The Ordinary, a skin care brand, began running a free bus in Brooklyn between Domino Park on the Williamsburg waterfront and Prospect Park on Tuesday. The temporary shuttle, which traveled a route that can be a headache on public transit — requiring transfers between trains and buses, long walks and delays — was a marketing stunt intended to run for two weeks.
It lasted three days before it ran into some trouble.
On Friday afternoon, the bus appeared to stop running, missing several scheduled afternoon trips between the two parks, according to an online tracker on the brand’s website.
Janice Vuong, a 27-year-old user experience designer who lives in Manhattan, said she arrived at the pickup point in Williamsburg at 4:45 p.m. on Friday afternoon to take the 5 p.m. bus. There was no signage for the bus, and there were no representatives for the company at the stop.
By 5:25, it still hadn’t arrived. She and about five other people were still waiting, Vuong said in a phone interview from the bus stop.
When asked if the city had shut down the bus, Jeremy M. Edwards, deputy press secretary for the mayor’s office, wrote in a statement on Friday that the Department of Transportation had “contacted representatives of the Ordinary bus to provide guidance regarding the permitting process, including instructions for registering and applying for a New York City Bus Stop Permit.”
A representative for the Ordinary did not respond to questions as to why the bus appeared to have stopped running and whether the company had secured necessary operating permits.
“We are glad to see more people are catching onto the fact that New Yorkers need and deserve fast and free buses,” Edwards also wrote.
Seeming to draft off a core campaign promise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani to make New York City’s buses faster and free, the brand announced the bus this month on social media, offering a solution to “a transit gap that shouldn’t exist.”
“Infrastructure shapes how people move through their day,” the company wrote on its website. “When it works, it’s invisible. When it doesn’t, people build workarounds. The Ordinary Bus is one such workaround.”
The initial announcement of the bus route drew some applause from online commenters and from locals, who could spend 30 minutes on the Ordinary’s bus instead of the usual 50ish-minute commute.
The bus offered four timed departures from Domino Park and three from the northern corner of Prospect Park on weekdays, as well as two morning departures each on weekends.
On Thursday, Katherine Tiseo, 68, was riding the bus to Prospect Park. Tiseo said she had moved to Brooklyn from Manhattan about two years ago. “I am struggling with getting around without a car and the convenience of not having so many subways,” she said.
Before the bus appeared to stop running, transit professionals had conflicting opinions about the stunt.
“While this is just a temporary marketing campaign for a skin care brand, private licensed shuttles, taxis and for-hire vehicles can serve an important transportation purpose in New York City,” Eugene Resnick, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, wrote in an email.
The route drew criticism for connecting two of Brooklyn’s affluent neighborhoods, with some arguing the resources could have been better used elsewhere.
Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for the public transit nonprofit Riders Alliance, said the Ordinary’s chosen route was “connecting two heavily touristed areas rather than low-income communities where people are particularly transit-dependent.” (In recent years, the once bohemian Williamsburg has welcomed high-end brands like Chanel and Hermès. Luxury apartments near the Prospect Park stop of the Ordinary bus can sell for millions of dollars.)
The Ordinary, which was founded in 2016, first became popular with millennials seeking low-priced, no-frills products. While it has several bricks-and-mortar locations in Manhattan, there are currently no stores in Brooklyn.
It is not the first brand to seemingly play off one of Mamdani’s campaign promises in a marketing effort. The mayor also ran on a pledge to create a chain of city-owned grocery stores aimed at keeping food costs low for shoppers.
Earlier this year, Polymarket, a prediction market, opened a free grocery store in Manhattan for five days, offering products ranging from milk and olive oil to laundry detergent and paper towels. Though many in line said the experience was worth it, the company was criticized by some for choosing a wealthy neighborhood — the West Village — and for the long lines and slight chaos.
On the Ordinary’s bus route on Thursday afternoon, several riders said they had learned about the bus from social media accounts promoting free activities in New York City. One rider, a Williamsburg resident, said it would be nice if the route were permanent and not just a short-lived advertisement.
Gabriella Gershenson contributed reporting.
Madison Malone Kircher is a Times reporter covering internet culture.
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