New Best Video Chief Saving Outdoor Music

A new executive has taken over at Best Video — just in time to work with her former colleagues in Hamden city government to enable one of the town’s cultural gems to resume popular outdoor concerts.

Julie Smith began work last week as executive director of the Whitney Avenue video store and performance space. She replaced Hank Hoffman, who worked at Best Video for 27 years and became executive director in 2019.

Smith, who has decades of experience in both arts and government administration, arrives at Best Video with fresh perspectives and fresh ideas. Smith’s experience with the town is immediately being put to use, as Best Video figures out how to bring its concerts back outdoors, after complaints to Hamden’s planning and zoning office halted them a couple weeks ago, shortly before Smith officially took the reins as executive director.

Outdoor shows at Best Video were a pandemic innovation that proved wildly popular when Best Video began them in the fall of 2020. Audience members could socially distance outside before the vaccine became available. In the spring of 2021, as vaccination rates rose, Best Video’s outdoor shows drew crowds of 100 or so to its parking lot, making it a lifeline for New Haven’s music scene. As the shows’ popularity continued into this summer, it appeared they might become a permanent part of Best Video’s programming.

In June, however, two neighbors complained to Hamden’s office of planning and zoning, which asked Best Video to halt the shows.

“Once Planning and Zoning receives a complaint, we have to act on it,” explained Hamden mayoral Chief of Staff Sean Grace.

As outgoing Executive Director Hoffman and the Best Video board pondered the organization’s next move, a Change.org petition to reinstate the outdoor shows drew over 800 signatures.

Best Video is zoned for commercial activity. Its outdoor shows have started early in the day to avoid running afoul of noise ordinances.

The venue also lies within Spring Glen’s historic district, put in place about a decade ago. The district restricts some activities along Whitney Avenue.

Best Video’s case has revealed that the town doesn’t actually have specific regulations governing outdoor events like what the cultural center has been hosting. 

Initially, Best Video’s outdoor activities were effectively regulated by the governor’s pandemic-induced executive order allowing restaurants to have outdoor seating, but that ​“did not specifically cover musical acts, so it left this hole,” Grace said. ​“We had to look at it again.” 

The mayor’s office and P&Z are in the process of working out what new regulations governing outdoor music concerts will be. Hamden’s current zoning ordinances ​“currently don’t have a good regulatory framework to allow these things,” said Grace. The regulations governing the historic district have ​“presented the biggest regulatory hurdle,” which means setting up the framework to allow concerts in the long term will ​“probably involve changes to that overlay.“ The revisions will happen ​“with leadership from Planning and Zoning, and they’ll work with Economic Development as well.”

In the meantime, ​“we have created a special event permit process to recognize that the pandemic is still going on and outdoor musical events like they’ve been having at Best Video are very valuable to our community,” Grace said. ​“We’re asking them to make some changes to what they do to hopefully address some of the concerns” of those who complained, ​“but allow these really worthwhile events to continue.”

The upshot is that, ​“fingers crossed,” Smith said, outdoor concerts will resume soon. Best Video has already submitted the paperwork necessary to obtain their permit, ​“but we also want to be respectful of the neighborhood,” she added.

If reinstated, ​“the shows that will be outside will be the quieter shows — singer-songwriters, acoustic,” Smith said. Louder bands will be hosted indoors.

Smith is ​“cognizant that not everybody wants to hear concerts all the time.” They’ll also move the bands to a different location in the parking lot to make space between the bands and neighboring houses.

“We’re so happy that the town is working with us to help make sure that we can have these vital concerts,” Smith said. Town officials, she added, ​“could not have been more helpful.” And, especially in the wake of the Change.org petition, ​“the great thing that has come out of it is to see the support from the community. It’s been phenomenal. That’s been heartwarming, that people love this, and it’s been important to them, and they want to see it continue,” Smith said. ​“It lets me know right off the bat that this is something people want to see. It gives me a direction” for programming in the future.

What's Next?

Smith is also looking to Best Video’s longer-term future. ​“I’ve got 15 visions, but I really love working collaboratively,” she said, meaning that she’s eager to help shape Best Video along with its longtime staff, board members, and community members.

That said, first among the possible ideas are capital improvements, from replacing the carpet to expanding the cafe, because ​“people love it. It’s hugely popular. There’s nothing else quite like it around here and I think there is, no pun intended, an appetite for it,” Smith said. She also has an eye on just how large Best Video’s physical space is, and how long it can stay in its current home. Best Video has been at its Whitney Avenue location for many years, but it’s not its original location. ​“We get new movies in every single week,” Smith said. ​“We’re going to run out of space” eventually.

Another idea, however, involves expanding Best Video’s programming beyond its physical space to ​“reach out into the community more,” Smith said. Best Video already has created partnerships with the International Festival of Arts and Ideas and the New Haven Documentary Film Festival. Smith would like to see if Best Video could create similar partnerships with the universities nearby, and institutions in southern Hamden. While she was managing director of the Keefe Community Center, she said, ​“I heard it every day that … people who live in southern Hamden feel like they’re not considered part of Hamden, and that’s not okay — that’s not acceptable. I think part of being a nonprofit is that not everybody has to come to us. We need to get out in the community.”

When Smith managed Keefe, she worked with Best Video to create its Black film festival, and helped put together a panel discussion about hip hop and the school-to-prison pipeline. Now that she’s Best Video’s executive director, ​“I really want us to use this platform as a jumping-off point to bring in more people, so that more people feel like Best Video is part of their community,” she said. They also have ideas to bring movies to southern Hamden — perhaps with an inflatable movie screen in, say, Peter Villano Park, which is ​“right in the middle of a neighborhood. How great would it be to look out your window and think, ​‘hey, they’re showing a movie! Let’s go.’ ”

Part of Smith’s thinking arises from a conception of Best Video as a regional hub, drawing an audience not only from Hamden and New Haven, but towns farther north, east, and west, for its film and music programming. The arts are, after all, ​“something that crosses divides, and reminds people that they have things in common. That’s the thing that really good art does: it reminds you that we’re all connected, we’re all part of this universe,” she said. The pandemic appears, on some level, to have reminded people of that, perhaps because so many turned to the arts — from movies and books to music and crafts — to help them get through it. Smith said that Best Video has noticed an uptick in memberships in the past couple years. 

“We’re not just here as another Hamden small business,” she said. ​“We actually have a mission, and it’s greater than making money. Our mission is about preserving the archive that we have here, but also sharing all of that. You never know what people are going to see in a movie that inspires them.”

The Road To Best

Smith brings a long career in both the arts and local government to bear. Before moving to Hamden, she worked with acclaimed playwright and director George C. Wolfe, starting with his run directing the original run of Angels in America (for which he won a Tony). When Wolfe was tapped to head up the Public Theater and the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1993, he took her with him to manage his office, which meant she was part of a highly successful streak, including the theatrical run of Bring in ​‘Da Noise, Bring in ​‘Da Funk and a production of The Tempest starring Patrick Stewart.

“It was completely all-consuming. That was my life,” Smith said. ​“It was also how I met my husband, who was the set designer that George started working with a lot.” Her husband, Riccardo Hernández, designed the sets for both Bring in ​‘Da Noise and The Tempest. ​“We literally were spending 24 hours a day together because we were working on Tempest during the day and Bring in ​‘Da Noise at night… It was an insane time, but amazing, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” But ​“it’s really difficult to do with kids,” she added. 

After her first son was born, Smith left the Public Theater to become an agent for theatrical designers. By the time she and Hernández had their second son, Hernández was traveling all over the world doing set design, and ​“I just decided to focus on the kids. And then Sept. 11 happened. And where we were in Brooklyn, we saw everything.” 

That day in 2001, she felt a sense of claustrophobia knowing that she couldn’t leave Manhattan or Brooklyn if she wanted to. She feared for friends who lived right next to the World Trade Center. But ​“the thing I remember the most from that day was looking up at the sky and seeing these tiny pieces of paper falling.… And I turned to Riccardo and said, ​‘we’re moving.’ ”

Hernández had gone to Yale Drama School for set design. He suggested they visit the New Haven area. They drove around with a real estate agent; ​“this looks fine,” Smith recalled thinking. 

One of the things that caught their eyes right away was Best Video, which Hernández had gone to all the time as a student; he had been housemates with Paul Giamatti, who brought him to Best Video to rent movies. 

They found a place they liked quickly. ​“We moved into our house in Hamden on Oct. 28,” Smith said. 

She raised her kids and taught yoga, but as her kids grew, she started thinking about getting another kind of job. She had a friend on Hamden’s legislative council and mentioned that she had previous experience as an office manager. ​“I’m pretty good at administrative stuff,” she demurred. Based on her experience with Wolfe, she got a job in the mayor’s office, and ​“the rest is history,” she said.

Smith started working for Hamden’s government 13 years ago, first at the help desk, ​“taking every complaint that came into the mayor’s office,” she said. Over time, she worked in a number of capacities, from director of arts, culture & special projects to the chief of staff of the mayor’s office. Most recently, she was managing director of the Keefe Community Center in southern Hamden, overseeing four departments and about $50 million in school building projects, community development grants, and COVID relief. 

But ​“I’ve always loved the arts. That’s what my family does. That’s what my husband does” — Hernández is now co-chair of design at Yale’s drama school and still a working designer — ​“our entire house is books and music and movies, and it felt right,” she said, to apply for the position of executive director of Best Video. ​“I’d gotten all these skills from working for the town, between grant writing and working with FEMA stuff, and running the community center. So I’m really excited to bring all of that here.”