NEW YORK, NY.- Kim Hastreiter, co-founder of the beloved PAPER magazine, has spent her entire career participating in, documenting, and creating explosive cultural movements that began in downtown New York City and quickly spread throughout the world. For over 50 years she has also amassed a vast and iconoclastic collection of amazing stuff. This volume, aptly titled STUFF: A New York Life of Cultural Chaos (Damiani Books, 2025), chronicles an extraordinary slice of history and the people who defined it, using Hastreiter’s singular edit of art, fashion, design, photography, books and ephemera as a lens. The book features rare cover art by the elusive, yet legendary artist Jim Joe, best known for their iconic album cover for Drake’s If You're Reading This It's Too Late.

"I am a fanatical collector and curator of ‘stuff,’” writes Hastreiter. “Mostly stuff that I think is amazing, important, tells a good story, or just grabs my heart. After decades of obsessive collecting and brutal editing, I eventually came to realize that the objects I chose to keep told the best stories of my pretty crazy life so far — reflecting the way I’ve seen my unique slice of history evolve. Looking back, I now see that this big chaotic archive also shows the influence of the radical history, and important people, and subcultural markers I’ve witnessed and participated in over the past 50 years, living as part of a maverick creative community in the greatest city on earth.”

On these pages, you will also meet Hastreiter’s amazing and eclectic friends: at an all-night party in the basement of an East Village church with Keith Haring; a private art sale with Jeffrey Deitch in Phyllis Diller's kitchen; or an impromptu dinner at Trader Vic’s with Salvador Dali and Joey Arias. But STUFF is much more than a memoir; it is a loopy, joyous, chaotic ride through the last half century of cultural chaos in New York City.

Whitney Mallett writes in the foreword: “Kim called her book STUFF but I think it could also have been called PEOPLE. She tells you that she collects her ‘amazing friends’ with the same discernment as she collects potato-themed ceramics, crochet clown dolls, or art by big artists, like Keith Haring and Tauba Auerbach. But in carving out a radically new mode of storytelling, this 448-page tome serves as both testament and beacon, a record of collaboratively engineered creative intelligence that can guide whoever is looking to continue in its lineage. Think of it like a manual for future world-building packed with shopping recommendations, gossip, and lore.”

Kim Hastreiter (born 1951) is an artist, writer, editor, curator, and a cultural anthropologist. Born and raised in New Jersey, she attended California Institute of the Arts where she was mentored by the artist John Baldessari. After college she moved to New York City to be an artist, where she has lived and worked ever since. In 1984, she launched the legendary PAPER Magazine with her friend David Hershkovits, which they sold in 2017. She currently continues to document culture voraciously, publishing a series of “Memezeens” that track radical viral art of the meme on Instagram, writing a weekly Substack newsletter about the past present and future, bringing big creative ideas to life, writing two more books, curating shows of meaningful artists, and contributing as an editor to Apartamento Magazine.



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