The Stone Pony Effect

Sweeping change comes from grassroots efforts, not top-down reform.

Howdy 🤠

Hope you’re enjoying your Labor Day Weekend!

This week’s newsletter comes on the heels of lots of summer reading about the history of my hometown, Asbury Park. The history of the city’s rise and fall and recent resurgence is fascinating and layered with lessons worth exploring further.

As always, thanks for reading!

Kevin

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The Stone Pony Effect

A single spark can start a prairie fire.

Chinese Proverb

Asbury Park was a broken city. After decades of division, the city slowly declined until horrible riots in 1970 burned most of the city to the ground. There were no businesses, no jobs, and no people left, but a small music venue called the Stone Pony opened up in the 90s.

Long before his worldwide fame, Bruce Springsteen played there every Sunday, and slowly people felt comfortable coming back to the city. Soon enough there were enough people for a restaurant to open down the street. And then more bands came, and more people, and a bar and new restaurants.

Over the last 30 years, the city has been steadily revitalized through incremental steps in the right direction, and today, Asbury is an icon of the Jersey Shore, flourishing with culture, small businesses, and tourism.

All it takes is one small thing moving in the right direction to turn around lifetimes of despair. It gains traction, and we rally behind it. The positive effects ripple out and begin to seed change across many areas of life.

Even with nothing left, we have to begin moving the flywheel in the other direction. Something small and seemingly insignificant is enough to seed a movement, a culture, and a transformation.

When things are too far gone, massive sweeping changes seem like the only way to reverse the tide, but they’re counterproductive. Too much change too fast isn’t natural or sustainable.

It’s like feeding a kid vegetables and grilled chicken after a lifetime of fast food and candy. They’ll eat it if you make them, but they're not going to like it and it’s not going to change their behavior.

Some changes are too big to happen quickly. The most dire circumstances require small grassroots efforts, not artificial top-down reform.

The American Revolution wasn’t announced and implemented quickly by one person or group. Instead, it took decades of slow and small changes to the way the colonists thought. It only became a revolution in hindsight.

In real-time, changes in opinion and actions aren’t much of anything. We can only decipher their impact retroactively.

When we’re in a dark season of life or we feel a million miles away from where we’d like to be, we’d do well to remember the band that kept showing up to the Stone Pony in the desolate beach town.

That band wasn’t starting a revolution. Nor were the fans that slowly began showing up in larger and larger numbers. But those small actions turned Bruce Springsteen into an icon around the world and transformed Asbury Park from a forgotten city in ruins to a beautiful town revitalized by music, diversity, and culture.

None of this happened intentionally. All of the legislation and redevelopment efforts from the city, state, and federal government failed, but small and consistent grassroots efforts made all the difference.

Prompts

1. What grassroots actions should you be taking in your life or your community?

2. Are you pushing for or hoping for top-down reform?

3. How can you introduce small actions into your daily life to bend the future in the direction you’d like?

Deep Dive

• Fourth of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land

  • Fascinating read on the history of Asbury Park from its founding in 1871, through all the highs and lows until today.

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Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.

Kevin