Hank Hoffman Plans For A Future Beyond Best Video

It is hard to imagine Hamden’s beloved Best Video without Hank Hoffman, its current executive director, who has been an integral part of that institution since 1994. But in June he will retire to a life beyond the walls of DVDs and the wildly unique series of shows and programs he helped bring to life at the corner of Whitney Avenue and Thornton Street.

A lifelong participant in and supporter of the New Haven arts scene, Hoffman began his journey on the staff of Best Video when the store was on a different Hamden corner, specializing in VHS tapes, both popular and eclectic in nature. He replaced friend and fellow musician Richard Brown, who was moving out of state. Brown eventually returned to Connecticut and Best Video, becoming executive director of the space. Hoffman replaced Brown again in 2019, when Brown himself retired. Now it’s Hoffman’s turn.

“My wife and I have been talking about it for a while, trying to see where our finances were,” said Hoffman. ​“We want to be able to do things together while we’re both healthy. Part of it was when we had to close down for lockdown, and I wasn’t here after several nights of being here four or five nights a week. I was home with my wife, and I really liked it. I mean, I like being here, and I like overseeing the shows, but I want to spend time while I’m healthy and able with my wife, and also exploring things I haven’t had the time to do.” That includes playing his own music with his band Happy Ending, possibly taking courses, and getting back to writing. 

“I used to have a blog on visual arts that I had to stop because I didn’t have the time called CT Art Scene,” said Hoffman. ​“I’m thinking it would be nice to do that — go to galleries and write up shows and interview artists,” which is something he used to do years ago as a reporter for the New Haven Advocate.

Hoffman has also learned over the past few years, and especially during Covid times, to not take anything for granted. 

“It’s just been something that’s been on my mind as I’ve been getting older, and not to be morbid, but I’m the only one in my nuclear family who got past the age of 60, so I don’t take longevity for granted,” he said. ​“I don’t assume that if I work until 70 or 75 that I necessarily have time left over after that.” 

Hoffman wanted to give the board lots of notice ​“so there was time to really do a thorough and comprehensive search” for his replacement, he said.

“I would expect for me to have some overlapping time with my successor to really get them into the groove with what’s involved in running Best Video,” he added.

Running Best Video, especially during Hoffman’s tenure as executive director, has been a lesson in adaptability and creativity, most notably once Covid arrived. Hoffman — who took over as executive director around six months before the virus hit — never took it lightly, neither the virus nor the importance of the space in both the neighborhood and the local arts community. 

“Covid was a real kick in the teeth,” said Hoffman. ​“It’s like if you ever read Camus’s The Plague, which I re-read at the beginning of Covid. There’s these rumors of things and they’re getting closer and closer.” In March 2020, he recalled, ​“I was getting increasingly worried about having shows … the last one was an open mic.” (In the interest of full disclosure, this reporter was the host of that show/series.) ​“It was starting to feel irresponsible to be trying to get people to come out and gather in a place at that time.”

Best Video shut down in mid-March 2020, which affected the organization’s cash flow. Going into the Great Give in May 2020, ​“we were really hurting,” Hoffman said. The community stepped up, and between donations being dropped off and the Great Give, Best Video raised about $50,000, ​“almost twice what we had done before” according to Hoffman. 

The store ended up opening with curbside service for both DVDs and the café, building a deck to accommodate people who were coming to Best Video and sitting on the asphalt drinking their coffee. That deck sparked an idea.

“We realized we could see if it worked, see if we could do music out there,” Hoffman said, and thus a new phase of Best Video shows took shape.

“It was organic at first,” he said. ​“We were just using our floor monitors, and eventually it got to where we would take our whole sound system out. We were able to start it in September of 2020, and it was like an oasis to people who had been in the desert, both for audiences and for the musicians. It was a godsend because we were still having people wear masks, but people could get out and see friends and hear music and play music and feel safe.” 

Best Video had a couple dozen shows in the fall of 2020 and over a hundred shows in 2021. Hoffman credits a supportive landlord and neighbors as well as the community, who flocked to the parking lot with their chairs, kids, and dogs, making it at times even festival-like in nature. 

“Last year was really important because our identity — people still think Best Video: video store — but our identity is as a community institution, a gathering place, a cultural institution,” Hoffman said. ​“The way I put it is: the pandemic struck right at the heart of our nonprofit business model. We exist to encourage people to get away from their screens, to get to meet and gather and have a good time and absorb culture, whether it’s music or movies or literature, in real space together. The pandemic was no no no no no, and we wanted to be responsible. If we erred in any way, it was on the side of being more cautious than less cautious. We probably had shows with up to 100 people in that parking lot. The ceiling is just so great. You have a band playing, depending on who it is, you know, folks who have neighborhood roots. You have a group like Little Silver, a husband-and-wife duo playing, and they got their kids and all their friends and all the kids are running around and it’s like a festival. It’s like a block party, a block party in one parking lot. I like having that be our brand, when people think of us to think about events like that, because in times when there are all kinds of things to stress people out, to put on stuff that brings people real joy seems like a worthwhile endeavor.”

The Art Of Work

Hoffman has made a career of following his bliss, moving to New Haven from Fairfield County in 1980 for the punk rock scene, one that he documented extensively both visually and in recording and writing. After working about nine years in the printing industry, he left that job to finish his master’s thesis at Wesleyan and ended up taking a position at Best Video, replacing the exiting Brown

“I was looking for work and Richard was leaving,” said Hoffman. ​“I knew people that worked here” — along with Brown, Hoffman knew musician Raymond Neal and his wife Heather, who was manager at the time — ​“and I was interested in movies, so in a way it’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” he added with a laugh. At the same time, he interned and then started as a freelancer for the New Haven Advocate, working part time at both places until 1996. He then spent about three years as a staff writer for the Advocate, still working every other Saturday at Best ​“just because I just liked this place so much.”

“It was the community vibe,” he said. ​“The people who came in, the staff — a lot of artistically inclined people were on staff, so even though I didn’t need to be working here then, I kept doing it every other Saturday. As a reporter it kept me in touch with people in artistic spaces. Occasionally I would be talking to someone, a member or customer, and have a discussion that could possibly work as a story too.” 

Once Hoffman left the Advocate he returned to Best as a full-time employee, letting his love of music and involvement in the local music scene help guide the next phase of Best’s development as a center for musical expression.

“By 2011 we had sold off a lot of VHS tapes, which freed up a lot of space in the store, and we were starting to lose people because of Netflix by mail and the streaming was just starting to come in,” said Hoffman. ​“We were noticing that things were changing, but we also knew people were coming in every week saying, ​‘oh God, I hope you guys don’t close, I really support you and really want you to stick around.’ The store had a real connection to the community, and I was trying to think, ​‘what are ways we can get people to come out of their homes and come in here?’ Since I knew lots of bands and we had lots of space, I said, ​‘well, maybe we should start having music in here once a week’. People come in and hear the music, and maybe take out a rental, so we started with once a week. The original intention was for it to be acoustic music, pretty low key, but gradually we realized that because of the carpeting, the low ceilings, and all of the DVDs along the wall, that the room absorbed sound. You could actually have loud bands in here without blowing people out of the room and without bothering the neighbors. So eventually we just had whatever we wanted to have here, also having literary readings and film screenings. It was organic. It started off one night a week, and then as people started getting interested and word got out about what kind of vibe the place had, it became two nights, and eventually three nights. It was really interesting how it took off. At first it was just me trying to call people I know, and then once word started to get around, people were calling me.”

The performance space at Best Video has become iconic — in New Haven and beyond — and Hoffman’s presence at the events is equally held in esteem, whether it is as his role as master of ceremonies, filming and photographing the acts, dancing along with audience members at a Dust Hat/Bronson Rock holiday extravaganza, or playing his own music as a duo with Brown or with their band Happy Ending. Hoffman’s lifelong love of music (he noted that as an eight-year-old The Beatles’s first record was ​“life changing”) has shaped his career and vision.

“I am proud of the eclecticism of what we put together in the programming here, and I think it was important to why the performance space succeeded,” said Hoffman. ​“A lot of different musical constituencies got invested in it and saw it as a place that was welcoming. This is a really incredible sounding room. I think both for performers and for audiences, the acoustics in this room are really, really nice. It’s a great way to experience music, from quiet music to really loud music. I like to say we invested in this expensive baffling all around the walls like a recording studio, except it’s DVDs. It’s like a sponge that absorbs all the extra but leaves everything there that you need and want. It absorbs all the extra without taking out the energy.”

Hoffman is also excited for the possibilities beyond Best for himself and for the new executive director, whoever they may be.

“I think it’s exciting for Best Video,” he said. ​“It opens up opportunities for change. I’ve been here a long time, and I think we’ve still been doing really great things. I’m proud of what we’ve done the past couple years, but I think getting in someone with fresh energy is a good thing, and that’s what will keep things going.”

Hoffman will keep going too, with plans to record with Happy Ending as well as get back into writing, but he is still committed to getting music back into the space safely over the next few months. January’s shows have been rescheduled, and he is hoping to have shows again more toward the end of February. But he has yet another idea, if anyone is interested.

“If there are any performers who have experience on their own streaming from home who want to come and do it on our stage with our sound and bring their equipment and do it from here, I would love to do that,” said Hoffman. ​“A long-term goal was to get a streaming setup here that would have two or three cameras, but we don’t have that set up now. I’m still open to performers who may have been doing that in their bedroom or in their living room, if they want to come and get on our stage and use our sound system and have lights on them as if they were doing a show here.”

Best Video also received a CT Humanities grant this past December, and according to Hoffman, ​“the number-one priority for that money for us is film screening programming to pay for licenses and honoraria for people to contextualize the screenings” — so expect more film-related events in the future as well.

Hoffman does not plan on disappearing completely in June. He hopes to be back at the space occasionally to sit in the café on his laptop or read a book, have a coffee, and, of course, hear music, basking in the warmth of the community that he had a hand in creating, comforting, and supporting.

“I’d like my legacy to be having helped create a space that fosters a real sense of community and enthusiasm and nostalgia, and that both makes people reflect on the past but also feel optimistic about the future and what’s possible,” he said. ​“I’d like it to be a legacy of creative adaptation to adverse circumstances, and I’d like it to be an ongoing legacy of music and movies in a nurturing space.”