Summer Wristwatch (2.0)

My left hand (and part of my left arm at 5 to 7 PM) with a time piece that I endorse.

I stated the case for a summer wristwatch a few years ago. I’ll admit that these little guys don’t usually last that long. But, that is part of the point, right? It is the watch that you put on when you are doing some sort of activity where there is a (high-ish) possibility that it gets smacked against something, or massively scratched while doing some manual work on something. No? Just me? Anyway, I was reading a certain website the other day and saw a deal that I could not refuse. This Japanese built, solar powered gem is the summer watch of my dreams. It comes with a chronograph and a sub-4 hundo pricetag. To be clear, this is not sponcon in any respect. In further honesty, I used to have an aversion to non-swiss watches with chrono. But, dude, I have had this thing for a few days now in gross NYC summer weather, and I fully endorse this piece. That’s all.

NYC Coffee Cups

Coffee-Cup-Survey-Gear-Patrol-Lead-Full-

I’m not a coffee snob (or anything even close to that). When I buy coffee, I usually just get drip (or a double shot Americano when in Europe) and usually take it black because it saves time. I think that coffee tastes disgusting, though I drink a lot of it primarily for its caffeinated properties. Because of this, when I buy coffee, I generally select coffee shops based on things such as branding rather than what it “tastes” like. I will admit that I appreciate some good visual design when it comes to coffee cups (and almost everything else). There are a lot of ’em here in the city. Within a one block radius of my office there are at least 3 non-chain coffee joints. In that same radius there are probably 5-7 chain locations (Starbucks/Dunkin/Coffee Bean). I find myself patronizing the non-chain brands almost exclusively, and a lot of it is based on branding (i.e. the visual aesthetic of the disposable cups/sleeves). My friends at Gear Patrol, published an awesome little blurb this week visually cataloging some of the cups that can be obtained around NYC. I thought it was such a cool idea that I’m sharing it here. There are a few others that I would have included in the image had I been creative enough to come up with this idea. But I think that they chose a good cross-section. Check out the original piece over here.

[Photo: Henry Phillips]