking. You balance salt and sweet, crunchy and smooth, acid and fat. Life should be like a big, delicious soup.

Looking back on life must be cathartic.

The biggest thing I learned is that I’m an artist. I never knew what to call myself. I’ve always been an outsider, never belonging to one particular club. I was always an outsider in the publishing world. I was an outsider in the fashion world. In the design world. In the art world. Because I never did just one thing. This book made me realize that I’m an artist and my medium is my life. Paper was part of it. STUFF is part of it. My Substack is a part of it. My home is a part of it. I live my art. That was an epiphany. My book was rejected from every single publishing company. It’s an outsider-published book. Homemade. Once again, DIY.

There is melancholy in the pages too. You lost so many friends to AIDS like Keith Haring.

I lost over a hundred friends. People just disappeared.  It was surreal. It was slow motion. It took 10 or 12 years. And people died different ways. Some killed themselves. Some denied they were gay. I was constantly going to fundraisers, funerals and memorials. You can’t relate to death when you’re 23. Look, I wasn’t a gay man. I didn’t have the personal trauma of oh my God, I’m going to die. Or my lover died. I was a straight 23-year-old girl who had a lot of gay friends. Now that I recently turned 70, it was a big moment for me because I could see the end. I had so much in my head and felt compelled to get it all out and explain everything to everybody.

I hear STUFF is going to be the basis of a documentary about you.

It’s not going to be a normal documentary. A young, super-talented director I met named Waylon Bone has been tailing me during this crazy time of launching this memoir for the past six months and is continuing on tour with me. New York, L.A., San Francisco, Mexico City. He shot me cooking soup for 150 people. He’s not a normal documentary filmmaker, so it’s going to be kind of unique and eccentric and I hope fabulous. 

You’ve discovered, nurtured and promoted so much incredible talent. You could have a talent agency. 

I’m a truffle hunter. Put me in a room with a hundred billionaires and one artist, and I’ll find the artist in two seconds and talk with ’em the whole night. For fifty years, I’ve never been good at making money but I’m great at finding art and amazingness everywhere.

Order Kim Hastreiter’s STUFF: A New York Life of Cultural Chaos HERE