Join Us Every Weekday at 5 for Stoopy Hour

Hello, reader.

It’s been a weird week.

You are probably reading this from a couch groove that is a little more well-defined than usual, by virtue of the fact that you’ve been spending a lot of time in it, breathlessly refreshing your browsers and inboxes as the news cycle plumbs new and more unthinkable depths with every passing hour.

To review: the markets are in freefall, the restaurant, music and live event industries are all on the verge of collapse, gun sales are surging and sports fanatics are so desperately bored they’ve resorted to watching marble races on YouTube. And those are just the indirect effects of COVID-19, a virus that has now killed 150 Americans across 50 states, with more than 10,000 known cases reported as of this afternoon.

It’s a lot to reckon with, and we’re all trying to cope and distract ourselves in our own little ways. For us, that means diligently reporting on the world around us and helping you make sense of it. But it also means taking some time each day to check in with each other and make sure that everyone is doing OK, in extremely relative terms.

One way we are doing that is with a daily team-building activity called Stoopy Hour (stoopid name for stoopid times, we know). Coined by Executive Editor Mike Conklin, Stoopy Hour is a brief period each afternoon when we all put down our work, head out to our respective stoops, fix ourselves a drink and share a picture of it with our colleagues. Then we banter at each other, tell lame jokes and generally try to do the same normal-feeling things we would be doing back in our office in Manhattan.

If you want to join us for Stoopy Hour, it’s pretty simple:

Sit on your stoop (or anywhere, honestly — though we recommend some place outside if possible) any time after 5 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday.
Take a picture of your beer/cocktail/espresso/etc.
Post that picture to your Instagram story and tag @insidehook. Then we’ll add your post to our story, and we can all have one great big Stoopy Hour together.

You can find the latest submissions on our Instagram story. Whether you can join us or not, we hope that you’re weathering the storm in good spirits, and we look forward to a day when we can send you an email that’s not full of stories about a pandemic.

Until then, keep your heads up, and happy Stoopy Hour.