WEBSITE SPOTLIGHT: Hopstop.com

Eric:
We've all been there...Your friend's band is playing at that bar in the east village, but you have no idea how to find it. The movie you're doing background on is meeting on location in Inwood, but you've never been past 96th St. Check out www.hopstop.com found under or Maps & Direction heading.

I personally love this website because it continues to give me detailed directions and maps of catering locations in the city. The traveling time estimates are so accurate that I've always been on time for my events. It will even ask you for the travel day and time so that it can calculate any weekend subway changes! Hopstop.com's directions can vary from the fastest and most direct to subway & bus combinations. If you ask it to map out an address you will see cross streets and the neighborhood. Or if you just have an idea of the location and want to check out the scene you can "Point to Location on a Map." And just when you think they're done, you can even request subway directions on your mobile phone! Ain't technology grand? Happy traveling!

Here we go!

Hello this is Stephan (Stephan Stubbins - the headshot all the way on the left), and I am so excited to be starting this blog. I'm one of the 4 founders of The Theatre Mafia (our beloved company, who's aim it is to help Actors, Singers, Dancers, Musicians, & Theatre Artists living in or moving to New York City). All 4 of us (Stephan Stubbins, Eric Jackson, Emily Whyte, & Ryan Boda) will be contributing stories to this blog about our laughable mistakes, learning experiences, trials, tribulations, and glorious successes in New York City and beyond.

I'd like to start off by introducing and telling you a little bit about myself. I grew up in Cincinnati, OH (I'm a big Bengals & Bearcats fan!) and after graduating from High School I got a BFA from Webster University in St. Louis. When I graduated college I remember getting this foreboding feeling when I thought about New York City, and where my next steps might take me. I felt at once petrified and enlivened by the prospect of making the big move, yet also completely clueless when it came to the real world questions of where to begin (...like how to find an apartment, how to get a real job in the city to pay for that apartment while I was waiting for my first big show, how to even get seen for a big show, etc.).

I ended up getting very lucky. I ended up not having to face NYC at all in the beginning. Right before I planned on moving to NYC I got a job doing Doug in the Doug show down at Disney's MGM Studios, and I was able to postpone the big move to NYC for another 6 months. Getting the show was lucky, however, how I really got lucky was that while I was in Disney World my friends were moving to New York and learning the ins and outs of the city. When I finished my time at Disney I was able to come up to the city, stay with them and make my start. It's amazing what we learned in those first couple years of living in NYC...as much as we experienced, auditioned, branched out, & explored, there was always this feeling that we were still only scratching the surface of what NYC and the Theatre Business had to offer.

I am now in my 6th year in New York City, and while I am still discovering, learning and experiencing new opportunities all the time, I often find myself thinking "If only I knew then what I know now". Consequently, that is exactly what our company The Theatre Mafia is aiming to do - give our resources and knowledge to those who could use it most. I relish the opportunity to pass our experiences and inside knowledge to friends and fellow actors, hoping to shine some light where we ourselves once got lost.

Thanks so much for looking us up, and thanks for reading the Blog! (I promise it will get much more fun and interesting from here on out!)