Influencers in the wild: Meet the Brooklyn Mavens

By Brian Braiker

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There are some 2.7 million people living in the borough. But there are only two Brooklyn Mavens.

Lauren Riley and Merlyn Oliver are born and bred in Brooklyn: Riley is from Prospect Heights, Oliver grew up in East Flatbush. Together the two comprise the Brooklyn Mavens, a social media outfit dedicated to highlighting the best of the borough, old and new.

“We’re two women that are natives of Brooklyn, showing you the real Brooklyn,” says Riley. “There are so many people that have moved in to Brooklyn and they’re looking for things to do. We provide that perspective of what’s new, what’s hot to do, and the perspective of what Brooklyn used to be, because we’ve grown up [here] and seen the changes.”

Riley and Oliver have more than 20 thousand followers on Instagram, where they shout out Black-owned small businesses, historical curiosities and explore neighborhoods that are new to them. And they are this week’s guests on “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast,” where we break down who they are and what they do.

“Brooklyn is huge and Lauren and I have really tried to attack the whole Brooklyn. We really want to showcase the things we go through day to day. And we’re also learning from other cultures, from other people, what they go through,” says Oliver. “We’re two Black women—of course our experience might be different. But … we go about different places and are learning more so we can share that with people who’ve lived here all their lives and didn’t know anything about Sunset Park or anything about Coney Island.”

Recent posts include a shoutout to Cuts and Slices in Bed-Stuy for National Pizza Day, a riff on the fact that Brooklynites refuse to leave the borough if they can avoid it, and a roundup of Black-owned hair salons in the borough. Last week the two unveiled new branding, launched a new TikTok channel—because, TikTok—and they hosted a Super Bowl party at IV Purpose, a Bed-Stuy sports bar. They don’t have a website, yet, as the two both have time-consuming day jobs. But it’s coming, they say.

The aim going forward is to reach even younger audiences (the two are 29) and appeal to a broader swath of the community. “We really want to reach more men,” says Riley. “We have a large female-based audience and so we want to make our content a lot more diversified so that we can reach people of all ages and genders.”

A “maven” is an expert or connoisseur. Think: fashion maven, which is actually how the two got started, posting about fashion to Instagram around 2016 or 17—it’s all a blur. The two grew up together, went to Edward R. Murrow High School in Midwood together and both attended Penn State.

Today they marvel at how much their neighborhoods have changed in the past two decades, for the good and the not-so-good.

“I can’t always comprehend gentrification,” says Riley. “There are nice parts about gentrification, like getting a Union Market or having more restaurants in your neighborhood, which are all really nice, because I don’t have to leave Prospect Heights to have fun, to be very honest with you, which I think has made me more lazy. But it’s sad because it’s pricing people out. Even myself … I can’t even live in my own neighborhood that I grew up in.“

We discuss the origins of the Brooklyn Mavens and how they’ve grown to collaborate with brands like Pepsi and Kings Plaza. They describe being tourists in their own city, discovering new-to-them spots in Bay Ridge and Chinatown. And we explore what people tend to get wrong about Brooklyn.

“People think that Williamsburg or Bushwick equals Brooklyn and that there’s no other thing in the whole borough to do,” says Oliver. “That is definitely one of the things that we spotlight. No, there is definitely something to do at least in every single neighborhood.”

Check out this episode of “Brooklyn Magazine: The Podcast” for more. Subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.