Gradually, then Suddenly
While I was reading through Issue Seventeen, a quote from The Sun Also Rises came to mind. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
At Gear Patrol, we chronicle change and innovation in the form of product news and reviews. Most of the things we cover iterate on an idea that came before — and when you do it every day, the passage of products seems to exist on a long, gradual continuum.
But when you have a vantage point to see many of those things collectively and thematically, as we do in the pages of our magazines, you get brighter glimpses into the suddenly. In a flash, things that once seemed to exist only in the concept are being used every day by people around the world.
The pages of this issue demonstrate some of the larger, bigger changes afoot. Some fresh, some odd, some clever.
In a heartwarming story, we meet Zeb Powell, a 20-year old Black snowboarder from North Carolina whose turning heads and winning gold by … falling over. You can’t miss him in his incredible heartshaped glasses (page 32).
Electric cars are finally ascending upon drivers in what seems like a total eclipse on internal combustion (page 90). Also in “cars,” tiny trucks that echo Chevy’s El Camino are back in force (page 94).
Elsewhere, leather goes vegan, and mainstream (page 70). Bose released a set of hearing aids and they make total sense (page 28). An ex-apple engineer could kill stereo with the world’s first triphonic speaker — look it up (page 22). A new 3D printing method from Silicon Valley could change how everything is made (page 128). And as if California didn’t breed enough innovation already, it may also be home to one of the world’s best — not to mention weirdest — whiskey makers (page 53).
If you’re just here for the gear, however, I’ll simply point you to the Winter Gear Awards. Our picks range from a backyard fire pit to an adjustable dumbbell set to the best damn socks on the planet. They’re premium, accessible and useful. The good stuff starts on page 140.
When it comes to gear, I’m afforded the occasional opportunity to spot a throughline emerging between products and users. Looking beyond performance and price, I sense an urgency now among makers and users to reckon with how products impact people, and ultimately, an opportunity to think anew about what we use to pursue our lives to the fullest — be it an electric vehicle, 3D-printed backpack or pair of vegan work boots.
When Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises, an entire generation was recovering from World War I. Being on the other side of our own generational crisis (COVID-19), perhaps we too are realizing that we’re ready for change, more suddenly than we expected.