Starting in spring ’07, Patagonia will begin selling footwear that’s not made to be worn with waders. Their casual shoes will be made with Vibram’s Ecostep soles which use 30% recycled rubber and hemp or vegetable oil tanned leather. Now it won’t hurt so bad when you step on glass at Widespread Panic concerts.
via Treehugger
Forget for a second that you can use almost any bike tool as a bottle opener, and then you’ll realize just how cool the Park Tool BO-1 Bottle Opener is. Park also makes some pint glasses, but at $5 each you would be better off drinking a pint at a bar and then just stealing the glass.
The Nixon Juice Watch lets you store up to 100 stopwatch times for $90. You’re supposed to use it for storing your training run times, but you know it’ll be a hit for timing beer bongs at the frat house. You’ll even be able to tell the pizza guy how much quicker he made it to your house versus the previous 20 trips.
The North Face’s Steep Tech line is a lot like the Gaper line from 686. It’s all old throwback stuff you’d wear a laugh, but North Face doesn’t seem to think so. They even still pay homage to Scot Schmidt. At least they stick to their guns with the classic black/yellow bumble bee colors. When I see someone with this jacket in the lift line, I always think they’re just trying to dress ironically.
Munich Germany is now home to the world’s largest indoor snowboard halfpipe. SnowFunPark (its real name) opens on December 8th with a 130m long, 20m wide, and 4.5m high halfpipe. I’ll send you a picture of me riding it on an Airboard when I head there for ISPO in February. I guess I can add halfpipes to the list of things German’s good at: over engineering and brewing killer beers.
via Snowbroader
After Mr. Clark and his surfboard blanks quit giving his employees cancer, a handful of small companies began moving into the market and borrowing material designs from skiing and snowboarding. Firewire Surfboards might be the company Gerry Lopez was talking about when taking shots at pop outs, but their construction continues to gather support.
Check out this quote from Time magazine:
Companies like California’s Firewire Surfboards and France’s Salomon have caught the attention of high-ranking pros by bringing innovative materials and construction methods to surfboards, some that had already worked wonders for skis, snowboards and the wings of Boeing Dreamliners. New designs using expanded polystyrene foam (EPS), epoxy resins and stiff sheets of carbon fiber add responsiveness and maneuverability to the boards. The buzzword: “flex memory”–or “flex”–the way a board snaps back into its original shape in a turn or maneuver. “The materials have a memory of the original curve, and they return to that curve very quickly,” says Firewire’s Mark Price. “It gives you that twang-like effect when you’re coming out of the turn. It’s almost like a bow releasing an arrow.”
via Get Outdoors
Instead of facing another lawsuit for someone slipping on your waxed curb, just throw some Slip Tape on the bottom of your deck. This heavy-duty clear tape is supposed to grind more consistently than bare wood. Maybe use it on your snowboard, too?
Today I feel like making turns at 11m intervals instead of my normal 15 meters. Better buy a new pair of skis. Wait! I have the Rossignol Radical R11 Mutix skis with customizable, err, high-performance dynamic parts. I can just swap out some torsion things on the top of the skis and make tighter turns. That $1300 I dumped into this technology is finally paying off, now I just wish Deer Valley could groom down all this powder.
via Get Outdoors
Timbuk2 put a new shine on an old bag for the holidays. They’re taking things back to the custom sewing days by offering three made in San Francisco bags. You get an idea how far they’ve moved from their core market when you see one of the messenger bags is only available in laptop size and the other’s a grocery getter. The only “customizable†part is that you choose your three colors—hmm, do I want to French flag or the Italian?
via Bikehugger
