Hello World Wide Web.
This is the initial post on HOFFSTACK, your new favorite place.
I, Jordan Hoffman, have created HOFFSTACK to share with you frequent music recommendations, thoughts on movies new and old, musings on our wider culture, and occasional emotional breakdowns. If you brown bag your lunch one time each month you can afford to subscribe. If you live in an expensive city like I do, you can brown bag your lunch one time each month, subscribe, and still come out ahead. Look at that, I just saved you money. You already owe me.
But there’s also a big project fueling HOFFSTACK. I call it HOFFSTACK IN THE STACKS. My goal (and this is going to take a hell of a long time) is to visit and report on every branch of the New York City library. Here is a visual of what that will look like.
Look at that, that’s me exploring the five boroughs of New York! (This illustration is an original work by Meagan Leavens, whose work you have seen in many Star Trek comic books and elsewhere. She’s very talented and also nice.)
Anyway, there are 40 branches of the library in Manhattan, 66 in Queens, 62 in Brooklyn, 35 in the Bronx, and 14 in Staten Island. (There are also three individual systems; Queens and Brooklyn stand alone, it’s complicated.) Getting to some of these spots may involve me driving, which will make for a nice narrative, as I don’t really know how to drive (but I do have a license, and a car.)
This is not going to be a quick project, especially because I never go to the Bronx or Staten Island. But I plan not just to visit each library, but to poke around the neighborhood, have lunch, check out the local stores, talk to people, and get a sense of the place. Did you know that I used to be a licensed New York City tour guide? You can read about that here. (Yes, annoyingly, that’s a “Wayback Machine” article because the initial publication where I placed that story, Departures magazine, has changed ownership and deleted all their old material; part of HOFFSTACK will include reviving some of the lost or unpublished stuff. Make a mental note on that one, I have a doozy coming soon.)
Oh yeah, now’s a good time to ask a question: who the hell is Jordan Hoffman? Perhaps it’s best just to say he is an opinionated (((New Yorker))) who has never had a real job, but has been writing about culture, mostly as a freelancer, for over 15 years. Currently my work is frequently seen at Foreign Policy magazine, Vanity Fair, The Hollywood Reporter, Decider dot com, Vulture dot com, and a great many other places. Over the years I’ve written a lot for The Guardian, The New York Daily News and TV. Guide, if you can believe such a thing. I have bylines at The New York Times, The New York Post, Rolling Stone, Slate dot com, Polygon dot com, Thrillist dot com and I was also part of the debacle at The Messenger dot com, which was hilarious. I got my second start in media, after an early stint at About dot com, at a place called UGO dot com, which is mostly about video games which is funny because I really don’t like video games.
This suffices, I believe, as an introductory post. I also happen to be writing this on New Year’s Eve. I look forward to exploring more with you soon.
Looking forward to this!
Same