Gear Patrol

Ever since we started GP, there’s been a steady stream of notes from audience members with something on their mind.We recently decided everyone could benefit from seeing some of the highlights from our frequent correspondence on a regular basis. There’s a serious amount of collective wisdom, insight and passion that’s simply too valuable to keep black boxed in the dialog of an email thread. So, moving forward, we’ll be using this series to showcase our favorite correspondences on a bi-weekly basis. Here’s our first batch.

Did you see this weekend’s forecast? The warm weather’s rolling in like a happiness-creating tide. Though it seems backwards, this is the perfect moment for us to wrap up our Summer Preview. Sure, we’re sad to see it go, but the entire premise was to get you prepped — and now it’s game time.

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Smell that? Summer is in the air. For our sixth issue we’re taking an early dive into the throes of summer. We’ve packed three weeks worth of equinox-ready content into a fine assembly of informative guides, buzz-worthy roundups and interviews with the sole intention of making your next project, party or purchase the season’s best….

Name your favorite domestic beer. Not so easy, eh?

With Malted Madness, Gear Patrol takes on that challenge: blind tasting the best craft brews across America. We’re not talking about your “go-to” choice, the quick pick you can find at any supermarket or Jiffy Mart across America, although there are several of the quality we mean that are nationally available. No, this is about the beer with a starring role in your dreams, a taste that conjures the trumpets of heaven with each sip and invokes tears of joy as it traipses across your palate. Naming a favorite is subjective, like picking America’s “Sexiest Woman”, and an over-simplification of the media. Gear Patrol jumps into the fray, regardless, in an attempt to do just that: pick the best craft beer in the United States out of a field of 64 in a grand single-elimination tournament. Join us for Malted Madness, the perfect companion to the culmination of college basketball. Read on for more info.

Today, we’re announcing a change here at Gear Patrol: a course correction to provide us the time and resources to hone in on the insights, thoughts and perspectives you’ve come to expect and love from our team.

Good news: Based on the overwhelmingly positive response to the Fortnight of Coffee, we’ve decided to extend it another six months. Ah, just kidding. We received more than 400 photos in response to our Show Us Your Coffee contest: latte art, morning espresso pulls, campfire percolators, an espresso mint mojito, a crazy lego piece, delicious-looking pancakes, many remarkable pour-over kits and even a few oddballs. So… who won the damn thing?

The Show Us Your Coffee Contest ends Sunday. Read on to hear the rules and details.

If you haven’t been snoozing, you know we’re right in the midst of a Fortnight of Coffee, our two-week study of addiction that life-affirming beverage. But we can’t do it alone. Too much caffeine. Not enough time. Loved ones troubled by our shaking hands and fast-talk gibberish. So we’ve got a proposition, the net-net of which involves a shot at a Bonavita BV1800TH Coffee Maker: Thermal (pictured right). That’s enough brewing power to go from take-out dweeb to caffeinated honcho faster than you can say, “coffee is for closers only.”

Specifically, we’re looking for you to snap photos of your daily coffee experience and send them our way. What works: your home coffee maker or setup, favorite coffee beans, the cute barista at your local coffee house, the cup of Joe on your daily subway commute, the Probat parked in your garage, mind-blowing latte art, even a regular old cup of black coffee at the diner. What doesn’t work: tea.

To enter, simply hashtag photos on Instagram or Twitter with #GPcoffee and include @gearpatrol in your comment so we can find you (follow us while you’re at it). Or just email shots from your phone or computer to coffee [at] gearpatrol.com. If you need a little inspiration, check out some submissions from our Show Us Your Beef contest.

Throughout the Fortnight, we’ll be sharing coffee photo submissions on GP, and we’ll announce a winner on Twitter the first week of March. The winner gets the official title of Brewmaster along with the Bonavita. What are you waiting for? Fire up the camera app and show us the crema.

It’s time to roll out the Fortnight of Coffee, two weeks of stories about our favorite morning drink. In our third issue (previously, Month of Beef and Bond Week) you can expect gear roundups, original storytelling, photo essays, videos and a few surprises. Hold on to your mugs. Coffee’s up.

It’s frosty out there, but we’re fired up for February. For this month’s issue (previously Beef and Bond) we’ll be turning the collective braintrust to the wonderment of cupped lightning. The entire team will be doning our coffee aprons as we deliver up a piping hot pot of pretense-free knowledge, caffeinated lore and the best tools of the brew. Instant to drip, pour-over to cold brew, prepare yourselves for our dark roasted crash course for the budding enthusiast, serving mid-February.

Vizio has officially presented the Rose Bowl for several years now and often uses their accompanying commercial time to tease the gadget-loving public with new products. The commercial that kicked off halftime this year was no exception, showing glimpses of a few unreleased devices we’re certainly excited to learn more about at CES. These include what looks like a Windows 8 tablet, a next generation Android tablet and of course, sleek-looking, new TVs. If you haven’t seen the spot already, we’ve embedded it above to study at your leisure. Look out for it on the air over the coming weeks as well. Pay close enough attention (*cough* — 8 seconds in) and you might even catch a glimpse of your favorite site, a.k.a. us. Special thanks to the fine people at Vizio for choosing GP for such a cool cameo. We are truly honored and can’t wait to learn more about what’s in store from the great American electronics company in 2013. With a resume credential like this, our dreams of landing a part in Rudy 2 are now that much closer.

From all of us here at Gear Patrol, here’s wishing you and your families a Merry Christmas.

Over the last five years, we’ve worked to make Gear Patrol a gathering place for guys hell-bent on getting the most out of their time on planet Earth. Our approach from the beginning was inspired by what magazines have always done: providing a filter on the world, sharing our take on what’s valuable and interesting, employing original photography and thoughtful storytelling — but with the agility a website affords.

When you spend as much time as we do scouring the known universe in search of noteworthy products, one thing becomes abundantly clear: building a single great thing is a phenomenally difficult accomplishment, and repeating it is next to impossible. Every so often though, a company emerges that defies the odds and changes the world…

There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American. – O. Henry From all of us here at Gear Patrol — above and afar — we hope your Thanksgiving is a great one. We’ll see you tomorrow.

We’ve weathered sirloin squalls and Tartare trichinosis, digit-endangering cleavers and briskets that cause pleasure comas in two out of three eaters. It’s been one hell of a Month of Beef, and it’s time to honor you, the people who made it happen. We received a massive amount of submissions for our Great Map of Beef…

What’s more masculine than a month dedicated to beef? Easy: James Bond. Bond fights for the good guys, but to call him merely a hero would be an injustice. Beyond 007′s ability to deliver equal parts charisma and carousal, the man manages to do it all: defuse bombs, win showdowns (fisticuff, gun, or blade), evade…

Update 2: Well fellow Beefeaters, it’s been a long and arduously delectable Month of Beef. You’ve learned how to braise, order beef online and match your cut with your preparation. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed yourself, tried new things and maybe even gained a few pounds of beef weight. What you’ve also done, for the benefit of…

Our suspicions were correct: you do love your beef — some of you are even budding beef photogs. Our Month of Beef photo contest is in full swing and a mess of juicy photos have rolled in: plump ribeyes, succulent Beef Wellington, beef stew, beef tartar and even a few fat burgers. We’re so proud…

Update: Well folks, it’s about that time. Grill ‘em if you got ‘em. Put all your beef down on the table. More specifically, send in your beef photos. We pick five winners tomorrow, and you can’t win if you don’t try. So rush to the supermarket. Bomb over to your favorite butcher shop. Get beef,…

It’s October, and what this month lacks in historical feasts and gift-giving holidays it makes up for many times over as autumn’s marrow. It’s apple picking season. It’s football season. It’s sweater and waxed canvas jacket season. It’s foliage season. And guess what else? It’s beef season.

The title says it all folks. We’re looking for two highly motivated individuals to support the editorial team in a variety of capacities. Writing to unboxing. Multimedia to social media. Editorial to operations. If you’ve been itching to get your foot in the door of men’s media and live in the New York area, then…

I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,…

We’ve officially launched a Tumblr outpost in the wild west that is the internet. It’s not just the same ol’ re-hash of what you read here every day, though. Instead, we’ll be using it to share inspiration from around the web: stunning photography, our own outtakes, thought-provoking articles, good tunes, and other random digital asides…

Update: We’ve been totally stunned by the number of applicants from the posting. Seriously, we had to setup a Google filter so we didn’t miss any. Looks like there are others out there with our same crazy, incurable affliction for gear hunting. If you’re interested in the job, be sure to write in sooner than…

The spirit of innovation has almost always been about making life as we know it better, or at least a more pleasant experience. Sure, there have been some stutters like the weight-loss contraptions of the 50s, hydrogen blimps, and auto-tune, but these hysterical and sometimes horrific failures are mainly just bumps on a steady climb…

23 posts in, we’re long overdue on giving our Project Kickstarter series an official kick off. Since publishing our first article on a Kickstarter project, back in the summer of 2010, we’ve watched in awe as the site quickly matured into a powerful platform, capable of transforming the dreams of passionate creators into legitimate products…

We’re taking Monday off to be with friends and family — not to mention recuperate — but until then, here are a few sage words for the New Year from Mr, Franklin himself. We couldn’t have said it better. Our best to you in 2012.

At our humble New York office we’re surrounded by a coliseum of publications dedicated to creating excellent reading on this internet(s) we call home. Count the rest of the web in and suddenly you’ve got a lot of places to bookmark, subscribe to, add, watch, like and follow. It’s hardly duck soup. So it goes…