Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Everything you need to live it up

Looking to make your extended weekend celebration extra memorable? Well, our editors have culled through our latest posts to help provide some last minute inspiration for your Memorial Day weekend, whether the festivities are at your place, or elsewhere. You can thank us by throwing another burger on the grill. Two slices of cheese, please.

Also, keep in mind that while Memorial Day is a great excuse for spending time with friends and family, don’t forget that the holiday was created to honor those who sacrificed their own lives for the sake of ours. Take a moment amidst your festivities to think about the incredibly brave men and women who paid the ultimate price so that we all can live free. Giving veterans a well-deserved hand shake wouldn’t hurt either.

Continues after the jump.

Take it all and then some

The utility of a BigFoot Bag wouldn’t be lost on a wiseguy like Tony Soprano. They’re designed to lay completely flat for quickly loading everything from large bundles of cash, to liberated merchandise, or even the recently “disposed of” competition. Once the dirty work is done, they zip up and securely clip tight for carrying.

Those with more legitimate occupations will also appreciate that they work great as impromptu ground cloths or tarps, and make moving an entire camp’s worth of gear incredibly easy, granted you’ve got Paul Buyun cannons hiding under your sleeves. The yard bag specifically can move the equivalent of 13 large trash bags of waste material.

All of their offerings are made from sun, wind, water, and puncture-resistant materials and come in three sizes of small (57″x52″), medium (86″x72″), and large (118″x96″). Nice details like weighted sides and reinforced carrying handles top off the smart design, leaving you to focus on where the bodies contents need to go.

Buy Now: $50+

We’re not ignoring the “Skyfall” trailer; we’re watching it for the third time right now. But a new adaptation of Gatsby seems somehow important, American — a story handed down to the next generation, a role bestowed on DiCaprio by Redford, a soundtrack with Irving Berlin for one with Kanye and Hov. A cautionary tale for the Tobey Maguire set. Also, some nut is selling a tube of presidential blood. Come on, man.

It’s a big and complicated world. We’re at tips [at] gearpatrol.com if you think there’s something we should know about.

Make hoarding look good

Juuri Storage Containers from Danish homewares design company, Menu A/S, are made of very durable and heat-resistant borosilicate glass and stripped of unnecessary decoration or adornment for a very masculine aesthetic. A flexible silicone collar placed between the glass sections creates an airtight integrated container, perfect for dry goods, while the top and bottom can be used individually as open storage trays — for items on your desk or any other knick-knacks you seem to collect like a Lohan collects jail time. Juuri jars come in three stylish Scandinavian color variations: Clear glass, Smoke glass or Menu’s signature Blue glass. Pick up a few and organize your house, but please, keep your science experiments still in the drawer.

Buy Now: $30

You say you want a "revolution"

Sometimes, we get so used to a certain product that no true changes are ever really made for years, decades even. Toilet paper comes to mind. Another is the pneumatic tire. Sure, the modern tire is a wealth of technology and high grade materials such as synthetic rubber, sulfur, carbon, steel, etc. Heck, recent years have even given us the run-flat tire, but the vast majority of cars don’t have these kind of shoes. Nevertheless, one requirement has always been the use of air, and if you’ve had your fair share of flats and blowouts over the years, you know how disconcerting your tires’ dependency on air truly is. Well, while you’ve been going about your day and no less, drooling away the night hours unconscious, tire engineers have been working hard at developing the airless or non-pneumatic tire.

Deep picture for shallow pockets

Prices for quality projectors have dropped faster than Facebook’s IPO over the last few years, making the dream of mancave movie theaters much more realistic. The trouble is sorting out the deals from the doozies. For a street price of often less than $2,000, BenQ’s first full-HD 3D W7000 Projection System is a particularly good bargain for movie-lovers looking for the best 3D experience at home.

So-called active 3D is becoming a projection standard for eliminating the irritating crosstalk associated with 3D images, but the need to wire a separate IR emitter to sync the projector with the glasses is an extra setup hassle that often requires recalibration to get everything working properly. The additional IR signals can also wreak havoc on IR-based remotes. The W7000 uses DLP Link instead, which provides the same benefits of other active systems with non of the tradeoffs. Tack on top-notch 2D and 3D picture reproduction, ICFccc certification (for professional calibration), a slew of inputs including two HDMI, one VGA, and one s-Video, picture-in-picture capabilities, and a flexible lens for a wide array of room installations — and you’ve got an incredible home upgrade that’s not to be missed. We can’t make the same claims Piranha 3D.

Buy Now: ~$2,000

Sweet sin-sation

Add the food of the gods, cacao, to the water of life, booze, and you’ve got Twice the Vice spirited chocolates. A box holds nine chocolate-enrobed, liquor-filled morsels that are available in a variety of spirit themes including a fine tequila and a kentucky bourbon series. While we’re sure all of their delightful boxes are worth a try, the Single Malt collection is the highlight of Twice the Vice’s series of high octane bonbons. Inside you’ll find a trio of The Macallan 12 year: thought by many to be the best of that vintage and silky smooth, The Glenlivet 15 year old: fruity, floral, soft and rich with oak and vanilla, and from the Islay region, the Lagavulin: a deep, dry and exceptionally peaty beast not for the faint of heart. Matched with the incomparable rich velvet of Belgium’s Barry Callebaut chocolate, they’re reason enough to revive trick-or-treating for adults, in our book.

Should you be fortunate enough to live in one of 18 states (AZ, CA, CO, FL, HI, KY, LA, MA, MD, MN, MO, NH, NJ, NV, NY, TX, VA, and WA) that allows shipment of these potent confections and you’re over 21, then knock back a box. Otherwise, let the smuggling schemes begin.

Buy Now: $28

Riding in style

Sure, you could argue the obnoxious styles of most biking apparel lines makes you more noticeable to vehicles on the road, but who cares about safety if you’re riding in clothes you wouldn’t be caught dead in? A new brand Search and State is challenging the notion of what cycling gear should look like with the introduction of their S1-A Riding Jersey and S1-J Riding Jacket. Both items are handmade in the US, and represent stylish yet understated alternatives to the usual fluorescent road wear. Best of all, they come in just one color: a two-tone black and gray. For now, they’re only offering a jacket and jersey, but we can expect more murdered-out gear in the future.

The tailored-fit S1-A jersey is constructed from lightweight, breathable fabric that’s designed to dry quickly. The front Riri zipper helps with additional temperature regulation should you need it and boasts the classic three rear pockets to keep small items in check. The matching S1-J riding jacket is billed as a three season staple, equipped with a unique C-Change bionic climate membrane that independently reacts to changing temperatures by closing when exposed to cold and opening in response to heat. It’s also light enough to fit into the jersey’s pocket just in case things get too steamy.

Either item should help you look good and feel good while on the road, but we’d still recommend wearing a blinking hat or something for safety.

Buy Now: S1-A Riding Jersey $125 | S1-J Riding Jacket $245

A definitive read on the indefinite

Writing a half-decent book on watches is no small feat, but authoring a history of time? That requires a level of prowess and dedication beyond the reach of most, but Dominique Fléchon, historian and expert in fine watches has done just that. His book, The Mastery of Time: A History of Timekeeping ($63) casts much more than a casual glance at watches.

Chronicling mankind’s obsession with time and its tireless attempts to measure it since the dawn of civilization, the book covers everything from sundials to atomic clocks, from pendulums to wristwatches. Flipping through the books pages is akin to embarking on a well-read adventure back in time. Fléchon presents the steady mastery of time across the millenniums and faithfully represented against the backdrop of human accomplishments and their narrow relationship to the science of horology. A towering scholarly accomplishment and already hailed as a major work of reference for collectors and experts, the The Mastery of Time is likely to fit just as nicely amid your collection of watches as in your library.

Buy Now: $63

Just as bright, without the white

IdeaPaint, creators of the brilliant whiteboard-anywhere technology have now concocted a new iteration that looks even better: IdeaPaint CLEAR ($225+). Brace yourself, doodlers, because now you can turn any surface, of any color into a writing station. Specifically, CLEAR is a certified low-emission and LEED-compliant finish that goes over any interior paint (or wood) to create a dry erase board.

Satisfy your brainstorming addiction by scrawling ideas, graphs, or Matt Damon’s janitor math all over your office walls. Then easily hide the evidence with a quick wipe down once you’ve had your fill. While the business use cases are obvious, CLEAR might just be the best invention for the parents of marker-happy rugrats since invisible ink.

Buy Now: $225+

The one, the only

The MX-5 is the quintessential roadster. Balanced, tractable and compliant, it’s a true driving purist’s car. And Mazda churns out special editions of their venerable little roadster like the Alien Mother pops out face huggers. Perhaps the most significant permutation of the MX-5 is the Mazda MX-5 Super20, a one-of-a-kind version that first bowed at SEMA 2010. When we say one-of-a-kind, that’s because it truly is the only one ever made and likely the only one that ever will be.

More details after the jump.

Get strapped

Dial down the touristy vibe on your next photo hunt, home or abroad, with a DSPTCH Camera Sling Strap ($48). Designed and made in San Francisco by a photographer — a man quite deft with the lens himself — is made using mil-spec commercial grade nylon webbing and outfitted with a uni-loop connector to ensure a wide range of fits. Available in black or olive, the perfectly sized strap works as a sling, over the shoulder or around the neck, and even features a quick-release clip for rapid detachment. Blending in never worked, or looked so good.

Buy Now: $46