Inside New York’s Only Black-Owned Outdoor Store

What does Outlandish mean to you?

Williams: We had a short list of names but nothing was hitting. One day, I was reading a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye titled “What’s Here.” It wasn’t even about the outdoors. It just had this word “outlandish” in it that touched the garden in me and the soil that had been cultivated for those weeks of brainstorming.

The word broken down means being outside, reconnecting with the land, and not taking ourselves too seriously. Last fall, we wanted to do a hike with my Baptist church in Fort Greene. Everyone was like, We don’t hike. That’s not our thing. So we called it a nature walk. People were like, Oh, how many miles is it? We let them know it’s 5 or 6. They were like, Oh, that’s too much, until we pointed out it’s about as many steps as you do every day going to and from the subway. That made them think, Oh, that’s easy; I could do that. We tweaked the framing a little bit, and people came out.

How closely knit are you with the other Black-owned outdoor shops?

Williams: We’re close. There used to be four of us, but now there are three. The store owner who passed away is Mark Boles; he lived in Hingham, Massachusetts, and had a shop called Intrinsic Provisions. When we were first getting set up, I emailed him, and he wrote back within an hour or less and said, “Let’s get on the phone and talk. He was like, We’re the second, and you all are about to be the fourth. He was like, You guys are the fourth, and I was like, Sir, we haven’t opened yet! We can’t claim that number, but he started calling us the fourth even before we became the fourth and, in a way, helped us become the fourth.

He invited us to go up to Massachusetts. I drove up to Hingham, shadowed him for a day, and learned a ton. I heard about his relationship with brands, how he managed inventory, and how he designed the communication and the strategy. He opened up all the books and shared everything with us. While Mark passed away just last month, we keep in contact with the other two Black-owned shop owners, Jahmicah Dawes of Slim Pickins Outfitters and Mandela Echefu of Wheelzup Adventures. It’s been squad for sure. We have a call once a month.

Visit Outlandish in Brooklyn and online. Support independent businesses and help build a more accessible outdoor culture for everyone!

Source: https://www.fieldmag.com/articles/outlandish-brooklyn-outdoor-store-interivew