Pop Up Bagel Sucks and High Valley (Look)Books

nOt fAmOuS, bUt KnOwn... ok bro!

Happy wednesday everyone. Reporting live from my humble goon cave.

For this week I’m talking about two internet presences. One of which I actively dislike and one I actively do like.

Pop Up Bagel Keeps Getting More Stupid

95% of the things I ever make fun of I enjoy to a certain degree, this is not the case with Pop Up Bagels.

Taking a step back — I’m so tired of the whole best pizza / bagel in New York conversation mainly because the majority are above a certain threshold of “good” and beyond that it’s only used as a hook in clickbait foodie videos.

Pop Up Bagels makes good enough bagels but as a brand they make me irrationally upset. (I know, touch grass or whatever)

I think it all starts from their stupid slogan Not Famous But Known. It sounds like a phrase that should be tattooed on some guys back next to a lion. Like this.

I also can’t help but feel the invisible venture capital hand guiding their mindless collabs.

This toothpaste one could be the worst to date.

I get it’s supposed to be whimsical and probably leading up to a shitty april fools joke but as a company with the digital presence of a lame influencer in 2019 — it just makes me go *thumbs up* “nice one guys”.

I’m all for #securingthebag, but they lose me when it starts to feel like a company first and a bagel place second. If I were to go in there now, I wouldn’t be buying bagels for friends but instead participating in a transaction positively affecting the P/L of POPUPBAGELS INC. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a TurboTax EZ FileSchmear in the works for April 15th.

Also… don’t tell me how to eat a bagel man. The “we do things a little differently around here” vibe is fried. I almost think the rip and dip thing is just a ploy to be more operationally efficient.

Ok now let’s talk about media I enjoy consuming and the the opposite vibe of the above.

HIGH VALLEY (LOOK)BOOKS

If you didn’t see the NYT + Airmail pieces last year (or the hidden gem tiktoks) — High Valley Books is a massive collection of fashion/architecture/design books and magazines in Greenpoint. It’s ran by a sweet man named Bill Hall out of his basement.

I want to talk about their instagram though. High Valley’s grid is becoming an amazing archive of people that like to use the word archive. It’s like getting to people watch at the Bushwick La Cabra from the comfort of your own home.

Here’s a snippet.

I love how perfectly blurry each photo is, as if an excited and wholesome uncle was texting you a photo of your cousin (or something like that lol). This really is one of the best small business instagram’s I follow. That’s probably in part because the owner, Bill, has most likely never uttered the words “social strategy” or “content calendar”. Just pure “authenticity” as marketing execs would say.

This is one of my favorites below. #broistough

There’s no embarrassing attempts for virility at High Valley Books, just genuinely highlighting your customer base and being grateful they came in. If you simply have a good product, service etc you can leave the trying to go viral to tiktokkers farming for content.

I hope they make their IG feed it into a coffee table book cause I would definitely spend $100 on that. Check out their IG here and see what “creative producers” in NYC are wearing.

Thanks for reading. Here’s a song to listen to while Citibiking over the williamsburg bridge this weekend.