Adding Black culture to the Boston narrative
Sidney Baptista is determined to take Black culture to the running masses, but he started by bringing running culture to his Boston neighborhood
Everyone’s talking about the Boston Marathon right now. Nothing else in the road running world matters this week. The holy grail of couldn’t-even-qualify-for-it marathons is just one of the things the state capital of Massachusetts is known for. What else? The Tea Party. Tom Brady. Harvard University. Larry Bird. Whitey Bulger. Ben Affleck. Boston hardcore punk. People of Irish descent. It’s all incredibly… white.
That’s less than half of Boston’s truth, of course. The city is listed 6th or 56th most diverse city in the USA depending on which metrics the study uses, and while the Boston Irish are the largest single ethnic group in the city, with a conservative estimate of 22.8% of its 675,000 residents, 56% of Bostonians identify as non-white.
One Boston native that’s been working hard to redress the perceptions and the future of Boston is Sidney Baptista. He’s a busy man. Having started Pioneers Run Crew in Dorchester, South Boston back in 2017, he added an apparel brand, PYNRS, in 2020, as well as community elements such as Spin The Block and the 26.TRUE unsanctioned marathon, a forthcoming content series in conjunction with Brooks, with whom he’s also creating a PYNRS shoe, and he’s sponsoring a podcast with rapper, Noreaga. Seems like a lot, right? Well, Sid is a man on a mission to bring running to his community, and he’s building an empire to fulfill it.
It started in 2017 when he started the Pioneers Run Crew. Back when there wasn’t a run club in every neighborhood, Sid, born and raised in Dorchester, put a run club in his neighborhood – the most populous and diverse part of the city, comprising 38% Black, 23% White and 21% Hispanic inhabitants. Dorchester bucks the demographic trends of the city.
My five miles through the neighborhood with Sid on a chilly almost-spring evening confirmed that as I ran down the narrow sidewalks past liquor stores and check cashing facilities. It was a different vibe to the cobble-stoned streets and high-end hotels around Boston Common. He chuckles wryly as we talk about the differences.
“Boston is a super segregated city. You might have seen white people running with us [in Dorchester], but did you see white people walking on the street? I got tired of leaving my neighborhood to go run, and I wanted to bring running to the people here.”
Building a community by providing an experience that resonates with people like him is 100% of what Sidney Baptista is about.
After growing up with violence throughout his life, he had the opportunity to “leave the hood” and go to boarding school at 14. He describes the situation as a culture shock, and couldn’t stop wanting to bring more people that looked like him into the school. As Sid learned that he was fast, he ran track, breaking records along the way. He then partied his way through a big college, but duly acquired a high-flying accounting job. Again, he spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how he could use his position to aid his community.
Once he started traveling for work and seeing how other cities were building music festivals for black people, he asked why Boston wasn’t doing that for its people. So he quit said high-flying job and built it. When that venture failed (a result of city corruption) Sid became dejected and depressed, suffering anxiety and panic attacks. But then, one evening, he saw an old friend running down the street, smiling. Sid thought, “Why are you so happy?” As far as he was concerned, running wasn’t for black people, so he joined him for a run to find out.
“I only knew how to sprint, so I had all these older people passing me, but they were so nice. When I would play ball with my homies, all we would do is shit talk in the group chat before, the entire time we were playing, and after, too. It’s all negativity.”
“That was a time in my life when I could not take any more negativity, so when I went for that run, and my homie, Jarick was happy, and people passing me were being nice to me, I knew I had to get better at running.”
And so he did, and soon after, Pioneers Run Crew was born. Sid talks about how the crew is a well-oiled machine now, primarily helmed by captains and crew members, allowing him to focus on other parts of Pioneers.
This decentralization of command is what Sid has also brought to his streetwear-inspired running brand PYNRS. Launched five years ago after Sid noticed that existing running gear wasn’t built with his community’s bodies or style in mind, the high-end performance apparel can now be found nationwide in REI and Nordstrom among others. Late last year PYNRS raised $120,000 through a funding drive where investors can share in the profits.
“It’s for the people, so we’ve allowed people to invest in it. It’s directly crowdfunded, allowing them to share in some of the revenue. It’s about creating something that’s a voice, a reflection, an outlet, a representation. Something that’s really owned by the culture.”
It’s easy to say that capitalism is a form of white supremacy (because it’s true), but in lieu of overthrowing the economic structure of liberal democracy, building this more inclusive form of capitalism might just be the best way to dismantle the dominance of modern market forces. You can rage against the machine, or you can march your way through it.
For instance, while complaining about the current administration, Sid also explains how he learned lessons from how Trump rose to power, supported by legions of everyday people who would never let him be toppled.
“As I’m building this company, it doesn’t matter what the running industry wants. The people, we speak for what we want.”
While Sid acknowledges that PYNRS doesn’t have the kind of money his competitors do, he revels in the fact that he’s “created a movement, a community, and a culture that is global.” Yes, he’s selling a product, but as Sid tries to differentiate between the crew and the apparel, it’s clear that it’s so much more than that.
Consider Spin The Block, for instance. On the surface, it’s an event that Sid takes to cities to launch PYNRS in a new location, but he brought it to Dorchester from Berlin for a more personal reason, after seeing Seb from Berlin collective DNA’s Hood Laps relay race.
“I decided to create a race that’s inclusive and runs around my community, so we called it Hood Relay. A four-person relay and there were multiple ways of winning, to keep it inclusive. You can be the fastest team, come with the best-looking outfit, bring the most energy, and the crowd favorite.”
With the urban immigrant culture including Cape Verdean, Dominican, Haitian, Puerto Rican, Jamaican, and more, the team outfits on the relays celebrated carnival culture, but as Pioneers Run Crew increased in notoriety and popularity, however, the makeup of the group changed.
“As the crew changed and we started becoming more white, the costumes started changing, and coming out like a Hallowe’en type of run. It didn’t feel authentic to the community that we were trying to serve.”
“When I speak about culture, I’m talking about the culture that black and brown people grew up with in the city, where we were over-policed, underserved, we had to come up with our own shit. When we show up here, we want to make sure that we can play our own music, and that people who are coming into our space understand that this is how we do it. This is how we reflect the culture of the neighborhood that we run in.”
In terms of communicating a culture, he admires how fellow Boston apparel company, Tracksmith speaks so fluently to and about their audience – people who might want to transition from the office to a cabin in the woods to a run. But Sid is happy to leave them to it while he builds his own thing for that over-policed, underserved faction of society.
“That’s not me. It just never connected with me. That’s not the life I came from. That’s not something I aspire to. I love what they create for people who do, but we want to do that for our people.”
“Ever since I left my hood at 14, my whole goal has been to bring the experiences that I have back to my people. So when I found running? I brought it to my people. Once we take over running, [if we] give our culture over to these brands, we’re never going to own anything. We already do this, so let’s put a company in front of it.”
It’s fascinating to see how Sid has used and continues to use his experiences in coming from an urban area but growing up in boarding school and in a top, white-collar accounting firm to code switch his way into the business side of the running world, bringing his people further into the fray the whole time.
What Sidney Baptista is doing is a prime example of Reverse Brain Drain, where an individual leaves their home country (or neighborhood in this case) for better opportunities, but returns with their newly-gained knowledge and skills to improve things at home. That he’s building his community up with him gives his actions that much more pedigree.
Run the culture, indeed.
Pioneers Run Crew runs every Wednesday evening in Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts.
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Thanks for reading
Raz x
Love this!!! And I love how running is something Syd is using to help turn the narrative—especially the example of the positivity that can be brought by the running community. I know it hasn't always been sunshine and roses for Pioneers, but to continue to show up and help folks like me learn how we can be more inclusive towards all of our fellow human beings—both on and off the run!!!
Inspiring read! There really are some amazing cultural leaders in the space right now!