Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Call it a comeback

In America, the hatchback has long fought an uphill battle — garnering the scorn and disdain of image conscious buyers who prefer the look of a sedan or coupe. The thing is, regardless of mass public opinion, we think hatchbacks are great, especially on smaller vehicles where the proportions, engineering and design seem to jive [...]

2 Coats, 18 Days

Seasons are something you can take for granted when you live in LA — I do — rarely giving you an opportunity to truly test cold weather gear. Granted our desert climate can create temps in the high 30s on winter nights, but it’s still not the right environment for challenging the winter gear that [...]

If train A leaves the station at...

According to estimates there are 800 million cars on the road today. By 2050 it will approach between 2 and 4 billion with 70% of those cars existing in cities. Needless to say, automakers — and city planners alike — are scrambling to develop new and more efficient ways to get around. One company, Ford, [...]

Filed Under: Ravishing

Silver (and black) Bullet

What do you get when you cross a great brand, an Airstream and a trunk show? You get the AETHERstream: a mobile shop chock full of goods like well-cut jackets and sweaters, to other appointments including wireless internet, dinner table, bed and even a suspended fire pit. Conceived by Thierry Gaugain, a former Philipe Starck [...]

Old school American muscle? We'll take it.

Even a caveman can eat it

Living a healthy lifestyle can be confusing: Eat six times a day by reducing meal size and snacking. Don’t snack. Don’t eat carbs, focus on proteins. Too much red meat is bad for you. Drink soy milk because it doesn’t contain lactose. Don’t drink soy milk because it increases estrogen levels lest you risk a [...]

Design Within Reach

Volvo has long been seen as the safe car. But no one wants to date the “safe” guy. And only billion dollar corporations afraid of lawsuits give out awards for completing something safely. Needless to say, “safe” isn’t a buzz word that lights up headlines. Armed with this cultural realization Volvo’s designers and engineers decided [...]

How mid-size got its groove back

I fondly remember my father’s 1988 Audi 5000, both of them. After the first one he owned had run its course, he went about purchasing the exact same one again. Same color, same interior, same everything. It was then, despite its infamous foibles, that I was introduced to German engineering, a course on how to [...]

Fiat It's Worth

With the Italian brand finally making its debut back on US shores, what better time to get behind the wheel for an extended session with the hot new hatch. More than a Smart Car, but less than a Mini, the 2012 Fiat 500 delivers a cache of vintage-inspired looks combined, modern underpinnings and an approachable [...]

Everything I learned in life I learned in rally school.

5:30 AM, Los Angeles | Waking up at the crack of dawn for school is hardly an ideal way to start the day. Unless, of course, you’re getting up early to attend rally driving school for a crash course in four-wheeled mayhem. Over the course of our day we partook in rapid-fire lessons on the [...]

Dispatches and gear reviews from Hawaii's oldest island

Hawaii has always been one of those places that seems totally wild and far off. Yet, like Lada Gaga, it’s American. So when I was tasked by my better half with finding a summer adventure that didn’t require a subscription to Rosetta Stone and also had a beach, it became abundantly clear that Hawaii was [...]

Final Cut, Bro

In recent years, stalwart denim purveyor Levi’s has expanded into beyond their blue-collar roots offering not only fashion forward goods suited for coal miners but for agency ladder climbers, as well. The brand’s social accessibility and blend of fashion/practicality have led to the Levi’s Workshop — a pop-up style event that offers exposure, equipment, training [...]

Henderson, the Raen King

Studies based entirely off of vintage pop culture speculation have shown that the quickest way to up your cool-factor is by either smoking or wearing sunglasses. Since the first has shown to cause early onset death, we’ll put our stamp of approval on a pair of shades. And unless your day job involves the paparazzi [...]

There's an App for That Too

When you were a young boy, you could eat eight hot dogs at dinner, sleep two hours, run around for 12 hours without stopping, break your arm and heal in about fifteen minutes. As we mature that changes, and we are introduced to words like metabolism, prostate, ROTH IRA and hypertension. And in this culture [...]