We Almost Didn't Have a Boston Popup

A hap-dashed popup made for us by us at the Boston Marathon almost didn't happen. But I'm so glad it did. Sometimes vibes go further than dollars.

Apologies for writing the 7th article about The Rec Room.

To put it bluntly, we crushed it.

Nobody else on Newbury was flexing a ~$3000 budget, and I doubt anyone signed a lease later than we did (March 30). We showed up to the money-amped arms race of marathon weekend with vibes and thrift finds. And it almost didn’t happen—we got outbid a handful of times on our location, and barely could cover the rent as it was.

I can’t quote everyone, but the feedback and well wishes were amazing. Thank you to everyone that came by, told a friend to see it, or sent a DM saying how much they liked it.

I sort of can’t believe how well it went. It was everything I’d hoped it would be: a spot for friends to gather, an industry hang, something people would seek out, a place that felt inviting and more about “swinging by” to window shop and chat rather than optimized for high volume merch sales (though the Swiftwick stuff did sell out, and we overall did well).

At some point we had the Brooks Running sales team meeting with a running store owner, while some of the Bandit team took advantage of our blazing fast wifi (password: yeswehavewifi), all while I was drinking coffee with my local running friends. As a capstone, Scott Jurek visited not once, but twice, the second time to bring a group of his friends to check it out. For anyone that ran in the late aughts and read “Born to Run,” you get it.

It’s hard to describe the feeling if you weren’t there. And unfortunately I have fewer photos than I’d like. I was deliciously offline last weekend, too busy working the store.

Some edits from the Rec Room. I was hilariously not present for the team polaroids.

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Big running events have always moved me. Similar to TRE, I was emotionally raw all weekend. I joked with a few friends that I’d cry at least once. There were a lot of happy tears, a lot of being super grateful for what I’m able to do, a lot of admiration and appreciation for all the runners out there doing their best. For many people this is the culmination of many years of effort. This popup felt like a similar culmination that my running career built up to. It’s one of the many gifts that running has given me.

I’m blinking through more tears as I write this. Not too dissimilar to the tears I had running through Ashland and Framingham, seeing the first few crowds early in the morning with only Ary Santos, the Masters para-athlete I was guiding. It was a moment of awe, immense gratitude, as well as an understanding that I may never experience it again.

Instead of a race this year, it was The Rec Room, the indie running brand popup I pulled together with fellow newsletter writers Lee Glandorf and Katherine Douglas (also store owner of Running Wylder). Knee brace be damned, this hipster and two moms¹ (and Nash) pulled it off with a lot of help from our friends, our moms, and not a lot of money.

First image: Me, on Monday before the race. Second image: Wednesday night.

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Thanks, It’s Community

The Rec Room was a third space rather than a store. We were not optimized for sales—I could barely run the Shopify POS. It felt like a mix of living room and unfinished basement meets showroom. We leaned into that.

What made The Rec Room great though, wasn’t the stuff, which was well curated, it was the environment. People not buying and simply browsing felt comfortable coming in, which meant they brought their friends, they hung around, they sipped coffee and played the Super Nintendo. We gave people time and space to talk and ask questions, to check out the brands we brought in and ask why. There was time for curiosity rather than a rush through checkout.

On our shoe string budget, we proved it doesn’t take much to create that environment nor to have an impact.

One quote from Katie’s newsletter stood out to me:

The magic of what we created, from a budget next to nothing, highlights to me just how overmarketed and overproduced the running industry has become

My core running experiences have never been brand oriented or transactional, it’s always been people. It’s the running camps I went to in the summer where I met kids from other teams, it’s being a part of the history and legacy of Williams College XC where I ran², it’s the brutally cold long runs with my group in Boston, cross country drives with my roommate Greg out to Boulder, it’s the after parties in hotel rooms or the nearest bar at club nationals.

The iconic spike bus

While I loved the Nike spike bus, which I vividly remember from high school XC, the free shwag didn’t woo me. It was the cool post collegiate athletes I admired that worked there. At Green Mountain Running Camp (Nike), it wasn’t the dream of making Nike Nationals that drew me back but the other campers and counselors, many of whom I still keep in touch with. Nike enabled that, but it wasn’t about Nike.

A brand can support that experience, but it cannot buy it.

You can however create an environment where that is celebrated and is more important than what’s being sold. The Boston Marathon is built on legacy and a community of runners that have long understood that loyalty to each other trumps logos. My training group consists of about 30 guys that compete for just about every team in Boston. I don’t think we’ve ever mentioned the brands or teams in the group chat. Brooks is not running miles with you at 6:30 in the morning. Asics isn’t checking in on you while you’re injured.

The Rec Room felt different because it wasn’t a brand house nor a retail setup. It wasn’t some marketing budget byline made for advertising. It was a space built by runners. It was a place built by locals.

Nothing about our space was optimized for sales. It’s not that we didn’t care about that. We did. But we cared more about making the place a respite from the hustle and a destination for discovery, than we did about making it a highly optimized merchandizing machine. The latter is what brands fabricate. The former is what people create.

A big thanks to R.A.D., Currently Running, SOAR, Unna, Pruzan, Bonzer, Like The Wind, and the people at each of those brands for believing in us. Especially thanks to Nash (Currently) who was employee of the month for us and Omar of R.A.D. who was down to assist wherever he could.

Anyways, we’ll be back. If you want to read more about the how, both Lee and Katie covered it thoroughly.

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1. Lee’s words, paraphrased. Great write up here

2. There have been 3 coaches in history, and every year 50+ alumni go back for a special XC alumni weekend.