The neighborhood is constantly changing, and it can be hard to keep up among the influx of salad spots and artisan piercing chains. To make it easier to navigate — especially ahead of the holiday shopping season — small local businesses both new and old have come together for a Greenpoint Retail Crawl kicking off on Saturday, November 19.
From November 19 through 27, shoppers can pick up a “passport” — with logo designed by local illustrator Matt Reuter and printing done by Espy Color Imaging on Driggs — at one of the 24 participating businesses. After spending a minimum of $10 at three locations on the list and receiving subsequent stamps on the aforementioned passport, participants will receive a swag bag tote available for pickup at Coz Salon, Lockwood, or Drama Club.
For those angling to be a hometown hero, there will be a grand prize drawing among any shoppers who spend $10 or more at any eight of the participating businesses and return completed passports to Coz, Lockwood, or Drama Club by December 1 (the winner will be drawn that evening). Entrants will have a chance to win one of three prize packs all centered around Greenpoint themes and containing goodies and gift cards.
Greenpoint Retail Crawl – Participating Businesses
Goldpoint
Lockwood
Pilates BKLYN
Coz
Dandelion Wine
Word
Alter
Tend Greenpoint
Drama Club
My Plastic Heart
Parachute Brooklyn
Catos
Maison Jar
Market on Kent
Edy’s Grocer
Big Night
Marmalade
Awoke Vintage
Vessel Floats
The Wild
fyb jewelry
Local Color NYC
Frank Vintage
Otis + Finn Barbershop
The goal of the Retail Crawl is two-fold: increasing traffic to and awareness of local shops while also encouraging stronger community relationships between neighbors and the places they frequent. The idea itself was brought to life by the teams at Lockwood, Coz Salon, and Drama Club, inspired by a similar crawl organized by Lockwood’s Astoria location — Lockwood owner Mackenzi Farquer and marketing manager Christina Mueller reached out to Coz Salon owner Meg Costello and manager and makeup artist Danielle Hartnett due to their history working together on the Greenpoint Pride initiative, then the quad immediately linked up with Drama Club owner Jack Sachs and the rest, as they say, is history (or it will be, especially since the goal is to keep the crawl going twice a year). But said history could not have been achieved without the help of Broadway Stages, which provided sponsorship this year.
“At the end of the day, we’re hoping to kind of bring this new influx of people in Greenpoint into the fold of the smaller businesses. We’re really lucky that we have this like, treasure trove of small businesses,” Costello explained. “The idea was really just to build on what we started with Greenpoint Pride, where we were just kind of making connections in the neighborhood.”
And the Retail Crawl is only one facet of the push to highlight the uniqueness and value of local small businesses in our ever-evolving (for better or for worse) neighborhood. Costello et al. have also been working to create a directory of small businesses and business owners in the neighborhood under @shopsmallgreenpoint on Instagram.
“We really want to create a directory and just connect business owners. ‘Cause I think throughout this we’ve felt really supported as a small business just by reaching out to and talking with other owners, and most of the businesses in Greenpoint are female-owned businesses,” Costello remarked. “So there’s this huge space for us to all support one another and I think that creating this community will do that. I’m also just really hoping that we can, as business owners, pool together our resources to help each other out and just be supportive and really embody the community spirit of Greenpoint.”