Paper Magazine’s Kim Hastreiter Wasn’t Satisfied. So She Built Her Own Amazing World.

Well, so just the anger of like going to New York and getting rejected, which I'm always getting rejected. I've gotten rejected like every. And you don't take it personally? No, I just get mad. And then because I have a vision in my mind and I am very stubborn. And when I see something in my mind and no one sees it, it drives me fucking crazy. So you're determined to make it happen? Yeah, I will do anything to make it happen. And if you won't help me, fuck you, I will do it myself. [Music] Today on the messy parts we're going to have on Kim Haasstrider. You'll know her as the founder of Paper Magazine, an iconic downtown culture magazine. But really, she's an artist. She started off as an artist and she's an artist of sort of an expansive type, the kind that collects friends, stuff, and all kinds of ideas. She's lived through many things, the AIDS epidemic and of course the pandemic. And what's amazing about her is that she continues to want to help and inspire. Despite having seen so many things and feeling a little bit bleak about the world today. So Kim, I'm so excited to have you on. You and I got to meet through Ikram, the amazing Ikram of Chicago. And the minute we met, we sort of had this moment of how is it that we haven't met before, because we share Michael Francis, the OGCMO of Target when. And many other people. Yeah, and many other people. But we sort of had a love of like those early days of Target and all the stuff they did, which makes sense. So I'm so excited to jump into the story with you. You've given a lot of interviews and that you have a lot of stories and a lot of stuff. But I wanted to go back to sort of young Kim growing up in New Jersey. Like just take me a little bit back to who you were before the icon that you became. I mean, I just had like an amazing mother and an amazing grandma. I had an amazing parents. I just was like a suburban kid in New Jersey, you know? Like normal. I wasn't already. I wasn't. I, you know, like my mother was a big reader. She was a big like like she always loved art. And she was kind of like stuck because it was in the 1950s when I was born. And, you know, she, she was really smart. She was intellectual. She was an art. She loved art. She collected art. She was kind of like had really good taste. She knew about fashion because her mother had like a dress store that only sold Klamacardle, who was like my favorite designer. She was like the best American designer. So you sort of grew up around art and design? Yeah, just for my mother. But they lived in the suburbs because that's where they thought they should live when they had kids. And your dad? My dad was a jeweler and his, his father was a jeweler and had a little, they had a jewelry store in Newark, New Jersey. So he had the store and then they started a little earring company that was named after me and my sister. It was called Kiri. It kind of did well and my mom did all the designing, but it was like not really fabulous. But you say you weren't an artie kid. My mom always like read the New Yorker and like we always had, it wasn't fashion. It was more like the New Yorker culture. Yeah, culture. And so she always knew like the hot restaurant in New York and they would go into the city because we were only a half hour out of the city. In Orange. In West Orange. In West Orange. And so what made you decide to go to art school? Well, I didn't go to art school first. I went to Washington University in St. Louis. So that's where I got in and I didn't know, you know, when you're that age, what was I 19 or something? You don't know anything. So I went there and I took normal classes and I, I just didn't love it. And then I was kind of like, it was 1969. Okay, so that was like the big year of like when Kent state happened and Vietnam. And it was like a huge upheaval in America. My friends were all getting arrested. I mean, it was crazy in 1969. And so I went to college like in September, dressed in villager outfits with little circle pins. And my parents came to see me in St. Louis like four months later. And I was wearing like hiking boots and like a floor length Indian Shmata. And like I was hippie. I became a complete hippie. Smoking pot, taking, you know, mushrooms. I was loved psychedelics. What was their reaction to that? I think my parents were shocked when they saw me what I looked like. But they were, you know, they were liberal. My parents were liberals. I mean, my mother worked for Eugene McCarthy. It was like all that. They were very liberal. So how do you then get to art school in California? So then I was at Washington University. And it was like, oh, I just, I, but I kept going down the hill. They had this art school. And that's where all the interesting people were. And that's where I met people. So then I realized I was reading like start reading art magazines. I remember I was reading art forum. First, I like said, I think I want to transfer to the art school in Washington University. You know, with my mother's blessing, she was like, good, be an artist. She loved it. So I learned ceramics. I did painting. I did all that stuff drawing. But it was really a classical art school. And I started reading about like art forum of on guard things in New York. And I found out about the school in Nova Scotia, Canada. That was completely like radical. And it was called Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. And people who were in the art world, who were of a certain age, will remember. It was like the best art school that ever existed. I remember I told my mom that I, I said, I think I want to transfer to go here. But I want to take a year off and go to, I want to travel. And there are those days you could buy a year-ale pass for $1,000. And then you would never need a hotel. You could just get on a train and travel anywhere. I bought a year-ale pass and I went to Europe and I went to Morocco. I went to all these different places. I would just get on trains and go places all by myself. And then I went to Nova Scotia and that was like a whole, I went all by myself. I bought a pickup truck. And before Nova Scotia, when I was in high school and when I was in college, my mother would always find these crazy things for me to do during the summer. The best one that she found, right, when I was still in St. Louis. And I think it was before I went to Europe. But she was like, okay, this summer you can either work for Daddy in Newark, New Jersey at the jewelry store or you could work for this architect named Palace-Ollary who's building the city of the future in the desert in Arizona. So I always always like, okay, I'll go to work for him. Yeah, I'll go to Arizona too. Yeah. Do you know who Palace-Ollary? I do. Well, Google him because he was building like a crazy city in the middle of the Sonoran desert. He was the Sitalian architect. It was called Arcosanti. This was in 1970s and I was one of the first people I finished one of the first building. You would do construction in the desert in the summer. I mean, you sleep outside. It was outrageous. So how do you get to John Baldersthorian LA? So then I went to Nova Scotia after all this, after Europe and everything. And that was the year I was in Nova Scotia, the year of Watergate. So I remember it was the year that Nixon was impeached because that was the most memorable. Yeah. And Vietnam. I mean, it was, but I was in Canada. These people started this school in Canada because Canada wasn't involved in the war. So this group of art students from Ohio University all got together when they were about to graduate and said, what are we going to do? And so one of them was Canadian said, oh, the Canadian government has all this money for arts. Let's start our own art school. That's how it started in Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. I mean, it's legendary. It's a legendary school. And so I got my bachelor's BFA there. And then Nova Scotia at the time shared a lot of staff with Cal Arts. Because like John Baldersthorian would teach there. And then Eric Fishel was actually a student at Nova Scotia. But I don't know if you know who Eva Hess was. She was like an artist. And plus it was Canadian and it was free. The whole thing was like $100. So it didn't even cost my parents anything. So I was going to ask that because one of the things you say when you do interviews or talk is that really money wasn't your motivator. Never. And not good at it. But yeah, you've managed to actually have a successful life, right? So I think-- Yeah, but not through money. I never-- I'm like kind of through my friends, you know. But I never made money in anything. But you know, if I was a young person now coming out in the world today that feels like money is so the driver for so many people, what would you say to somebody who is younger like about prioritizing money or not? You have to prioritize your happiness, not money. But how are you supposed to pay your bills? First, you have to find your gift. That's really important. What is your gift? Every single one of us has a gift. What's your gift? I'm really good like connector, like people and ideas. My gift isn't so easily described in words, and that's actually what my next book is about. It's called work. And it's about not being one thing. So it was kind of hard. I thought I was going to be an artist. I went to all these art schools. After Nova Scotia, I went to Cal Arts. Yeah. And I was supposed to go right in the art world. But when I, you know, John Bullessari, he was like my biggest supporter. He loved my work. He called the Whitney-- The LA artist. I had like amazing people behind me. And they all love my work. but I came to New York and not one of the women that I went to school with. into a gallery. It was only the boys. It was like a boys club. And I was a punk and I got pissed off and I was kind of like, fuck you art world. I don't want to be part of this. So how did you then decide to pivot? So even when I went to Cal Arts, I started making friends with people who weren't artists. And then the people who were artists that I made friends with were like filmmakers and doing crazy things. That was right when video got invented. It was literally 1973. I started making video art. I started doing these things with multiple videos that were kind of similar to the paintings that I was doing. I was addressing this certain thing in my mind. And I kept thinking like, I don't know if I could be an artist that's just like, because people love my paintings. So they were like, oh, keep doing the paintings. Keep doing. And I would like keep doing them. But I was kind of like, well, I don't want to do this. Keep doing these paintings. The same paintings because it wasn't interesting to me. Something didn't satisfy me. I mean, I don't want to keep doing paintings. That's the thing about the art world. If someone loves something you do, they're just like, oh, keep doing it because they thought they could sell it. I don't know. Whatever. People loved my paintings. They went crazy for my paintings. But I was kind of like, how many times can I say the same thing? And even with my videos, I was saying the same thing in my videos that I was saying in my paintings. It was this concept of space. And I had this whole thing going. Like if you looked at my videos, you could see the connection to my paintings. So how do you then pivot? Well, so just the anger of like going in New York and getting rejected, which I'm always getting rejected. No, I just get mad. Yeah. I will do anything to make it happen. So I spent my whole life and my whole career DIY. I did everything myself. So when I moved to New York with Joey Arias, the performer, we drove in my dragon wagon across country and we stayed at my mom's house in New Jersey when we first got here. And Joey had nothing to do with the art world. He was like in a rock band. He was like a comedian. He was working in a frame store. I mean, he was like, but he did love fashion. I have this whole crowd of friends around Joey, none of whom were in the art world. And I was so pissed off at the art world that I would go out with all these kids. And then the mud club happened. I'd be going to the mud club. But it was all these other type of artists that were mixing things up. So I moved downtown with Joey. We got a sublet for like $100 a month or something. It was crazy to think about Joey got the first job. He got a job at Fear Rucci. So he's like, "Kim, you should work near Fear Rucci." And someone else told me about this job that was available in this clothing store owned by Betsy Johnson and this other woman is called Betsy Bonke Nini. It was this really cute store on Madison Avenue. And it was like Bohemian owned by these like Bohemians. Bonke was the owner with Betsy Johnson who was also like, Bonke was a Rockefeller. So me and my friend Bronca who I went to college with both got jobs as sales girls there. That's where I learned about avant-garde clothing. Joey was working in Fear Rucci down the street and he became like a big star. Fear Rucci was like the best salesman. But he was meeting like the Queen of Spain or like movie stars would all go there. Everybody loved Fear Rucci and everyone loved Joey though. Joey became really famous. We met Salvador Dolly. I mean, we met all these crazy people and even at Betsy Bonke Nini, all these famous people like Barbara Streisand would shop there and like Nora Efron I became friends with. She was my customer. Jackie Kennedy was my customer. I mean, she was married to Aristotle and now this is the time I lived around the corner. So it was all like these women. It was women's clothes and that was where I first found like kind of the Japanese, like Conza Yamamoto and all the France and Javier. There was all these avant-garde designers that I got really into. I got really into fashion. But meanwhile, I still have my art thing going but I didn't have a studio. I didn't have any place to make art and I didn't really fit into the art world. I was fuck you. I hate you art world. I don't want to be part of you. At that point, I had this wonderful Nana, my mother's mother who was really close to she died right after kind of I moved to New York and she left me 20 or 25,000 dollars. Wow. But it took like a year to get the money. And so I was kind of like I remember saying to my mother, I can quit my job selling clothes because I wasn't my fun selling clothes and my mother was like, no, you're not doing that. You have to take the money and you have to buy a loft because in those days, Soho and Tribeca were like kind of industrial places and they started this program for artists. If you were an artist, you could get like a really cheap loft by and then you had to bring it up to code and then you would be tax-free for 10 years. It was like this really good deal for art. So all these artists were buying up these buildings in Soho first and then it went to Tribeca. When artists still lived in Soho. So there was this art guy named Henry Galsuller who was friends with Andy Warhol. He became like the head of the cultural guru of New York and he worked for the government and he set up this artist program and you had to prove that you're an artist and if you got a certificate, you were allowed to buy one of these. And so a lot of artists bought whole buildings and then they sold off floors. My mother said, you're going to take that money, you're going to buy a loft. In those days, you could buy a loft for $15,000. And that's where you started paper in that loft. Yes, exactly. So I was living on Prince and West Broadway in this kind of city tenement with the top in the kitchen. But then when my grandmother died, I started looking through the village voice and I found this place on Lisbon Art Street. Soho was already, I remember looking at a whole floor in Soho and it was like $10,000 and every week the price will be going up. It was crazy. It was like this gold rush. So I went to try, I found this place on Lisbon Art Street. It was amazing. It was a vitamin factory and it was 16,000. And I bought it and I brought my mother to look at it because it was like shitty. It didn't even have a floor. Had these machines and it was like a factory. But it had six windows looking at the Empire State Building and six windows looking at the at the World Trade Center. It was beautiful. I had these beautiful curved ceilings. And I bought it. I remember I used car paint to paint the kitchen. I put astroturf down. I was just like kind of, it was fun. So what made you decide to do paper? I was still working at Betsy Boncini, okay, when I got the loft. But then I met Bill Cunningham because he used to stand on the photographer. Yeah. So Bill Cunningham used to stand on the street of Madison Avenue and 59th Street. That was like 60th Street rather. And I used to dress crazy because I would always be coming from the clubs. And Bill started photographing me. Because he loved street photography. That's what he did. And I dressed crazy. I was dressing crazy. He started chasing me and then he started like waiting for me at the subway and we kind of became friends and then I saw him downtown in the flea market on Canal Street on one weekend. I was like, what are you doing here? He said, oh, child, I like, I shoot people here. What do you, you know, so we became friends. And every day, I would see him. He would take my picture. He had a column in the New York Times. Sometimes my picture would be in there. But Bill said to me one day, how do cool people know what to do? You don't read the New York Times to find out what to do. And there was no like time out. That was too straight, you know, for us. So all there was was the village voice, which was kind of a hippie rag. And so that was like the demographic wasn't really stylish of it. So there was this newspaper that called the Soho Weekly News. It was fabulous and had a style section in it. And it was kind of like you would buy it every Wednesday. And there was this calendar in the middle and you do plan your entire week. What club, what bands were playing, what art shows were opening. And you just, it was like the guru. It was it. So Bill kind of worked, had a little secret column. And he called himself the snapper. He didn't use his name because he was working for the New York Times. And so he said, Oh, the style editor, Annie Flanders, quit. They actually had a big fight there. So he said, they're looking for a style editor. I think you would be a good style editor. So I was like, well, I don't know anything about being an editor, you know, I'm an artist. He said, you're perfect. You live downtown, you dress crazy. I found out later they wanted to hire him. And he didn't want the job. But he had to find someone for them to hire. And they loved him. So he made them hire me. But anyway, I got the job with Bronca, this girl Bronca, who I went on to Cal Arts with and we split the job. I remember we each got like 150 a week. I think the job paid 300 a week, something like that. But it was also was downtown. It was really fun. It was really, really wild. And that's where I met David Herschkevitz. He was my partner. I started paper with. And I mean, there was amazing people there. But there's like almost two lessons in this, right? Which you don't think about because it's your story. But as I listen to you, it's like two things I take away. One is that you even though you were like, I know nothing about it. You were willing to try it and give it your all. Well, just because I didn't have, I didn't know what else to do. I hate it. The art world. I didn't want to sell clothes. That's what my mother even said. Like, what are you doing? You've been there two and a half years. She was kind of like, you didn't go to our school for like eight years to be a sales girl. My mother even said, do you want, do you want to own a store? Is that what you want? But she, she was like open to it if I said yes. The second thing about you that's really interesting is, and you You talk about how you collect people, but relationships have clearly as a key part of your equation, right? Because Bill plucks you out in this story and helps you find the next thing. And you're sort of living in this, you know, yes, downtown scene, but still lots of interesting people. How do you make these relationships? I mean, I only like spend time with people that I think are contributing something. Why does that matter to you? Because I don't want to waste my time. Like life is short, you know? I mean, I'm 74 now and I like, I'm stricter than ever about how I spend my time just same with my stuff. And I just, at a certain point when I was young, I was like, and I have this friend who was really smart who said to me, "Everything you buy has to be incredible. Never buy anything that's not incredible." And I was kind of like, "Oh, okay." So in other words, whatever, if I buy salt for my kitchen, if I buy a mug for my kitchen, it has to be like fantastic. So he kind of, this friend of mine who died of AIDS, but he instilled that thing in me like, you know, you can't have any mediocrity in your life. So I became really picky about everything that I surround in myself with. I got the best department. I do have a good eye that I inherited from my mother and what I wore, what designers I love. So I went to the Soho News, not knowing anything. And the Soho News was like outrageous. You didn't get there till one in the afternoon because you were at the mud club the whole night. You had to go get your art director at the mud club in the middle of the night. It was a weekly, okay? You can't imagine what doing a weekly is like. And I had it. I can because we do the podcast weekly. I was just responsible for like 15 pages every week. I was Michael Mustos editor. I was the editor for food. I had to cover it and then fashion, but fashion was like style to me. So I started coming up with these crazy ideas and key tharing. I became friends with, I used to go to club 57. I was friends with like that whole crew and Joey also was involved with club 57 with key tharing and John sex, all the people that died. Kwong Chi, like that you don't know who they are, but they were amazing and photographers and artists and oh god, I did these great ideas. I used to transform people. Robert Maplethorpe shot shot for me. I mean, but the Soho News only lasted for two years. I was there and then one day we went to the Soho News for and we get there at like noon. Literally we had a drug dealer coming in. Everyone was doing like drugs. If the sex pistols were intent, whoever was in town would come to the Soho News to see it because it was like the hot thing. So what happened to the Soho News all of a sudden, one day we got to work and everyone was like, oh, they sold the Soho News yesterday. I was like, what? They sold it to some English guy named Lord Harnesworth, who was like, kind of a daily male guy who was a right wing newspaper publisher from England that like we were like, what? We immediately hated them and we were like, oh shit. It all went to pot and then we tortured them so much that one day we came in and they closed the Soho News. Okay, it's closed. And then everybody just took the tables. Xerox, we walked out with like we stripped it like termized. We took every stall everything like. I remember we made it. It was the best. And then I was kind of like, oh shit, I don't have a job now. What do I do? So I went, I went to Condi Nass because I thought, oh, maybe I'll do this. Maybe I could get some really. Oh my God, that is hysterical. Well, but I didn't know. And so at the style, I could do style for Condi Nass. So I went and I met with this is before Vanity Fair was just starting. And the first editors were like, oh, we want you to do stuff for this new magazine, Vanity Fair that we're starting. So I was like, okay, because also they paid you a lot of money. And I had a column in this magazine called Mad Mazzell that they gave me. That was a Condi Nass magazine. It was kind of like a magazine for young women. And I did this crazy streetwear column. And then I had a column in GQ also. I started doing freelance. But Condi Nass was like so hideous. Every single thing I did, they ruined. And I was like, fuck you. No way. We're back to the fuck you. So I hate it Condi Nass. The same time David Herskowitz was like, so ho was kind of becoming more popular. There was like restaurants opening. And we thought they were so stupid those people that like closed it, you know? So David was like, let's start another weekly. Like we need a weekly in New York, but one that has style took us two years to try and raise money and get rejected by every single person. How? What was so hard about that? Because like we met these art directors and they did like a, we did a, what's it called like a, like a mock up? A mock up. It was so fabulous. I still have it. And then everyone liked it, but they were like, is it a music magazine? I'm like, well, not really. Is it art magazine? Well, not really. Is it a fashion magazine? Because it was sort of you, like not one thing, but lots of things. I know. We kept saying it's culture, but they didn't understand what it was. Because they were like, well, what exists that it's like? And we're like, it doesn't. So what happened was finally David came in one morning and said, he bought this Michael Jackson poster on the subway and he said, we should just do a poster. Let's just start it as a poster. So I went to this printer and I was going to cost $4,000 to print. And we had all the so-called news like distribution. We had all of the infrastructure at our fingertips. We had these two crazy art directors who worked at the New York Times. They came up with the poster design and we decided to call it paper. We each put in a thousand dollars and we gave the first ads for free. We made these 20 ads. And if you bought one ad, you would get the first one free and then you get the second one you would pay. And that's how we started and we started in my house on Lisbon Art Street. How many years did you have paper before you sold it? 33? Long time. Well, we sold it in 2017 and we started in 1984. You know, when I first moved to New York in the mid-80s, I mean, that was the Bible of downtown, right? And to your point, it was everything. It wasn't just one thing. Yeah. What was the lesson you took away from that experience? First of all, we weren't really journalists. We weren't really publishers. I was an artist. My partner, David, was kind of like, we're all in the art world kind of down there and everything is converging. The artist would do something with Debbie Harry and then they'd do like something with Vivian Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. We're kind of our heroes because they were doing fashion and music and everything was mixing up. So that was just a really important part of the culture that we wanted to represent in paper. So you sort of built a media entity that was really a community. Totally. And why do you think community matters to you? Because it just was kind of like, I hate journalism where like you get press releases and then you hire some writer to write a story. For me, that's like the worst. I would rather find a person who's obsessed with a crazy genre of film and have them write about what they know about and are embedded in and are obsessed with. So that was our philosophy at paper. Get people, all these crazy creative people and we would teach them, David would teach them how to write. And then we would find, you know, AIDS was happening. We did the first AIDS column. What happened was when people were diagnosed to me, something that really stands out in my memory of that is if you were diagnosed, then you knew you were going to die. You were either dying six months or a year. But you know, to me, the wildest, I mean, I had friends that all of a sudden proclaimed that they were gay. They were straight. I had friends that killed themselves in various ways, like just to how people dealt with being HIV, like Keith Haring, when he was HIV, he started like, he was like a maniac, like producing as much work, like mountains of work, you know, artists would be like just go into production mode because they knew they were going to die. So that's like wild to, you know, and they were all in their 20s, like what is a 20 year I'll do when they know they're going to die. And then a lot of people who didn't have their families rejected them, you know, so we would visit them and we would, you know, try and help them. And there was a million fundraiser, you know, we would have fundraisers and I had this beautiful David Warner Ovich sculpture that I got at a fundraiser for a mutual friend of his before, you know, he died. He was. You're describing community of like people coming together and what was a very difficult time. You know, it was also like Mayor Koch, who was gay and like he wouldn't say he was gay and he was like, we were of course furious at Ronald, you know, all the political people who wouldn't acknowledge it and Larry Pramer, who was like, might became my friend and neighbor. So let me ask you because now here we are in 2026, you know, at a very different world than what you're describing. When you reflect back on that time and sort of where we are, what do you think about? I think Michael Stuype really said it good in my book. I don't know if you read the part about Michael about PTSD and how, you know, AIDS really gave him like this huge PTSD. Then when 9/11 happened it brought it back and then when this COVID happened it brought it back and now, but I think that, I mean, now is unlike, forget it. Now it's just beyond. It's like so beyond. How do you process that because your reaction actually? If I go back to COVID, it's not to sit still. It's to go do, you know, answer questions in the park, start a newspaper, right? Like you don't sit still. - No, and so this one, well, I mean, I do think that you have to, that art is really important and that you have to be creative and you have to try and figure out how your gift can help lift people up. - After 30 some years of paper, I mean, you were a paper. What was that, like, sort of that loss of identity when you sold it? - Well, I don't know if I may have told this story, but I sold paper the week my mother died and it was like a really crazy week. It was just by accident, those two things happened the same week. When you sell a business, you sell the business and then you have to do diligence for a month and then they come back and you close. And when my mother died, I remember she was living on Chamber Street and this assisted living, they said, well, you have to get everything out of here in a month from now. So I had this month that was, I was a little bit in shock, I was happy because I didn't want, I was not happy at paper because it was just not fun anymore. - Why wasn't it fun here? - Because the internet kind of became more about counting people and celebrity and I am not into celebrities. I really-- - Even though you have a lot of famous friends. - No, but to me celebrities like me maybe because I treat them like normal people, I always thought celebrities just want to be treated like everybody, normal people, like nobody's. And we always had the saying at paper, we treat famous people like nobody's and nobody's like somebody's. But I like the talent. So especially I really don't like untalented celebrities. I just go for talent, whether you're famous or not. - So anyway, so I had this month and then that one day when I'm enclosed that week, all of a sudden I had like these boxes. So it really gave me a job to do for like six months was go through all this stuff. So it wasn't like as big a shock. I mean, it was kind of like, it was a relief 'cause I was trying to sell paper for two years no one would buy it. They wanted me to stay and like kind of help them with the transition and that didn't work. I've heard a lot of times that founders don't work. It doesn't work when you stay 'cause people don't know, you're used to be the boss and now you're not the boss, it doesn't work. - That's messy. - Yeah, exactly, definitely. So that's in work. But I then had to figure out what to do with all this stuff. And so then I was going through everything and it was like history lesson, oh my God. - Was that the founding of stuff? - Yeah, that's how common. And I had it to be a most brutal editor also. 'Cause I didn't have room for all this crap. That took like six months to do. - But was there ever a moment in there where you were like, I'm miss being the founder of paper? - No, because when I stopped, I had this idea called amazing unlimited. And I wanna open a restaurant 'cause all these people always wanted me to open restaurants 'cause I was really into the food scene. I knew all the chefs and people had asked me and I was like, I'd never want another business. I never want to manage people. I don't want anything to do with like a business. So I always said no. Then I was like, oh, I wanna start a nonprofit where all the money goes to people with ideas, like amazing ideas. And so I would give grants. I had this crazy idea that I would open a cafeteria with all my chef friends, get everything donated and 100% of the money would go to people who submitted amazing creative ideas to me. And you get like $10,000 to make the idea happen. I worked on that for like a year and a half. And then when I went to get my nonprofit, I couldn't get a nonprofit 'cause they won't give nonprofits if you're gonna start a business. It's like a whole thing. It became really complicated and then COVID happened. So all that was going on simultaneously, but I always need like a big, I have like three projects right now. - Driven by ideas. Okay, I'm gonna look here because I have a couple of rapid-fire questions I wanna ask you, but I also made a note. You and I have been around long enough to have seen many versions of things. We still remember the rotary phone. You said, "AI is like a slow motion car crash." What did you mean by that? - It's like when you see something that you know is gonna be horrible and destructive, but people don't see that. I'm good at, I'm really like an early, I can predict things early. - How do you work around cynicism? Because that's something you say you do. 'Cause you're not cynically. - No. - Even though you've seen a lot of things. - Yeah. - I try and help. I try and help people. - You say good people, no good people. And you know, we know lots of people who are not good friend-sharers. You are an incredible friend-sharer. What gives you joy about that? - Well, I find amazing people, and then I want them to meet other amazing people. So it's just like, I mean, I have introduced a few people that got married, but it's not even like that. It's just like, collaborating, like, I have the most, like, jewels, people. And then if I find someone who's a jewel, I love to know who they think are jewels. Who are there people that they think are amazing? And so then I want to meet all those people, and then I want my amazing people to meet their amazing people, right? And it's worked. I have all these, and now the friends are becoming almost together. - I love your rule about collecting people. You say no assholes and no transactional relations. - Totally. - How do you live by that? - Well, you know, I think when you're 20, you don't really live by that as much, or when you're doing ambition and all that, maybe you have to like, be nice to an asshole, but I mean, I just never was good at it. I'm not good at it. - Like I'm done with that. - Yeah. But now, forget it. Like when you get a whole dirt past six-tier, and now I'm 74, like, no. - No. - I mean, I won't even have lunch with someone I think is, you know. - That's a gift. I'm totally taken. - I love young people. So I do go liberal on the young people. So if someone's like 20, I'll be very open to inviting them over, or like 80. You know, I love teaching. I'm dying to teach, but of course, all the schools don't understand what I'm talking about. Not one school, like NYU completely rejected me. Everybody rejected me. - Everybody's gonna work. - No. They all reject me, 'cause they're like the same thing. Like what shelf are you gonna be on? Like what's the boxer? - You never fit on a shelf. - That's actually sort of a gift. - I think I would be the best teacher, and I love to teach. - But you do teach. - When you get old, you have all this stuff in your brain. I have all this really good stuff. I just wanna get it out before I die, and teach people, give people what I have, what I've accumulated. - Okay, we're gonna do rapid fire. So the first thing that comes to mind. When was the last time you cried? - This morning, probably. I cry every day now. It's like too much. - What was the biggest mess that actually led to the most growth? - Probably like that day that I got, when I got all the boxes delivered from paper, and just like I couldn't even walk in my house. - What would you tell someone to do before they're 35? - By an apartment. By something. I don't care if it's in like flushing or whatever. Just like get something that you own that's like where you're living, because that saved my life kind of like around. - The ground's in your room. - Yeah. - That was definitely my mom's advice. What career myth do you think is a waste of time? Anything that's money driven. - What would you tell someone who's having a crisis in confidence? - Find your gift. To find your gift. And you might not even be able to define it, but every single person is born with a gift. And if you can figure out your gift, what are you better at than the next guy? What do you do better? There's something. I know there's something. It could be your cook. It could be anything. Find your gift. And when you find your gift, like lean into it and build around it. - Okay, final question. What would be your walk on song? - My song? - Yeah. You're gonna give a keynote. What's the song you want them to play as you walk on? - Oh God. I don't know. It's either David Berner, Pink Martini. - Okay. - I like that. I can't thank you enough for coming. I was such a gift from a crumb to me. Both of you, good friend-sharers. - Yeah. - Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode with Kim. She inspires me every conversation I have with her. Remember, like, listen and share so that we can share more messy parts and remember that really the growth comes from the messy. (upbeat music)