A few weeks ago, a friend and I were riding our bikes up Kent Avenue in Williamsburg. There were swaths of young people walking towards Domino Park or heading back to shop along the beloved Bedford Avenue (or even at the new Hermés that just opened up in Williamsburg).
The crowds were so large that the sidewalk couldn’t contain them. The pedestrians trickled onto the bike lane and caused numerous clashes among bikers. Bikers angry at walkers, walkers angry at bikers, as the story goes.
I can still remember when Williamsburg was “up and coming”. In 2012 and 2013 when my friends and I partied in Billyburg until 6:00 in the morning. Streets like Kent, Wythe, and Berry were mostly abandoned warehouses and hobnob apartments: friends had sheets covering their windows and tiny roaches climbing around their kitchen sinks galore. But the rent was cheap, and it was Williamsburg, and rooftops had no laws. We routinely ate pizza out of boxes in the hot summer months of July overlooking the skyline of Manhattan. My friends and I had the following jobs: art gallery curator, designer at Steve Madden, restaurant group assistant, music agent, DJ, event planner, chef. We were part of the young crowd that gets left behind in the summer months in NYC.
The opening of the Wythe Hotel transformed Williamsburg into a more luxurious destination for my friends and I. Until then, Williamsburg had simply been a place to spend a night out, and then go back to the “real action” of Manhattan.
The Williamsburg I remember:
Before Williamsburg exploded, or “blew up”, there were no Uppa Baby strollers, Alo Yoga’s, or $2.5 billion park constructions1. Culturally speaking, Williamsburg was a diamond in the rough. It was close enough to Manhattan without all the foot traffic. It still felt like YOU had discovered it. Chefs rushed there to open insanely good restaurants, offering even more affordable prices than in the city. Notable examples include Roberta’s, the now-shuttered Lodge, and Cafe Colette.
Clubs stayed open until morning, raves littered the warehouses every night of the week. It truly was a dreamland (for just out-of-college creative types).
… Until it “blew up”.
No, this is not an article about gentrification, though of course that plays a major role in the blowing up of Williamsburg. I recognize my friends and I felt like we discovered it because we were in the process of gentrifying it. There are so many amazing writers who write more eloquently about gentrification than I can. I am not one of them.
I want to talk about post-gentrification.
Or, post-blow-up.
I want to talk about what happens when a brand, product, neighborhood, or restaurant gets so popular that it ‘explodes’ and loses the original quality and charm that led to its come-up.
Here are just a few things that have blown up and inherently lost control of their quality:
Williamsburg’s French Bakery Bicyclette
Blue Bottle Coffee
Coachella
Instagram
Venice, Italy
Avocado toast
Food trucks
Street art
Farm to table fast-casual places
Pinterest DIY Decor
Platform Converse
Starbucks
Free People
Whole Foods hot salad bar
Nike
Airbnb
Uber
Air travel
I’m sure you or someone you know, when mentioning any of the above things, has said, “Oh yes, I remember when _______ was cheap/good/better, and now it sucks.)
As my friend and I rode our bikes through the streets that day, she turned to me and said “Williamsburg blew up,”. It was a Saturday after all, and Smorgasburg was happening, the food festival that went viral for serving absurd and comforting meals like the ramen burger.
Smorgasburg, yet another thing that “blew up” and turned into a crowded, hot, and overpriced festival. Don’t take it from me, though…
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffc704ad8-697d-49a8-8e5b-5c81ce8c613a_1100x664.png)
And then I realized something: the term “blowing up” is used for gaining popularity, going viral. But the language, the term, is inherently destructive. When something blows up, it self-destructs.
What goes up must come down.
Nothing good lasts forever.
The impermanent nature of things.
It reminded me of something I’ve spoken about before (read: The Dark Side of Going Viral). When you get a lot of exposure, eyeballs, foot traffic, and/or virality, it produces a boom in business.
This is what we all want, right? Virality, popularity, success? But if we look at history, the economy, Roberta’s pies pre-investments, or a burgeoning social media platform that feels good at first but eventually becomes laden with trolls, we can see that the high can’t last forever.
Are all businesses, people, brands and restaurants truly ready with the infrastructure, resources, and support it takes to take someone?
Take Chappell Roan, for instance, who has risen to fame at an insanely fast pace. In June, she broke down on stage in front of a crowd. “I’m just feeling a little off today. My career has gone really fast and it’s really hard to keep up. This is all I’ve ever wanted, it’s just heavy sometimes.”
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I hope (for the sake of our ears) that Chappell and her team take good care of her and allow her to rest so she can continue making people happy with her music (including me). Her quality hasn’t diminished at all yet, but she’s feeling the pressure of good business.
This sort of over-blowing-up is especially true for our predominantly online world. It’s hard to keep up with the Joneses and keep pushing content as a creator when you blow up.
That special spark, the thing that made them stand out in the first place, often gets lost in the noise -
Take another example: the Lululemon Wunder Under legging. Lululemon pulled onto the scene selling $100 leggings between 2009 and 2012. They were one of the first to make premium athleticwear that made people excited about working out.
But as the demands increased and word spread, Lululemon fans started calling them out. They said it was going downhill; that it wasn’t such a hot brand with unmatched quality after all.
On the Lululemon Reddit, every few weeks someone posts about the quality decline. Users show pictures of how their 5-year-old Lulu leggings look better than their 1-year-old counterparts. Word is also spreading that Lululemon is getting rid of their quality promise altogether, as seen in this post.
Is it just what happens when a brand expands too fast, too soon?
Is it inevitable as we put profit over everything?
Is it because people abuse the system and we can’t have nice things, so generous return policies will inevitably end?
I spoke to the writer of
about this phenomena. She wrote:“When something takes off, the pressure to scale is intense—more products, more locations, more everything. Society equates success with constant growth, and staying small often looks like a lack of ambition. But so often we see things breakdown: in the rush to meet skyrocketing demand, there’s a clash between keeping up quality and chasing bigger numbers. That special spark, the thing that made them stand out in the first place, often gets lost in the noise. As they stretch themselves thin, what made them unique starts to slip away, leading to the kind of “failure” where they might still exist, but they’re no longer the brand people fell in love with.”
So, for any business owners reading this, consider this: slow steps forward are still steps forward. One itty bitty step at a time. And maybe it’s for the better you haven’t blown up yet. Maybe it’s better for your product or service, too.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90957285/inside-the-new-domino-sugar-refinerys-2-5-billion-renovation