Gear Patrol Magazine, Issue Eleven: The Craftsmanship Issue by Gear Patrol

The Craftsmanship Issue

Wish List: The Best Stuff

How to DIY

Battle-Ready Zombie Tools

Pro Tips: Breaking In Raw Denim

Boozing with the Monk of Malt

Modding a $10K Watch

The Review: TNF FutureLight

#TheMug

Zen at 60 mph. THE ALL-NEW ELECTRIC LIVEWIRE™ Here comes Harley’s first step into the electric future—one that goes 0 to 60 in 3 seconds with a twist of the throttle. No clutch, no shifting, just pure exhilaration. Discover the most connected rider experience with H-D ™ Connect technology that helps you stay in touch with your joyride.

L E A R N M O R E A B O U T T H E L I V E W I R E ™ AT H - D . C O M

© 2019 H-D or its affiliates. Harley-Davidson, Harley, H-D and the bar and shield logo are among the trademarks of H-D U.S.A., LLC. Third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The H-D™ Connect service is not available in all markets. See dealer for details.

The integrated design, optimal dimensions, comfortable style and carefully executed finishes of the BR 05 make it perfectly suited for urban life. Full of character, this instrument exudes strength and elegance. The BR 05 is the latest jewel of masculinity from Bell & Ross.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT SEIKOWATCHESUSA.COM

Coiling darkly through the coral reef, a narrow shaft ends in an illuminated cavern unlike any place on earth. It’s known as Satan’s Palace.For those with the passion to challenge and explore the unknown.

Contents The Guide

Found: Klon Centaur Guitar Pedal

Aftermarket Watch Mods

Jony Ive’s Personal Touch

Wish List

The world’s most desirable gear, right now

Garage Brands: Humble Beginnings of Iconic Labels

Counterpoint: Craftsmanship Is Not a Lifestyle Prop

Kramer Knives Shokunin Series

Klipsch Heresy III Speakers

The Armoury Archives Bespoke Suit

AnOrdain Model 1 Watch

2019 Bugatti Chiron

SnoPlanks Asym Fish Snowboard

G EAR PATRO L TH E C RA FTS M A N S H I P I SSU E

What the Hell Is “Craft Whiskey” Anyway?

The Review: FutureLight by The North Face

Testing: Dog Beds, Cameras Hiking Boots + More

Guide to Life: How to Break In Raw Denim

Bulk Buy: Humidity Packs

Craig DeMartino Climber

Arcâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;teryx specializes in technical, high-performance apparel, outerwear and equipment. Design is our way forward. Make it yours.

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CONTENTS

Features

110

East Fork Breaks the Internet

In Good Hands

Alex Matisse comes from art world royalty (yes, he’s related to that Matisse) but always wanted to make things that were honest and usable. His East Fork pottery line is exactly that — and also an unexpected online sensation.

Handmade goods are time-consuming, labor-intensive and essentially impossible to scale, which is why almost no one makes them anymore. These six artisans produce the intricate (and highly hands-on) exceptions.

124 How to Make a Blade for the End of the World

In Montana, a self-taught crew of swordmakers crafts well designed and battle-ready blades for the zombie apocalpse — whenever that arrives. Until then, the Zombie Tools gang will continue drinking beer and having fun.

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136

146

Q+A: The Whisky Bible’s Jim Murray

Photo Essay: Janus Motorcycles

Chris Wright talks with acerbic Brit Jim Murray, one of the most polarizing and powerful voices in the spirits world thanks to his exhaustive, expansive and entirely self-published annual tasting anthology.

On the ground in Goshen, Indiana with the builders behind Janus Motorcycles, makers of small, simple bikes with outsize levels of quality and craftsmanship — and even more personality.

CONTENTS

Intel

164

166

180

Personally Adaptable Accessories

Won't Fade Away: Craftspeople Keeping Dying Arts Alive

In the Inferno at Michael David Glass

170 Seasonal Style From Studio to Street

182 Build It, Tie It, Make It, Dye It Yourself

188

192

Hacker & Restomodder Talk Cars of Tomorrow

The Parallel Universe Machine

G EAR PATRO L TH E C RA FTS M A N S H I P I SSU E 1

Never Sound the Same

MW65 ACTIVE NOISECANCELLING WIRELESS HEADPHONES

Exceptional Acoustics

Premium Design and Materials

Built for Life On-The-Go

Active noise-cancelling technology engineered to perfectly accompany our signature rich, warm sound

Our most sophisticated and lightest over-ear headphones, crafted with anodized aluminum and fine leathers for superior comfort

The ultimate companion for your daily listening or travels, featuring 24 hours of battery life

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

A Eric Yang

FOUNDER, EDITOR IN CHIEF

@hashtagyang | eyang@gearpatrol.com

G EAR PATRO L TH E C RA FTS M A N S H I P I SSU E

ccording to Google, searches for "craftsmanship definition" have increased nearly threefold over the past nine years. My sense (at least from up here, in the armchair-economist cheap seats) is that, now more than ever, people want to know how to identify a well-made thing. Post-recession psychology drove generations of consumers to think about what is truly essential — and that increasingly includes products. My editor’s letter from Issue 10, which focused on innovation, noted that a product’s viability most often comes down to utility for the end user; consumers vote with their wallets. But as those consumers have become savvier and more discerning, the table stakes have moved beyond price: they now incorporate story and process — the question isn't just “how much?” but also, now, “how?” and “why?” The provenance of certain products has always been a selling point — cars and wine come to mind — but it's no longer optional; products today need origin stories. We have become obsessed with “handcrafted” goods, throwing money at them on crowdfunding sites and in the process recalibrating our value calculus to prioritize a good story over actual long-term value. Marketers moved in to supply that demand. The result: the word “craftsmanship” can be loaded, if not downright cliché. The rise of crowdfunding hasn’t helped, specifically in the “here’s what consumers love to hear” template that’s invariably copy-and-pasted across categories. Consumers love hearing about artisanship and craft, so — truthful or not — those ideas are broadly applied in an effort to drive up prices. Likewise, it’s an open secret that many people’s favorite direct-to-consumer companies, whether they make luggage or sunglasses, neither design nor make their core products; instead, they rely on venture capital and the smarts of agencies like

Branch Creative and Pattern Brands to design and develop their wares. That's all fine, as far as those things go, but it does add yet another obfuscating layer between those who make things and those who buy them. That leaves us with a notion of craftsmanship that’s practically post-definition, avoided by especially savvy founders and marketers alike. It’s a word that, as someone who takes the idea of product journalism seriously, leaves me wondering where we stand. I tend to look to younger consumers for guidance. Powered by unprecedented access to information and fueled by anger at the latent effects of the global recession, these consumers, particularly Gen-Y and Gen-Z, are especially perceptive, despite lower net worth and less discretionary cash — a huge voting bloc of two-legged value calculators who put a premium on sustainability and authenticity. (For that reason, they are also the consumers powering the booming second-hand marketplace and the apps and services that sustain it; frugality is no longer shameful — it’s share-worthy.) And how does that affect the practitioner, the craftsperson himself? Thanks to that same empowered consumer I believe that there’s a resurgence of educated appreciation for craftsmanship currently underway. Brands that peddle shoddy wares are increasingly called out and shunned. True artisans can reach larger audiences thanks to e-commerce. And even large name-brand companies are embracing the idea of well-made at scale. All of this, and more, is addressed in Issue 11. Simply put, there’s more well-made stuff available to more people at more price points than ever before in history. So, what does "craftsmanship" mean in 2019? It's the role of the modern consumer to answer that for themselves. We're just here to help.

ORIGINAL OUTSIDER 40 YEARS AGO WE SET THE STANDARD In 1979, we introduced the Danner Light – the world’s first breathable, waterproof boot lined with GORE‑TEX. The utilitarian design quickly became the standard in waterproof footwear. Today, we honor four decades of premium, American craftsmanship with the limited‑edition Danner Light 40th, built for the modern explorer.

DANNER.COM

MASTHEAD

founder , editor in chief

ERIC YANG @ hashtagyang cofounder , chief content officer

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staff writers

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editors

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ZEN LOVE @zlo_watches

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CAREERS gearpatrol.com/jobs issue 11 contributors

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director of content and strategy , gear patrol studios

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AJ POWELL @allenjamespowell content producer , gear patrol studios

CHARLES MCFARLANE @charles_mcfarlane Gear Patrol Studios is the creative partnership arm of Gear Patrol. Select advertising in this magazine has been crafted by Gear Patrol Studios on behalf of brands to help tailor their message specifically for Gear Patrol readers. These sections are demarcated with GEAR PATROL STUDIOS. To learn more visit, studios.gearpatrol.com or reach out to us: advertising@gearpatrol.com

39° 35’ 0.478” S 71° 32’ 23.564” W

Reconnect.

Montblanc 1858 Geosphere montblanc.com

The Guide

Craftsmanship isn’t easy to define. Perhaps that’s because it encompasses so many things, from a legendary guitar pedal (p. 24) to an iconic tech brand’s entire look and feel (p. 34). And it’s not limited to hard goods, either, as brews (p. 43) and booze (p. 58) have in recent years staked a formidable claim to the “craft” label. In truth, just about anything — even a crazy-fast car (p. 84) or a funky-shaped snowboard (p. 92) — can merit the designation. As long as actual humans are willing to put thought, consideration and loads of sweat equity into their wares, “craftsmanship” will remain in the lexicon for years to come.

FOUND

Klon Centaur Professional Overdrive text by john zientek photo by chandler bondurant

After playing guitar in clubs around Boston in the 1980s, Bill Finnegan decided to build a kind of guitar pedal that didn’t exist: a neutral, harmonically rich overdrive that didn’t affect the character of the guitar or amp. So with the help of two MIT grads, he spent four and a half years developing a completely original circuit. To protect his work, Finnegan coated the hand-wired board in black epoxy and housed it in a customcast enclosure. In the last weeks of 1994, Finnegan delivered the first batch of Klon Centaur Professional Overdrive guitar pedals to professional players. He quickly developed a following. Over the next decade, he worked up to 70 hours per week, all to build around 8,000 $2 ,0 00 +

GEAR PATRO L TH E CRA FTS M A N S H I P I SSU E

units. The Klon Centaur found its way under the feet of countless professionals (like Jeff Beck and John Mayer), kick-started the boutique-pedal movement and spawned untold clones on its way to becoming one of the world’s most influential and collectible pedals. In 2009, Finnegan discontinued the Centaur, and the $329 pedal doubled in price overnight. Now, on the secondary market, they regularly sell for thousands. If you just want the sound, a successor pedal, the KTR ($269), sounds much the same but is far less expensive thanks to surface-mounted components and an off-the-shelf housing. But if you want a legendary piece of handmade history, there’s no substitute for a Centaur.

Body Modification Aftermarket watch customizers engrave, color, refinish, bling up and otherwise mess with the watch worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most beloved brands. Are they artists, or vandals? text by zen love photos by chandler bondurant

GEAR PATRO L TH E CRA FTS M A N S H I P I SSU E

Chris Ser knows his work upsets people. “I understand where they’re coming from,” he says, digging his pneumatic engraving tool deep into the metal of a $10,000 watch that most owners would be afraid to scratch. “But Rolexes are not as sacred as some people make them out to be.” Ser and his colleagues at Fin Des Temps, an artist-owned engraving house he founded in 2014, perform their sacrilege in a tiny sixthfloor apartment-turned-studio on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. They are not simply engraving owners’ initials; they are carving intricate, original artwork onto nearly every available metal surface of high-priced luxury watches. Ser, himself heavily tattooed and with gold teeth in his smile, physically resembles his ornate, flashy designs. Fin Des Temps and other engravers exist within a small but growing industry offering aftermarket customization in a variety of forms. At one end of the spectrum, DIY

enthusiasts tweak design elements of their inexpensive Seikos or Casio G-Shocks, swapping in new hands, bezels and even dials. At the other, highly trained craftsmen, like those from Les Artisans de Geneve, will refinish every component of a complicated high-end watch, from the dial to the movement, leaving it practically unrecognizable from its original form. In between you’ll find

companies, such as Bamford Watch Department and MAD Paris, that will give your Rolex Submariner a black PVD coating, a layer of diamonds or other flamboyant features not offered by the brand itself. Underpinning the customizing scene is a desire for something exclusive. “Anyone can buy a Rolex, but a one-of-a-kind piece? Nobody else will have that,” says Justin Counter,

A fully engraved watch, including case and bracelet, can require more than 100 hours of work.

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“I’ve seen people get mad at ’em, like straight hate on ’em. Or people love them. That’s how you know it’s art and not just a watch.”

one of Ser’s colleagues at Fin Des Temps. Rolex is a popular brand for modifications; customers want something personal and unique, but that still retains the prestigious manufacturer’s name and the high-quality watchmaking it represents. “It’s really good for us to be able to put our art on something as solid as the Rolex brand. It’s like a ten-thousand-dollar canvas,” Ser says. But receptions are mixed: “I’ve seen people get mad at ’em, like straight hate on ’em. Or people love them. So they create emotion, and that’s how you know it’s art and not just a watch.” Many watch engravers have backgrounds in gun engraving, a traditional and respected art form that dates back centuries. To see the type of intricate, leafy scrollwork one typically associates with a Purdey sidelock instead decorating a high-end watch is not only visually striking but provides a direct link to historical craftsmanship techniques. But not everyone sees it that way — especially fans of the Rolex brand. There is a seemingly disproportionate amount of emotion attached to the idea of customizing Rolex watches in particular, with much of the criticism coming down to the idea that modifications of any kind devalue what began life as a watchmaking masterpiece. Not only is it the height of hubris to try to improve a Rolex, the thinking goes, but doing so is tantamount to defacing the original art of the watch. On the secondary market, even Rolexes serviced by the

GEAR PATRO L TH E CRA FTS M A N S H I P I SSU E

“You have to let the artist do his thing,” says Chris Ser of Fin Des Temps. The studio’s clients will often provide its engravers with images for inspiration, but most only see the final designs after they’ve been added to a watch.

company itself can lose value compared to “untouched” originals — such is the reverence shown for the Crown logo. (In any case, customizing any watch through a third party voids the manufacturer’s warranty.) As long as art exists, art critics will follow. Many customizing outfits seem to delight in such controversy. To mark the 90th birthday of the Mickey Mouse character, in 2018, Justin Counter at Fin Des Temps produced an irreverent bit of artwork that could be seen as simultaneously blasphemous to Rolex, The Walt Disney Company, and one

of America’s most iconic cartoons: a Rolex Datejust featuring numerous Disney characters melting in the throes of a psychedelic trip, Mickey engraved on the clasp with a gold tab of LSD on his tongue, licking Minnie’s eyeball. Is it art? Like beauty, the answer to that is in the eye of the beholder. But the skill and craftsmanship of many such customized pieces is undeniable. Ser, of Fin Des Temps, sees the two as distinct but interrelated. “Craftsmanship comes after the art,” he says. “The art is first and foremost.”

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Wish List 0 1 /0 6

Kramer Knives Shokunin text by will price photo by chase pellerin

Bob Kramer is the Virgil Abloh of the knife world. His custom kitchen knives are status symbols among chefs and sell out in seconds, often for tens of thousands of dollars. Cook’s Illustrated, a revered source of reviews and tips for grandmothers and Michelin-starred chefs alike, once noted his classic carbon-steel chef’s knife “outperformed every knife” they had ever tested. It should be easy, then, to spot the value in the Nakiri vegetable knives in Kramer’s new Shokunin series, which start at a cool $1,600. Each features a handcrafted handle — options include cocobolo or blackwood $1,6 0 0 +

GEAR PATRO L TH E CRA FTS M A N S H I P I SSU E

bamboo — and an uncommonly hard 52100 carbon-steel blade, known for its remarkable ability to retain an edge. Although Shokunin — which roughly translates to “mastery” or “craftsmanship” in Japanese — is an evolving series of Kramer-designed knives expressly made to give more people the opportunity to own one, they still won’t last. The first release, composed of just over 400 knives, sold out within weeks of becoming available online. The good news: a chef’s knife (Kramer’s specialty) is next in line for the master craftsman’s Shokunin treatment.

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G E A R PAT R O L S T U D I O S / M O N T B L A N C

Go Anywhere These pieces of Montblanc leather are perfect travel companions, no matter where you are off to.

Each piece in Montblanc’s Extreme collection combines classic old-world craftsmanship with new-wave technology to change your baggage game. These sleek and chic bags are made from leather with immeasurable protection — resistance to water, heat and even the errant scratch here and there. Part of the state-of-the-art offering is the carbon-fiber print motif on each bag. The Extreme collection can take it all and last you a lifetime. These are the toughest and most durable leather goods you can get your hands on. The two standouts in this collection: the Montblanc Extreme 2.0 Backpack and the Montblanc Extreme 2.0 Duffel, both perfect for a weekend getaway. Each features matte-black hardware, adding to the already polished look of the classic Mont-

blanc emblem hand pressed into the leather. The backpack features three main compartments along with a padded laptop pocket, two cell phone pockets and three pen loops, making it a great choice for the on-the-go pro who needs to be ready to work anywhere — or to escape for that weekend getaway. Unlike other duffels, which can turn into black holes for all your possessions, the Montblanc Extreme 2.0 Duffel has some serious organization up its sleeve. Besides the large main compartment, it is also outfitted with a zippered rear pocket on the outside, a padded open compartment, and three more pockets on the inside. To haul it all, there’s an adjustable and detachable shoulder strap and carry handles. The Montblanc Extreme can go anywhere with you and take it all, still while looking its best.

S E E T H E C O L L E C T I O N I N A C T I O N AT G E A R . G P/ M O N T B L A N C L U G G A G E

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The Ive Touch

At Apple, Jony Ive transformed tech products from bland, clunky gadgets to sleek, sexy and very mainstream objects of desire. Start here, with his greatest hits, and soon you’ll see his signature design language everywhere you look.

text by tucker bowe photos courtesy of apple

When Apple announced in June that Jony Ive, the company’s chief design officer and Steve Jobs’s “spiritual partner,” would be leaving the company after nearly three decades, the tech world let out a collective, audible gasp. Ive is responsible for some of the most iconic modern products ever created — by Apple, or anyone else. The iMac. The iPod. The iPhone, iPad and the Apple Watch. It was Ive, along with the late Jobs, who helped drag Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy in the late ‘90s before turning it into the world’s most valuable company. Ive started at Apple in 1992, when the company was struggling financially and Jobs was off running NeXT. When Jobs returned in 1997 he immediately promoted Ive, who had been thinking about leaving the company, to run Apple’s product-design

GEAR PATRO L TH E CRA FTS M A N S H I P I SSU E

team. His first assignment: turn the “boring beige box” Macintosh 128K into something cheaper, prettier and more popular. Ive responded with the iMac. Released in 1998, it showcased his new design direction for the brand: fun and accessibility. Instead of focusing on hard-to-understand specs like chip speeds and RAM, Apple would deliver products that “dispensed positive emotions,” according to Leander Kahney in Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products. The iMac was transparent and colorful, like a big gumball dispenser. There was nothing else like it, or even close. Over the next two decades, Ive leaned into the feel-good factor while designing products that were meant to be equal parts beautiful and functional — and often, as with the iPod, iPhone and more, landing on

forms that were truly ground-breaking. Ive refined the minimalist and simplistic approach of his idol, the industrial designer Dieter Rams, along the way developing an obsession with thinness and rounded edges, two of many hallmarks that have become synonymous with Apple’s now-iconic design language. That the most influential product designer in the world is leaving Apple raises many questions about its future. But don’t expect answers any time soon. As Jon Gruber, among the most fervent journalists who cover Apple, wrote in a recent Daring Fireball article: “We’ll still be seeing Ive-designed hardware five years from now. It is going to take a long time to evaluate his absence.” Recognizing his genius, on the other hand, is quite simple indeed.

iMac G3

1998

The iMac G3 — yes, the one from Zoolander — was the first Apple product in which users could really feel Ive’s influence. It was playful, with a see-through shell, and came in thirteen colors; to this day, it remains the most colorful computer in Apple’s history. And it was a massive success, selling 800,000 units in the first five months and effectively propelling Apple into an entirely new era, with Ive at the design helm. S I G NAT U RES

Translucent shell, rounded case back, lack of floppy-disc drive

2001

iPod The first iPod was an instant classic. It put thousands of songs in peoples’ pockets at a time when most portable music players could hardly store a regular-length CD. But the real beauty of the iPod was its brilliantly simple click wheel: a new user could pick up the device and intuitively figure out how to change songs and scroll through albums and artists without ever glancing at an instruction manual. Two decades later, it remains addictively satisfying to use. SI GNATUR ES

Mechanical scroll wheel, rounded edges, aluminum body

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iPhone

2007

Of all the important products that Apple has created, the iPhone is the most valuable to the company itself: iPhone sales account for two-thirds of the company’s revenue. Back in 2007, when Apple released the first-generation iPhone, it was the company’s first device with a multi-touch technology in the touchscreen — suddenly, you could interact with your phone by rotating the screen, pinching to zoom or swiping up, down and side-to-side. The demand was enormous: Apple sold its millionth iPhone just 74 days after its release. SI GNATUR ES

Multi-touch technology, portable music-player functionality, rounded edges

iMac

2012

Every company making all-in-one desktops continues to copy the groundbreaking design language of the 2012 iMac: a slim neck supporting a glass display such that it looks as if the monitor is floating in midair. Even Apple knows better than to mess with a classic; today’s iMacs appear largely the same. As such, some Apple diehards to consider this timeless design to be the spiritual successor to the first personal computer, the 1984 Macintosh. S IG NAT U RES

Extra-thin monitor, antireflective display, aluminum and glass body

G EAR PATRO L TH E C RA FTS M A N S H I P I SSU E

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Macbook Air

2008

Perhaps no Apple product garnered as much immediate awe as the first MacBook Air. When Steve Jobs introduced it at one of the company’s famous keynote addresses, he produced it, like a magic trick, from a plain manila envelope to a chorus of amazed ooohs and aaahs and whistles. The latest version, released in 2019, is the thinnest and lightest yet, weighing just 2.75 pounds and only 0.61 inches thick — that’s thinner than a first-generation iPod. SI GNATUR ES

Incredibly thin, sleek aluminum body, lightweight

Apple Watch

2015

The Apple Watch is a prime example of Ive’s exacting attention to detail. An avid watch collector, he consulted seven horological experts to make sure it felt like a true timepiece, instead of just another smartwatch. The digital crown on the Series 4, for example, is one of the most intricate mechanisms ever created by Apple; its subtle haptic feedback gives the all-digital smartwatch an unmistakably mechanical feel. SI GNATUR ES

Digital crown, aluminum and glass body, square face with rounded edges

Apple Park

2017

Many believe that Ive stuck around Cupertino as long as he did just to see Apple Park to completion. People are already calling the 2.8 millionsquare-foot circular campus his magnum opus, and it’s fair to say that Apple Park is indeed a product — just one made for the company rather than its customers. Ive thought about everything, from the way teams would sit with one another to the specific curvature of the glass, to make sure Apple’s massive new headquarters spoke the same the design language he’d been translating for 22 years as Apple’s lead designer. S I GN ATURES

Infinity-loop design, enormous curved glass walls, open workspace

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Wish List 02 /0 6

Klipsch Heresy III Special Edition text by tucker bowe photo by chandler bondurant

Klipsch introduced its Heresy speakers in 1957, and the compact, floorstanding loudspeakers are still in production today with the third-generation Heresy III. Like other models in the company’s cherished Heritage line, they’re completely handcrafted and assembled in Hope, Arkansas, and are still appreciated by audiophiles for their wonderful sound and classic swagger — even if the looks are a bit antique. For those who find the vintage aesthetic a touch too twee, Klipsch just dropped a matte black Heresy III colorway that blends in better with modern hi-fi setups. The speakers feature a titanium-finished grille and, compared with Heresy models of yesteryear, boast an upgraded woofer, tweeter and midrange driver, all of which help deliver a warmer, more expansive sound and punchier bass. It’s not all good news: according to Klipsch, the matte black colorway is a limited edition, and they only made 150 pairs. Hope you sent a holiday card to your hi-fi dealer. $2 ,79 8 ( pa i r )

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For us, innovation must always serve function. For example, raising our bezel by 2 mm has improved the grip. Just a little. When you care about watches, just a little matters a lot.

Aquis Date Relief

Garage Brands Some of your favorite labels started in a boardroom with loads of market research and even more investment capital. Others, like the following, were born of solitary figures toiling away with nothing more than unlimited passion, the spark of an idea and good old-fashioned handiwork.

Allagash Altra Burton Dyson Oakley Ski-Doo Sony

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te x t by ta n n e r b o w d e n will sabel courtney meg lappe eric limer will price jack seemer photos by chandler bondurant archival photos courtesy of brands

Allagash Brewing Company Rod Tod wanted a different kind of beer. The year was 1995, and when Americans weren’t slinging macrobrewed lagers, they were just discovering hop-forward ales from the Pacific Northwest. The yeast-driven saisons and spontaneously fermented Belgian lambics Tod adored weren’t even on the U.S. brewing radar. So he rented space in a warehouse outside Portland, Maine, and laid the foundation for what would become one of the country’s most revered breweries. And he did it by hand. Tod fashioned a 15-barrel brewing system out of old dairy tanks and jackhammered drains into the floor. He prototyped his first offering, a witbier made with Belgian yeast strains, coriander and Curacao orange peel; it looked hazy and tasted weird. At first he couldn’t give it away, but slowly locals started to appreciate it. Now, Allagash White is one of Maine’s most famous exports, and 25 years after he began, Tod is the recipient of the food-and-drink world’s Oscar: a James Beard Award, which he won earlier this year in the category of Outstanding Wine, Spirits, or Beer Producer. Along the way, he’s continued to push the narrative that there’s more to American beer than simple lagers and hoppy ales. CU R R E N T LY Allagash Brewing Company employs more than 130 people. In 2018, it produced around 95,000 barrels of around 80 different beers. P RO DUCT Allagash White, price varies

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Altra

Golden Harper ran his first marathon at 10 years old, about the same age he started helping out around his familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s running store. A decade later, the exercise science major identified a hole in the running shoe market for zero-drop sneakers, which cushion the toe and the heel at the same level to mimic the biomechanics of walking barefoot. With some tinkering and a toaster oven, which Harper used to soften and then carve out unnecessary cushioning, he created his first pair. He also shaped the toe box like an actual foot, rather than the torpedo-like silhouette many brands embrace. In 2008, Harper sold his first hand-modified sneaker to an enthusiastic buyer. Word got out, and runners suffering from plantar fasciitis, shin splints, IT band issues and other woes found relief in Harperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shoes. The next year, Altra was born with the Lone Peak, a shoe thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s as beneficial to beginners as it is to runners who have been marathoning since the age of 10.

CU R R E NTLY Last year Altra, which is distributed by more than 1,600 specialty retail outlets in 55 countries, tallied revenues of $50 million. P RO DUCT Altra Lone Peak 4, $120

Burton

A quaint New England barn in idyllic Londonderry, Vermont, is a key site in Burton company legend — and while it’s true that’s where Jake Burton Carpenter crafted his iconic early prototypes combining board and binding, the idea that laid the groundwork for the snowboarding revolution actually took root on Long Island golf courses. Growing up on Long Island, Carpenter longed to surf but more often found himself on powder during family ski trips to Vermont. At age 14 he rode a Snurfer, a toy monoski with a rope handle, and was utterly hooked. Carpenter shredded local golf courses near his childhood home and hills near his school; he and his friends even souped up boards with fins and makeshift bindings. Then there was college, and a Manhattan finance job. Only in 1977 did Carpenter resolve to truly send it, plunking his savings — and his passion — into Burton Boards. The rest is snowboarding history.

CU R R E N T LY With nearly 400 employees, Burton holds half the market share of what has grown into a $400 million industry. P RO DUCT Burton Custom Snowboard, $600

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Dyson

In the mid-1980s, James Dyson was drowning in debt and the bank was coming for his house. His wife, Deirdre Hindmarsh, was supporting the couple by teaching art in the countryside. For years, Dyson had been trying to improve on the Hoover Junior vacuum, the most powerful and popular consumer vac of the era. It sucked — but not in the way Dyson thought a vacuum should. The weak machine left him pushing debris around a room rather than removing it. He knew he could do better; he just didn’t think it would take so long. The spark: a visit to a sawmill, where huge industrial cyclone separators pulled floating sawdust from the air. The breakthrough, according to Dyson lore, was the 5,127th prototype — built, like the rest, in a barn behind his house in southwest England — a bagless vacuum that inhaled dirt into a 400-mile-per-hour tornado. Today, Dyson is a British knight and a billionaire, and his company’s products, while more powerful and efficient each year, remain rooted in the inventor’s original ’80s design.

CU R R E N T LY Dyson, which employs more than 12,000 people worldwide, pulled in nearly $6 billion in revenue last year. P RO DUCT V11 Torque Drive, $600

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Oakley

These days, Oakley is a household-name eyewear brand that also makes outerwear, backpacks, helmets and more. But in the mid-1970s, Oakley was just one man, Jim Jannard, hocking motorcycle gear under a company named after his English Setter. Spotting an opportunity in the motocross space, Jannard crafted Oakley’s first branded product — not sunglasses, but handlebar grips. Anatomically shaped and covered with tentacle-inspired suction cups, the B-1B, dubbed “the first motocross guidance system,” took off in 1975. But Jannard soon realized that, from a marketing perspective, a rider’s goggle strap displayed logos much better than handlebar grips did. So he and his skeleton crew started making goggles, silkscreening the Oakley logo onto straps by hand. After a road trip in the mid-1980s, during which he found himself annoyed by the sun in his periphery, Jannard trimmed down a wraparound goggle lens, bent some coat hangers into makeshift arms and taped it all together. A production version of this prototype soon launched as the Eyeshade — the first pair of extreme-performance sunglasses. CU R R E N T LY Today Oakley employs around 3,400 people and its annual revenue tops $1 billion. P RO DUCT Sutro sunglasses, $166

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YETI Ambassador Conrad Anker

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Ski-Doo

In the winter of 1934, Joseph-Armand Bombardier watched his two-year-old son die of appendicitis. The nearest hospital was miles away, and there was no way to cover the snowy ground of rural Quebec in time to save him. During the dark days that followed, Bombardier dusted off a concept he’d begun working on at age 15: a vehicle capable of traveling over snow rather than plowing through it. Three years later, Bombardier launched the B7, a hulking, seven-passenger tracked machine, from a garage he’d converted into a factory. That invention spawned increasingly larger vehicles with commercial, industrial and military applications. Still, Bombardier never gave up his teenage dream of a light, single-person vehicle that could float over snowdrifts. By 1959 he had turned that fantasy into reality with the SkiDoo, a $900 motorized snow sled that delighted everyone from polar prospectors to weekend hobbyists — a reputation that remains today.

CU R R E N T LY Bombardier Recreational Products, which produces the Ski-Doo, has around 10,000 employees itself — but one of BRP’s major stakeholders is the larger Bombardier Inc., a multinational manufacturer of trains and airplanes (including Learjet), which in 2018 topped $16 billion in revenue. P RO DUCT Ski-Doo MXZ TNT, $11,499

Sony

This once tiny electronics brand took its first tentative steps in a windowless room on the third floor of Tokyo’s Shirokiya Department Store, a building damaged from bombing during World War II. Founded by Masaru Ibuka, Akio Morita and a handful of employees in the mid-1940s, Tokyo Tshushin Kogyo (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation) initially focused on radio repair, and a prototype electric rice cooker that never hit the market. Then, in 1955, the struggling crew crafted the first of what would become countless hits: Japan’s inaugural transistor radio, the TR-55. The product was also the first to bear the company’s new name: Sony, a combination of Sonus, the Latin word for “sound,” and “Sonny,” a common American slang term for “boy” at the time. (Morita changed the name after discovering Americans struggled to pronounce the brand’s Japanese moniker.) He could not have dreamed that six decades later literally millions of boys (and girls, and adults) would be gaming away on Sony PlayStations. CU R R E NTLY Revenues for Sony hit nearly $77 billion last year. The brand has more than 100,000 employees worldwide and has sold more than 629 million PlayStation consoles to date. P RO DUCT PlayStation 4, $300

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UNFAILING GOODS

FILSON.COM

Wish List 03/0 6

The Armoury Archives: Bespoke Liverano & Liverano Suit text by john zientek photo by henry phillips

No one does classic men’s tailoring quite like The Armoury. The boutique shop, with locations in New York City and Hong Kong, works with a network of prestigious tailors to give its customers access to the world’s finest custom suiting. One of its premier offerings: a bespoke Liverano & Liverano suit made with fabric from the newly launched Armoury Archive, a collection of deadstock and limited-edition fabrics collected from mills around the world by The Armory founders Mark Cho and Alan See. Getting into this classic two-piece requires a hands-on consultation with Liverano & Liverano tailors during one of the brand’s two trunk shows per year at The Armoury outposts. Customers’ measurements are then sent to Italy, where expert suit makers spend up to 70 hours handcrafting the Florentine-style jacket and trousers. The standard process requires three fittings and a wait time of up to a year. But the final result is pure art: an impeccably constructed, tastefully proportioned suit with a clean silhouette and soft, sloped shoulder — plus the unspoken guarantee that you’ll never see another like it in the wild. $7,600+

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Well-made things are meant to enrich and enliven the ownerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worldview, not define it.

COUNTERPOINT

Craftsmanship's Hashtag Moment Do you really need handmade hiking boots, carbon-fiber skis and a $1,300 ice machine? text by josh condon photo courtesy of firstbuild

As with Guinness and child-labor laws, it’s hard to argue against an unsparingly well-made thing. What possible quarrel could one have with craftsmanship, that noble, hand-hewn levee against the rising tide of disposable, instant and cheap? There is an answer and it’s called the Forge, a $1,300, 52-pound system that produces, over the course of four hours and one minute, a single sphere of very clear ice the size of a baby’s fist. This flamboyant ice is meant to go in your glass, where it will improve your chance to rhapsodize about your whiskey, but won’t improve its taste. An unimpeachably reputable whiskey critic — he’s wearing an ascot — suggests, in a Forge marketing video I watched on YouTube, that such ornamentation is important to those who enjoy “the spirits lifestyle.” “And one of the best parts,” the critic says, beaming with the assurance of a man whose entire neck is swaddled in silk, “is a big ol’ sphere in your glass makes a heck of a conversation starter with your friends.” If you have been to even a single party (and there’s no evidence anyone involved with the Forge actually has), that sentence is deeply horrifying to contemplate. Picture a backyard on a crisp fall evening: an elegant, intimate gathering filled with enticing food and spirits and interesting people full of wisdom and humor and deeply personal stories of love and courage and loss — and then picture the host smoothing his ascot and insisting everyone talk about the fucking “ice.”

I have a profound appreciation for things that are deeply considered and beautifully formed, but almost none for the various fetishizations on the theme, otherwise known as “lifestyles,” which irritate the civilian: denimheads in smelly unwashed jeans trailing indigo streaks across a couch; cast iron aficionados running a disapproving thumb over a camp skillet on the wall; anyone taking group shots of their loafers. It all smacks of missing the point entirely, bastardizing something meant to imbue an intimate sort of joy into a source of status and anxiety. Well-made things are meant to enrich and enliven the owner’s worldview, not define it. The obsessives are at least better than the poseurs, of which there are many (20 million #luxurylifestyle Instagram posts and counting) thanks to an increasingly omnipresent e-commerce market surfing the wake of a trillion-dollar luxury industry. Traditional handcrafted goods have long served as a sort of currency among sophisticates, going back to when access to the right suit or shotgun or brandy was limited not only by money but by personal relationships, patience and even geography. Now, with an internet connection, some disposable income and the ability to cherry-pick an enthusiast forum, anyone can surround himself with the hallmarks of a deliberate and richly studied life within a week, without ever having learned anything at all. Disposable income can be a hell of a drug. At its upper limits, it allows you to own things you’re manifestly unqualified to use — 1,000-horsepower

supercars, $10,000 chef’s knives, $16,000 carbon-fiber skis — but which suggest, in their sleek and shiny Veblenian goodness, that being able to afford perfection ipso facto qualifies you to handle it. It’s a circular argument that pleasingly catches its tail every time a hedge-fund manager loudly folds his Lamborghini against a highway median at 90 mph; lessons in differentiating purchasing ability from actual ability can be both hard-won and hilarious. I take a useful cue from the craftspeople I’ve been lucky enough to meet in my career — furniture makers, cheese makers, woodworkers, chefs, tailors, watchmakers, glassblowers, distillers, brewers and vintners and, once, in England, the woman who sews together all of Bentley’s leather-wrapped steering wheels by hand. All of them are stubbornly unromantic about tools and disconcertingly comfortable with things tearing and breaking and shattering and otherwise going to hell. They respect the end product but don’t venerate it, the latter being an act best saved for religion and, occasionally, art. Above all, whatever it is they make, they want you to use it. That is the only true way to honor a well-made thing: use it unselfconsciously and hard, until over time you learn to appreciate every single thing — all the hours and sweat, the big gambles and small details, the headaches and sleepless nights, the love — that went into making that one object outstanding. Anything less, or more, is just a conversation starter for you and your friends.

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Message on a Bottle So-called “craft whiskey” is booming business — never mind that no one can agree on what it means.

text by chris wright i l l u s t r at i o n s b y k a i l a h o g awa

In early 2014, Templeton Rye was one of the country’s most exciting young whiskey brands. It had a handsome bottle, an old-fashioned label and a great hook: its amber-colored rye was made using a “Prohibition-era recipe” favored by famous mobster Al Capone. It was especially disappointing, then, when all that turned out to be bogus: Templeton was buying aged rye whiskey from MGP, an Indiana-based industrial spirits supplier, cutting it with water and then labeling it “Small Batch” in big black letters on the label. “Sourcing,” as it’s called, is not itself a sin in whiskey making. Some brands practice it to great effect: beloved labels like Willett Distillery, in Kentucky, have built sound reputations on buying other people’s juice and adjusting it, either through aging or blending or both. But being less than truthful about sourcing is blasphemy in the world of whiskey. Templeton Rye faced three class-action lawsuits, and as a result, it was forced to remove “small batch” and “Prohibition-era recipe” from its labels, as well as refund buyers three dollars a bottle for up to six bottles. Templeton’s story is extreme, but it’s also just one footnote in a wider debate about what constitutes a “craft” spirit at a time when that designation is increasingly

attractive to a liquor industry with over $3 billion in annual sales. One would imagine that, in the wake of the scandal, whiskey makers would have rushed to set a definition of “craft” — for self-preservation if nothing else. Instead, five years on, no one can agree what the word means. For distillers and those in the spirits industry, it’s been cause for frustration, division and distrust; for consumers, who are inclined to pay a premium for something they think is made with extra care, it can be damn confusing, and, in its worst cases, outright misleading. “You can tell these words mean different things to different people, but you’re not sure what they mean and why,” says Chip Tate, founder and former head distiller at the award-winning Balcones Distilling, who now heads his own brand, Tate & Co. Thomas Mooney, inaugural president of the American Craft Spirits Association (ACSA) and founder of Westward Whiskey, likens the debate to “talking religion.” The ACSA tried, in 2014, to set a sort of definition for a “craft spirit” by limiting voting memberships to labels that adhered to certain volume limits (750,000 proof-gallons per year) and ownership restrictions, including signing an ethics document committing to transparency. The problem came

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when, in an attempt not to stifle future growth, the association set the production limits so high as to be effectively meaningless. “In the room that day, when we decided what size thresholds should be, the decision we made was: big enough that we wouldn’t have to up the volume ceiling as everyone got bigger,” Mooney says. “In hindsight, we aimed laughably high.” The ACSA wasn’t attempting to be a governing body; it just wanted to create an organization for the small(er) guys. But this optimism created a massive umbrella under which even the largest commercial-grade distillers (that is: Jack Daniels, Beam-Suntory, Heaven Hill and Four Roses) can lay some claim to the “craft” designation.

Most don’t waste the opportunity: • “We practice the craft every day with everything that we do.” — Adam Harris, American whiskey ambassador of Beam-Suntory, which owns Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark and a handful of Scotch and Japanese whisky brands, including Laphroaig and Yamazaki. • “At Heaven Hill Distillery you will often hear people say we were craft before ‘craft’ was cool.” — Conor O’Driscoll, head distiller of Heaven Hill Part of the conundrum stems from the fact that the term carries a lot of weight in other food and drink circles, such as beer. “The lines are very stark between craft beer and not-craft beer,” says James Montero,

the general manager for Dogfish Head Brewery’s growing spirits line. But whiskey is not like beer, where “small” is often treated as a synonym for “good,” or at least “considered”; even the largest whiskey distillers are among the most respected practitioners in the world, consistently releasing great products, largely at affordable prices, including the occasional gems that win major awards. Medium-sized distilleries seem to be running from the term. Dogfish is an active member of ACSA and refers to itself as a “craft distillery,” but Montero avoids the term “craft” when describing his spirits (he prefers another made-up term, “scratchmade-goodness”). Michter’s, a popular new brand that both sources and distills its own

whiskey, similarly does not call itself craft. Founder Joe Magliocco considers the term empty and wants people to focus instead on the specific whiskey-making process. Then there are the small guys, the ones who round out the bottom-end of ACSA’s definition. For some, being a craft distiller is about the freedom to experiment, to take risks the big companies won’t, and to work hands-on with small batches. “What’s essential to ‘craft’ has mostly to do with a frame of mind,” says Chip Tate. To him, that means whiskey that is artistically and creatively motivated, rather than driven by market research or consumer studies: “What’s the difference between a fine-arts painter and a person who does really nice interior work? One person asks the client what they want, and then paints to please them. The artist is making the art for themselves — and then, maybe, it pleases the client.” There are of course small distillers who could profit from using the “craft” label but can’t be bothered with all the noise. “I’m not worried about this ‘craft’ business, which has become mostly nonsense,” says Jedd Haas, founder and distiller at New Orleans-based Atelier Vie; his distillery clearly falls under the ACSA definition but he shuns the craftsmanship label. “I just try and create art,” he says. And where are consumers in all this? The general whiskey-drinking public either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. Templeton, which now distills its own whiskey, only grew further after settling its lawsuits, and in 2018 opened a $35 million distillery complete with a museum. Meanwhile, enthusiasts continue to be asked to define “craft whiskey” for themselves. This is the industry punting on the term — a tacit erosion of the definition of craftsmanship for short-term profit-chasing. Across the country, fantastic whiskey (along with mediocre and poor stuff) is being made by both large and small distillers. Whether “craft” is on the label is mostly moot. For the time being, the term belongs right where we put our empty bottles: in the trash.

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Wish List 04 /0 6

AnOrdain Model 1 text by oren hartov photo by chase pellerin

Creating an enamel watch dial is no small feat. It’s a fickle, painstaking process with an extraordinary failure rate (up to 90 percent) that involves repeated rounds of fusing ground enamel powder onto copper plating inside a blazing hot kiln. A cracked dial is always a risk, and it’s hardly the only one — anything from an air bubble to a speck of dust can ruin the product at any stage. No wonder these bright, glossy dials are typically reserved for ultra-high-end timepieces. Boutique Scottish brand AnOrdain breaks that mold with its new enamel-dialed watches that retail for just over $1,300, a small fraction of the price of pieces from brands like Breguet and Patek Phillippe. That price becomes even more inexplicable when you consider the company produces only around eight dials per week. The Model 1, the brand’s first release, arrives in six colors, from Post Office Red to Iron Cream (pictured), and is equipped with a workhorse Sellita SW-200 automatic movement housed in a steel case. The vaguely throwback typeset takes inspiration from vintage ordnance survey maps, and help incorporate AnOrdain’s striking old-world enamel craftsmanship into a clean and handsome — and shockingly affordable — design. ~ $ 1, 325

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G E A R PAT R O L S T U D I O S / PA N E R A I

Below the Surface

Panerai’s Submersible Carbotech™ is the ultimate companion for one of the world’s greatest dives. Iceland’s rocky, volcanic landscape draws visitors in the millions each year, but while most stick to the surface, the jagged cathedral of rock underwater is a spectacle like no other. Set within Thingvellir National Park, the Silfra fissure is the only place in the world where you can swim between two tectonic plates – the North American and Eurasian. Filled with water from the Langjökull glacier, it boasts some of the clearest diving in the world. It takes between 30 and 100 years for glacial runoff to filter through the surrounding volcanic rock and reach Silfra, keeping the water ultrapure, not to mention, very cold. With temperatures that remain between 35 and 39 degrees Fahrenheit, diving in Silfra is not for the faint of heart. Though simply accessed by shore, it takes commitment,

a secure dry suit and strong temperament to swim in these waters. The right gear is everything here, and no watch feels better suited to such a rugged environment than Panerai’s 47mm Submersible Carbotech™ PAM01616. Its unique matte Carbotech™ material is made by compressing thin sheets of carbon fiber at a controlled temperature under high pressure together with a high-end polymer PEEK (Polyether Ether Ketone), binding the composite material. The result helps shape a timepiece that’s incredibly durable yet lightweight. With a power reserve of 72 hours, a black dial with luminous hour markers and dots, a unidirectional bezel, and water resistance up to 300 meters, the PAM01616 is the ultimate tough-as-nails companion for one of the greatest underwater journeys available on Planet Earth.

R E A D T H E F U L L S T O R Y AT G E A R . G P/ C A R B O T E C H

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THE REVIEW

The North Face FutureLight t e x t b y ta n n e r b o w d e n photos by chandler bondurant

With plans to weave it into everything from ski pants to footwear, The North Face is betting big on a new waterproof fabric that stays breathable no matter how hard you work. But does FutureLight really solve outerwearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most intractable conundrum?

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In 2017, after reaching the 14,150-foot peak of Colorado’s Mt. Sneffels, Andres Marin turned to Scott Mellin, holding a sweat-soaked layer he’d just peeled off his back, and asked something to the effect of, “Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to do this all the time?” Any mountaineer, rock climber, backcountry snowboarder, resort skier, hiker, runner or bike commuter can describe the unpleasant clamminess that percolates inside a waterproof shell under hard exertion. But Marin, a professional climber for The North Face, and Mellin, the company’s Global General Manager of Mountain Sports, were in a position to do something about it. Less than two years later, The North Face is

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releasing its first collection featuring FutureLight, a new and potentially revolutionary waterproof fabric technology that the company has been teasing for the better part of 2019. The dream of FutureLight is simple, which is not to say easy: waterproof technical apparel that’s so breathable the wearer remains dry inside and out, even during serious effort. Every outdoor brand from Patagonia to Arc’teryx has been trying to solve this riddle for years; the waterproof-breathable conundrum has remained the Gordian Knot of the outdoor industry. To make a fabric that lets sweat escape while still keeping rain or snow out, materials companies have long relied on substances like polyurethane and polytetrafluoro-

ethylene, or PTFE. Gore-Tex, for example, makes its Pro membrane from a sheet of PTFE stretched to just .01 millimeters thick, with roughly nine billion pores per square inch. That’s small enough to prevent a water droplet from sieving through but plentiful enough to let body vapor out — up to a point. FutureLight features a polyurethane membrane manufactured through nanospinning, a process already used in technology and medical fields. The polymer starts as a liquid solution that is drawn through over 200,000 nanosized nozzles to create indescribably thin threads. These are then layered into a mesh-like pattern of crisscrossed fibers and intervening gaps. The North Face claims an ability to “tune”

p h o t o c o u r t e s y o f t h e n o r t h fa c e

Roughly 4,300 feet later, I reached the summit, damp but not drenched, and very comfortable. I didn’t have to start the climb cold, and I didn’t have to futz with layers. I just had to zip up my armpit vents. 71

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p h o t o c o u r t e s y o f t h e n o r t h fa c e

the membrane to create more or fewer of these gaps, increasing or decreasing a fabric’s breathability. This allows the company to craft FutureLight-equipped garments for wildly different activities, from urban running to off-piste skiing. I got a chance to test the stuff last winter, in Aspen, on peaks not far from where Marin and Mellin had their epiphany. I’m attuned enough to know I run hot, so I typically start a climb wearing little more than a long-sleeved base layer, even when temperatures are in the teens: I’d rather start chilly than strip layers mid-ascent as I begin to sweat. But, for the sake of testing the new fabric, I donned both a base layer and a light fleece under The North Face’s A-Cad Jacket and bib, two products admittedly designed more for downhill than uphill use. Previous experience insisted I was overdressed, but roughly 4,300 feet later I reached Ski Hayden Peak’s 13,316-foot summit, damp but not drenched, and very comfortable. I didn’t have to start the climb cold, and I also didn’t have to futz with layers in the summit wind. I just had to zip up my armpit vents. FutureLight debuts this fall in jackets and pants designed for skiing, snowboarding, alpine climbing and other cold-weather, high-elevation activities; next spring it will weave its way into new windbreakers, rain jackets and footwear. Recently, I stumbled into the perfect urban test for the forthcoming Arque Active Trail FutureLight Pullover rain jacket: a New York City downpour on the way home from work. Aboveground, rain fell in sheets while below, the subway became a sauna. Wearing a rain jacket on a steamy subway car usually means a sweat-soaked shirt, but when I arrived home after the half-mile walk from the station, the only dry bit of fabric on my body was my shirt.

THE ELLIS G10 BLACK + BLACK

THEJAMESBRAND.COM

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developed its own machines to produce the material in a factory that makes electronic insulating elements outside of Seoul, South Korea. But the unquestionable difference will be scale: the sheer variety of products that will come equipped with FutureLight from a brand of The North Face’s stature (the company’s annual revenue tops $2 billion) immediately raises the material’s profile, and application, across the board. By the end of 2020, every waterproof garment the brand produces will feature the stuff. That means, whether consumers are buying products for FutureLight or just the TNF logo, the fabric is destined to find its way onto city streets and backcountry trails across the globe. Not bad for a product born out of a sweaty conversation between two friends on top of a mountain.

The North Face FutureLight 1.0 A-Cad Bib: 96% recycled polyester, 4% elastane stretch double weave upper bib, 100% polyester suspender panels and lower body; adjustable suspenders and waist belt, two-way center zipper, cargo-style pockets; $549, Fall 2019 A-Cad Jacket: 100% recycled polyester with brushed tricot backer; helmet-compatible adjustable hood, pass pocket, adjustable cuffs and hem, underarm ventilation; $599, Fall 2019 Arque Active Trail FutureLight Jacket: 100% recycled nylon-polyester blend; adjustable hood, kangaroo pocket; $299, Spring 2020

Next spring, FutureLight will expand beyond mountain gear like the A-Cad Bib and Jacket below; for example, the Arque Active Trail FutureLight Jacket (pg. 68) is crafted for the streets and the wild.

p h o t o c o u r t e s y o f t h e n o r t h fa c e

After more than half a year sporting FutureLight for climbing, skiing and trekking around town, the largest dilemma I can identify is the need to rethink my layering entirely. Because the A-Cad jacket is so breathable, I have to wear more than usual to stay warm inside of it. Other early testers have suggested these new materials are more wind-permeable, which makes sense, though I didn’t experience that myself. Some also point out that, despite TNF’s marketing push, nanospun membranes are not new. The technology was introduced most notably in Polartec’s Power Shield Pro and NeoShell fabrics, which debuted in 2009 and 2010, respectively, with far less fanfare. The North Face concedes the membrane construction is similar to past products but notes points of differentiation in the process — notably, the brand

Thousands of new products pass through the Gear Patrol office every year. Here’s a look at the gear we’re putting through the wringer this season. 75

O N C LOUDRO CK WAT ER PRO O F

S E IKO P ROS P E X LX SNR 029

FUJ IF IL M GFX1 00

BOS E N O IS E CA NCELLI NG H EADPH O NES 700

A N OVA P REC IS IO N CO O KER PRO

Y E TI TRA IL HE A D DO G BED

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text by tucker bowe r ya n b r o w e r meg lappe zen love henry phillips will price

photos by chandler bondurant chase pellerin

A lightweight hiking shoe built for speed and comfort from a high-end sneaker company known for its proprietary outsole. WHAT WE LIKE

WATCH OUT FOR

Easy-to-lock-down laces paired with a plush interior and breezy upper mean these hybrid sneaker-hiking boots go on easily and are comfortable from the first step, even when it’s hot.

On’s sneaker focus is apparent in its first hiking boot, which features an athletic fit that runs small. And don’t let the cut-out in the heel collar deceive you: you still need to wear high socks.

OTHER OPTIONS As far as comparable waterproof options, Hoka One One’s blacked-out Kaha ($220) is another staple with ample bad-weather protection for the feet and ankles and a style that’s equally at home on the trail or in the city. QUICK TAKE A solid, if pricey, addition to the growing category of sneaker-hiking boot hybrids, with the comfort and style you’d expect from one of running’s sleekest brands.

$230

Seiko borrows luxury elements from its renowned Grand Seiko line to create a tool watch that’s equal parts rugged and sophisticated. WHAT WE LIKE

WATCH OUT FOR

Zaratsu polishing, a 10th-century finishing technique used on Japanese samurai swords, brings subtle refinement to the titanium case, while Seiko’s brilliant Spring Drive technology offers quartz accuracy in an automatic mechanical movement.

Lightweight titanium notwithstanding, the case has an outsized wrist presence thanks to its 44.5mm size. And forget your budget: with this price tag, this is a different Seiko entirely than the brand known for affordable beater watches.

OTHER OPTIONS Omega’s Planet Ocean delivers not just excellent build quality but a prestigious name and starts at around $6,550. Then there’s the Oris Aquis Depth Gauge, another hardcore luxury diver, for just $3,600. However, Seiko’s Spring Drive movements have no direct competitor. QUICK TAKE Further proof Seiko can craft true luxury timepieces, but an odd choice of category; for a brand beloved for overbuilt and underpriced dive watches, it’s still unclear who would opt for such a subtle flex.

$6,000

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AXIS POLO

CAPITAL PANT

FIELD WATCH

RUSH LBD MIKE 40L

APEX 6” WEDGE BOOT

PURPOSE-BUILT APPAREL & GEAR

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W W W. 5 1 1TA C T I C A L . C O M /G E A R PAT R O L

A medium-format camera that offers astonishing resolution and surprising utility at a price that won’t churn your stomach. WHAT WE LIKE

WATCH OUT FOR

The new 102-megapixel sensor produces beautiful high-res images that display all the benefits of a larger-than-full-frame camera. Plus, weather sealing, in-body image stabilization and phase-detection autofocus all make the GFX100 genuinely useful outside the studio.

The sensor isn’t as large as other mediumformat cameras, and it’s sluggish compared to full-frame mirrorless cameras and DSLRs. In situations that require quick focusing, the image quality doesn’t quite justify the slower performance.

OTHER OPTIONS Phase One’s benchmark IQ4 starts at $47,000, almost five times more than the GFX100. But Fujifilm’s own GFX 50R ($3,999), with half the resolution, delivers similar image quality at less than half the price. QUICK TAKE An exciting and ambitious camera, but for some users, the compromises — and price tag — may overshadow its utility.

$10,000

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Bose’s pricey new flagship headphones promise class-leading noise cancellation and better call clarity than last year’s QuietComfort 35 II. WHAT WE LIKE

WATCH OUT FOR

Improved audio drivers and a new digital signal processor give the 700s cleaner sound in noisy settings, like crowded subway cars. An eight-microphone system advances the clarity of calls. Plus, the headphones now charge via USB-C.

Travelers beware: the earcups fold flat but there are no hinges on the headband, meaning the 700s don’t compact as well as the QuietComfort 35 Series II. And the swipe controls on the earbuds have a steep learning curve.

OTHER OPTIONS The Bose QuietComfort 35 II and Sony WH-1000M3 headphones are great alternatives that cost $50 to $100 less than the 700s. QUICK TAKE Bose means business, but travelers will miss the compactness of the QuietComfort line — even if the inflight movie sounds cleaner and clearer here.

$399

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The fastest, most powerful sous vide circulator ever made for home cooks. WHAT WE LIKE

WATCH OUT FOR

It regulates more than triple the volume of other leading consumer-level circulators, making it ideal for cooks who sous vide in large quantities. And the added power means water is brought to temperature nearly twice as fast.

Beyond the cost — it’s two to three times more expensive than its home-based peers — the fastening arm is not able to accommodate containers with thicker rims, like a cooler.

OTHER OPTIONS There are no other sous vide circulators designed for home use that boast this much power, and even those meant for professional kitchens don’t typically have this level of thermoregulatory capacity. When they do, they cost well above $1,000. QUICK TAKE Beginner cooks should steer clear: Anova sets a high bar but few home jobs will ever need the extra headroom.

$399

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An extra-tough, easy-to-clean dog bed with a removable travel cushion that’s perfect for camp life. WHAT WE LIKE

WATCH OUT FOR

The travel pad is a useful and well-sized touch and, like the bed itself, features a waterproof bottom to protect from wet grass and mud. The covers on both come off and are machine washable for easy cleaning.

It costs the same as a Tundra 45 cooler and only comes in one size — 39 x 29 x 6.5 inches — which may swallow smaller dogs. A three-year warranty is better than most, but some manufacturers do offer longer.

OTHER OPTIONS The Orvis Memory Foam Bolster Dog Bed ($229+) offers a similar pillow bolster, though it lacks a detachable travel cushion and water-resistant base. Casper’s The Dog Bed ($125+) is a plush, if far less robust, option that comes in three sizes. QUICK TAKE The brand behind the world’s toughest coolers has indeed delivered a premium and feature-heavy dog bed — but as with all things Yeti, be prepared to pay for what you get.

$300

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A Better Way to Buy and Sell Watches Stockx.com/Watches T H E C RAFTS M AN S H IP ISSU E G E A R PAT ROL

StockX is an independent marketplace and is not affiliated with any watch brand, nor is an authorized dealer. All brand and model names are the trademark of their respective owners.

Wish List 05/0 6

2019 Bugatti Chiron text by will sabel courtney photo by tony harmer

There are sports cars, then supercars, then hypercars. And then, there are Bugattis. The 110year-old brand has represented the pinnacle of modern-era luxury and performance since the Volkswagen Group resuscitated it two decades ago to build the Veyron, a car conceived as a sort of rolling superlative — the fastest, most powerful and most expensive production vehicle ever built. That car’s successor, the Chiron, aims to claim each of those titles for itself, though it has yet to attempt an official top-speed record. (Bugatti claims that, with 1,479 horsepower on tap and enough runway, the Chiron could hit 280 mph, but they haven’t bothered to try.) More than speed or superlatives or sheer excess, the Chiron’s most compelling storyline might be something subtler: attention to detail. The carbon-fiber chassis alone takes a month to build. The central console, designed to mimic the curve of the flank, is milled from one solid block of aluminum; the same goes for the rear light bar, which stretches more than five feet across and houses 82 LED bulbs. Each of the four speaker tweeters is equipped with a one-carat diamond diaphragm for exceptional high-frequency sound. And, for 2019, there’s more light to shine on that exceptional interior thanks to the optional Sky View roof — a pair of curved, four-layer laminated glass panels atop the cabin — which not only reflects infrared radiation but, unlike most moonroofs, actually adds headroom. Want a Chiron for yourself? No matter how fast you can sign the multimillion-dollar check, be prepared to wait: thanks to a five-month build time and a significant waitlist, delivery will take up to three years. $2 , 9 9 8 ,0 0 0 +

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GUIDE TO LIFE

Break In Raw Denim Denimheads say you have to wait months or even years before delicately hand washing your precious high-end jeans. These experts say otherwise. text by john zientek i l l u s t r at i o n s b y l i a m o ’ d o n n e l l photos by chandler bondurant

Across the internet, you’ll find articles, forums — hell, entire websites — devoted to the art of denim maintenance. Some connoisseurs insist you need to wait a year before washing jeans if you want Instagram-worthy fades; in the meantime, they suggest, getting the stink out is as easy as throwing them in the freezer. To find out if caring for a simple pair of jeans is really that complicated, we spoke to three of the world’s most respected denim experts: Kiya Babzani, co-owner of Self Edge; Jeremy Smith, co-owner of Standard & Strange; and Okayama Denim owner Merv Sethi. As it turns out, the washing machine is not your enemy.

Jeremy Smith S TA N D A R D & S T R A N G E

Kiya Babzani SELF EDGE

Merv Sethi O K AYA M A D E N I M

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Skip the Waiting Game According to Sethi, it’s true that you have to put in some time before washing. But the difference between two months and 12 months is “marginal,” he says. Babzani agrees, and says fades are mostly the result of actually wearing the jeans. “The way indigo loss occurs on denim is through wear, not through washing,” he says. “Indigo is a large molecule that doesn’t really penetrate cotton fibers, so it’s sitting on top of the cotton fiber. The only way to get it dislodged” — that is, create a fade — “is to actually scratch it off.” As a general rule of thumb, 30 to 60 wears (that’s one to two months with everyday use) will set the kind of creases prized by denimheads. But fastidiously marking a calendar might be overkill. “Being overly precious about denim ruins the experience a bit,” says Jeremy Smith. “You want these garments to be part of your life, and to show it.”

Don’t Fear the Machine When you do get around to washing your jeans, there’s no need to baby them. Just flip them inside out and throw them in the washing machine on a cold-water cycle. “If you want your denim to age in a natural and vintage fashion,” Babzani says, “then you should treat them how they were treated in the forties and fifties. They were worn regularly, and then washed regularly.” And though hand washing is indeed gentler, your denim doesn’t require it. “From all the clothing you own, including all your t-shirts and everything,” Babzani says, “the one that can withstand a washing machine the most is a pair of jeans.” As for detergent, use something mild, like Woolite

Dark, Tide Natural or Dr. Bronner’s. And don’t succumb to any internet rumors: “Don’t freeze your jeans and don’t spray chemicals on them — just wash when dirty,” Smith says. “Jumping in the ocean is good for Instagram, but then you have to get all that salt out before it tears up the fibers.” One thing the obsessives get right is avoiding the dryer; the heat can cause fabric to shrink, and tumbling will prematurely wear out the fibers. Instead, air dry your jeans after washing by hanging them. “Generally, the pocket bags and the crotch area are the last areas to dry,” Sethi says. “So if those spots are no longer damp, your jeans are probably ready to wear.”

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Wash, Rinse, Repeat (Yes, Repeat) Good news: you don’t have to think too hard from now on — just repeat the wash and dry process as needed. “Dirt kills fibers, so you’re not doing anyone any favors by having stinky, dirty jeans,” Smith says. There’s no correct length to wait between cleanings. Jeans are rugged and hard-wearing by nature, so every month or two might be fine. But climate and lifestyle will both play a role. “If you sit at a desk all day long, you can probably go two or three months without washing your jeans,” Babzani says. “But if you’re in New York City, in the summer, walking around in your jeans, you probably want to wash them a little more often.”

Darn It! Holes in your jeans shouldn’t mean a trip to the Goodwill pile — or even a patch, for that matter. Many tailors and denim-centric shops now offer darning services, which Sethi says is a superior method of repair. “Rather than adding another piece of denim below or above the hole in patchwork fashion, darning essentially recreates the original fabric using only needle and thread,” Sethi says. And while some major repairs may require patches, Babzani also opts for darning whenever possible because “it’s generally a little more comfortable, because there’s no patch and no interfacing used.” If your jeans have large holes, however, reinforcement may be necessary. But it’s amazing what can be salvaged, according to Smith. “We had a guy hit a deer on his motorcycle in his new denim, and we were able to get it cleaned up pretty well with our repair program,” he says. “I haven’t seen much damage that can’t be fixed.”

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Jack Clawson Studio Brooklyn, NY

Get Faded What the denim pros are breaking in right now.

Stevenson Overall Co. 714 Valencia Jeans

Standard & Strange x Ooe Yofukuten OA02-XX3

“These are one of the only production jeans in the world where the entire thing is single-needle stitched. Three years, two repairs. I love the way they age over time. The denim doesn’t have a massive amount of character when it’s brand new, but as it fades over time it definitely comes through.”

“The 02 cut is like a sixties [Levi’s] 505. Very timeless and wearable with anything. They’re the best jeans-makers alive right now, possibly of all time — doubly so if you’re into vintage [reproductions]. My outgoing pair is five years old and perfectly worn in.”

Big John x Okayama Denim Sample “We switched the weft out for a bamboo-fiber yarn, rather than the usual hundred percent cotton composition. These [new] selvedge jeans are not only insane on the aesthetic and texture front, they’re our first foray into a long-term effort to be a more socially and ecologically conscious company.”

j eremy smith , standard & stran g e kiya babzani , self ed g e

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merv sethi , okayama denim

RADO CAPTAIN COOK INSPIRED BYRADO OUR VINTAGE ORIGINAL. SERIOUSLY IRRESISTIBLE. HYPERCHROME CAPTAIN COOK INSPIRED BY OUR VINTAGE ORIGINAL. SERIOUSLY IRRESISTIBLE.

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MASTER OF OF MATERIALS MATERIALS MASTER

Wish List 0 6/0 6

SnoPlanks Asym Fish text by steve mazzucchi photo by chandler bondurant

In an era increasingly defined by innovative, high-impact shifts in mass production, how does a single small company crafting one snowboard at a time in the Pacific Northwest stand out? By creating a product so beautifully unusual that no one would dare think it came from a machine. Enter the Asym Fish, from SnoPlanks, a craft ski and snowboard manufacturer in Bend, Oregon. Made by hand using sustainable bio-resins and locally sourced bamboo, the Asym Fish turns heads with its dynamically shaped body. But the offbeat silhouette isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just for show: a longer toe side helps support sweeping bottom turns and explosive heelside carves, while the substantially rockered nose can crest deep powder with aplomb. You can certainly ride the Fish on liftaccessed groomers thanks to its carbonfiber-laced core and sintered P-Tex base, but we suggest you follow the shaperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lead and enjoy it the old-fashioned way: by hiking into the backcountry to find that thigh-deep nirvana. $799

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Everest Horology and its products are NOT affiliated with, authorized, or endorsed by Rolex Watch USA Inc. All watches, likeness, and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Rolex SA.

PROUDLY SWISS -MADE

BULK BUY

Humidity Packs text by oren hartov photo by chase pellerin

Cigars and guitars: thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what most people think of when they think of humidification systems. But controlling the amount of moisture in the air is beneficial for more than tobacco and wood instruments. Coffee, grains and cereals, spices, dried fruit and nuts, even your cannabis stash will all maintain peak freshness for much longer with the right attention paid to humidity. That used to mean a messy process that involved hygrometers and regularly refilling a humidifier with distilled water. But the Minnesota-based company Boveda came up with a better idea: its patented two-way humidity packs, which come in various sizes and humidity levels, can increase or decrease the amount of moisture in the air to a prescribed percent, taking the guesswork out of all-purpose humidification. $6+

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Features

Craftsmanship takes as many forms as the people who practice it. For some, that means creating products by hand (p. 110) to showcase their skills — though the version practiced by whiskey critic Jim Murray (p. 136) involves both Zen-like dedication and also cheese rolls. East Fork co-founder Alex Matisse (p. 98) makes the Internet’s favorite mug and can’t make it fast enough, while the maniacs at Zombie Tools (p. 124) overbuild weapons for a pop-culture apocalypse that’s (probably) never coming. Want to unplug from the zeitgeist? Check out the owners and Amish contractors of Janus Motorcycles (p. 146) at work creating throwback machines mostly off the grid.

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e x p e

i o n s t a

g text by will price photos by chandler bondurant

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Instead of following in his family’s artistic footsteps, a lex m atisse started a small pottery business in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Now, he can’t keep the internet’s favor ite mug in stock — and it has nothing to do with his famous name.

r e no on o o f n e

a r y Tues n i d d

a few hundred coffee mugs sit on a steel rack in East Fork’s Asheville, North Carolina, factory-studio. The mugs were made the week prior, are priced at $36 each and, in a few minutes time, will be entirely sold out. Alex Matisse takes a call while standing on the delivery ramp at the back of the facility, AirPods jutting from his ears. Facing the flurry of activity inside, his back to the Blue Ridge Mountains, he moseys up and down the ramp, negotiating the purchase of new machinery from China to replace the early twentieth-century equipment he bought less than a year ago. He’s trying, and utterly failing, to keep pace with the internet’s desire for his coffee mugs, which haven’t been available for more than a few hours per week in more than a year. Today, at least, it doesn’t seem to bother him. Matisse slips out of the July sun and through a glass door leading to the front office, an open, high-ceilinged space with a dozen desks and reproduction Eames office chairs tucked in on the right; a leather couch and chair in the center; and a 30-foot wooden table against the back wall. Imagine the ideal office of a direct-to-consumer brand advertising on Instagram and you more or less have it. “Pretty much what you expect, right?” Matisse says with a laugh. “Follow me,” he says, pushing through

a beige door to his left and revealing, with a sudden blast of mechanical noise, a two-story-high, 10,000-square-foot room filled with goggle-clad Ashevillains, clay-crusted machinery and unfinished earthenware. From her office in the front of the building, Connie Matisse, Alex’s wife and the company’s chief creative officer, watches the organized chaos unfold. “The entire production floor is like a choreographed ballet,” she says. Matisse’s habit of selling out of everything almost immediately does not stem from some sort of limited-edition, dropbased product-release business model. He just can’t make as much as East Fork’s voracious fans demand — at least not yet. He would very much like to. But, as he’s said in the past, East Fork is not the Warby Parker of pottery, nor does he want it to be. Because unlike the companies it’s often grouped with — Everlane, Casper, Away and Warby Parker among them — East Fork actually makes the stuff it sells. And if Matisse has it his way, that will never change. Alex, Connie and company CFO John Vigeland admit that labeling East Fork as akin to those flashy, crisply designed labels is an easy leap to make. Connie drew inspiration from those very brands for the company’s marketing, and its website features similarly gorgeous photography and

J u s

“The Mug” ($36) joined by East Fork’s Cake Plate ($16), Side Plate ($28), Dinner Plate ($42) and Everyday Bowl ($34) in three of the brand’s core colorways.

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whimsical self-awareness. The white-hot ceramics manufacturer has a keen eye for the Instagrammable, and its email subject lines are always clever. After three straight years of tripling sales, the company’s growth also mirrors the prototypical modern internet success story. “Ceramics have these peaks and valleys every fifteen years or so,” Matisse says. Vigeland and the Matisses simply caught the most recent spike at the right stage. But it wasn’t without a whole lot of hard work beforehand. In the late Aughts, Matisse dropped out of college to pursue apprenticeships in handthrown, salt-fired stoneware. He settled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and built his own kiln, making limited quantities of high-end ceramics and selling them to a small but “ravenous” (Matisse’s word) group of collectors. He met Connie in 2009 at a farmer’s market, where she was selling cheese, and the two ran the enterprise together until they invited John, a fellow potter, over for a weekend of drinking wine. That’s when foundations of what later became East Fork were first laid. For Matisse, it was a change. He describes the life of a potter as a lonely one, punctuated by small bursts of social activity. And while those days were filled with artistic seclusion, he never considered himself part of the “art world.” Even now, whenever conversations dip into artistic abstraction, Matisse instinctively returns to pottery’s egalitarian purpose. “It’s functional, humble, and people from all walks of life can appreciate and use it,” he says. “Making functional objects, instead of something to be observed. “I love being part of something that extends beyond the individual. I wasn’t in [the art world], I wasn’t being asked to do

something avant-garde or new,” he says. “There is also a very high likelihood that I would not be a very good artist, and I would make silly, bad crap. Which doesn’t sound very fun.” If Matisse sounds wary of calling himself an artist, there’s good reason. “There is a high bar [for art] in the family,” Matisse says, “and I wouldn’t want to come in under it.” Alex Matisse grew up in a household drenched in art in Groton, Massachusetts. His mother was into textiles and castings; his father, a self-described artist-inventor. His sister is a painter and his brother is a photographer. His grandfather, Pierre, imported and displayed Miró, Dubuffet, Le Corbusier, Chagall, Calder, Giacometti and other iconic 20th century European artists’ work in his New York City gallery. Alex is also the step-grandson of readymade-art pioneer Marcel Duchamp. And then there’s his great-grandfather, Henri Matisse — you might have heard of him — whose paradigm-shifting use of color created an artistic legacy to rival that of Picasso. Alex jokes he took to pottery because “no one else in the family had pursued it yet.” But Alex, for his part, was always a potter; he claims he was throwing “fairly seriously” by the seventh grade. His childhood home, a forlorn Baptist church that his parents rejuvenated, acted as the family studio. East Fork formally launched in 2013. Alex, John, or one of a handful of apprentices throw each piece by hand using clay sourced from the surrounding region. The original collection was created using a single wood-fired kiln, with house-made glazes and colors. Starting around two years ago, its masterfully drawn brand

facin g pa g e

Led by Amanda Hollomon-Cook, the Small Batch Studio is the only part of the company that continues to make pottery completely by hand. The mugs shown here are custom orders for specialty coffee roaster Counter Culture.

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and distinctive, brown-flecked pottery started to find traction as the company began developing a modest following. In 2017, they made 2,269 mugs on a potter’s wheel, each and every handle pulled by hand. The company added some apprentices in 2018 and pushed that number up to 3,078 mugs — still well below demand. Early adopters took photos of their prize and dubbed it #TheMug. In an effort to keep pace, Matisse halted production to hunt down the vestiges of America’s long-gone ceramics-manufacturing industry: presses, pugmills, kilns and jiggers from the early 1900s. They tried different forming techniques — slip casting, jiggering, RAM pressing — only to face delays; a process expected to take less than three months took nearly a year. They hired non-potter locals, trained them and re-released the Mug as a partially handmade product with a lower price. It sold out again. By February 2019, the coffee mug had a waiting list just shy of 3,000 people, East Fork had a new factory with dozens of new employees, and Matisse & Co. were the owners of the largest collection of early 1900s pottery-making equipment in America. In April, a day before the Mug was re-released yet again (this time made using more machines), Food Network published a 381-word article titled “The Internet’s Favorite Mug is Finally Back In Stock Tomorrow.” The Mug sold out again. Then The New York Times featured it in print. Television networks called about including it in Mother’s Day coverage. Emails begging for more mugs stacked up. “We’d done a very good job marketing the Mug,” Connie says, “and maybe turned up the gas on the marketing of it long before our production team was able to keep up with existing demand. But once that fly wheel starts spinning, it’s really hard to slow it down.” A couple weeks into April, with the sword of viral fame hanging over him, Alex wrote a blog post. In the piece, titled “Big Feelings from the CEO,” he answered the question of why, in his words, they

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from top

Pugmills churn out long tubes of East Fork’s proprietary clay mixture. A wax mold for an East Fork dinner plate. An East Fork employee uses a vertical jigger to press clay into a mug mold.

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hed s ap gr ys. a es

production fl e r oo ti k e i l n a c e ho r i e r nnie Mati eo o ss C

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Plates, bowls and mugs are inspected for cracks, inconsistencies and sharp edges prior to shipping out. Inventory doesn’t last long.

couldn’t “just fucking make more of them?!” “We have not chosen the easiest route. We are not the Warby Parker of pottery — as much as journalists like to lean on that line. We can’t flip a switch and make more overnight. All we can do is show up every day and try to make more than we did the day before,” he wrote. Today, the Mug starts as an iron-rich clay mixture sourced from Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina. It’s loaded into a pugmill that creates a homogenous, well-mixed tube of milk-chocolate-colored clay. The clay is cut into long pieces using a wire cutter, then placed in a mold, pressed, and left to dry for a day. To create the handle, RAM presses slam 30 to 130 tons of pressure on a plaster mold filled with clay; it’s faster than making each handle freeform, though the stamp creates seams on the handle that require hand cleaning before a clay-water mixture called “slip” is used to glue it to the Mug by hand. It dries for another day before its first firing, after which it’s glazed, dipped in wax and left to dry again. This is followed by another firing, quality control, sanding and touchups. Then, finally, it’s ready for sale. “Keeping up with demand would be a twenty-four-seven job. We’re trying to do it during regular working hours,” Matisse says. “It can be fast paced.” Yet Matisse moves around the factory slowly. He takes time to talk shop with the potters tasked with melding handle to mug that day; while he hasn’t thrown anything himself for more than a year, he still goes digging through the tool bin at the station for his preferred brush. He seems more friend than boss. (Matisse comes by that geniality honestly: our two conversations, in Asheville and New York, were both interrupted multiple times by former employees gleefully flagging him down.) “Our company serves our employees and community as much as our customers,” Connie said in a February 2019 interview with Architectural Digest. When preparing

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the space for their current production site, for example, East Fork brass carved a commercial-grade kitchen between the office and factory space. Staff lunches are shared twice a week at a community table in the front room. Alex admits his views on employment may sound näive, but it’s something he has to think about. “Ceramics are inherently labor-intensive. Even when we scale to a point of bringing in more automated lines of production, it will still be very much a team sport to get the pottery across the finish line,” he says. “The challenge is how we continue to ensure that this is a great place to come into work every day — whether you’re in the

shipping department, cleaning the bathrooms or a VP. One of my own metrics of success is how happy and satisfied our whole team is with the work that they are [each] doing as an individual.” East Fork today churns out about 450 mugs a week — roughly six times the volume of years past. With the help of new machinery, they hope to get that number to 600 by year’s end. Inventory is replenished online each Tuesday at noon, but the Mug hasn’t remained in stock for more than a few hours in over a year. Learning to feed such insatiable demand is starting to pay off. This year, for the first time, East Fork should break even financially. The company expects to become profitable in 2020. And while Matisse is

Matisse is quick to point out that, while East Fork has begun importing new, highend manufacturing equipment to bolster its volume capabilities, he has no plans to trim any of the company’s 50-person roster — up from 31 in 2018, 15 in 2017 and eight in 2016.

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pleased with the progress, it’s not progress for progress’s sake that matters most to him. While he’s taken calls from venture capital firms with track records for pushing brands to enormous valuations, Matisse sees VC money as a poison pill — a Faustian bargain that would demand they meet impossible-to-reach sales figures. He’s turned it all down. “I think of success as making a significant impact on the community we’re in,” Matisse says. “Growth isn’t just something you aim for just to grow. You grow toward more and better things — more employment opportunities, more meaningful work, more stability. “Success,” he says, “is being here in twenty-five years.”

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IN GOOD HANDS Very few products are still made by hand. These six are.

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p h o t o s c o u r t e s y o f j . n . s h a p i r o wat c h e s

J.N. Shapiro Watches

WAT C H E S

dvances in affordable manufacturing techniques like computer-assisted design have utterly changed the horological landscape over the last 30 years. Today, even well-made timepieces can be mass-produced at breakneck speed, even by novice watchmakers, and are more affordable than ever. That’s not the way Joshua Shapiro crafts timepieces. Growing up in a family of trained machinists, Shapiro began working with his hands at a young age. Even so, he pursued a traditional education in history (“I was the weird one who went to college,” he says), eventually becoming a school principal. Several years into that career, Shapiro decided he wanted to return to working with his hands, so he took up watchmaking. Now, he creates timepieces using a method that harkens back to the very beginnings of horology, while still administering a school. After crafting his first watch dial for a client, in 2011, Shapiro became fascinated by the art of dial making, which in turn led him to purchase an engine-turning machine a few years later. Engine turning is difficult, time-consuming work in which metal or ceramic is engraved, using a lathe, to create a repeating geometric pattern. After perfecting the traditional geometric patterns found on engine-turned dials, Shapiro began work on a special pattern of his own — something he dubbed the “Infinity Weave.” The decoration includes basketweave patterns within larger basketweaves to mesmerizing effect; the pattern seems to continue forever. Each of Shapiro’s enamel dials are comprised of nine different parts (not including screws) and takes upwards of 150 hours to complete. The technique links Shapiro in a line of watchmakers

“There’s no end to the rigor of it.”

going back to Abraham Louis Breguet, in the early 19th century, and continuing today with English watchmaker Roger Smith, a Shapiro idol. “I wanted to pursue something that was extremely difficult to master, took extreme sustained attention to detail and was an expression of all my passions: hand-craftsmanship, history and machining,” Shapiro says. “You can always improve it, always get better.” — O R E N H A R T O V

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H A N D -DY E D L E AT H E R

alifornia’s Icon 4x4 has built a reputation for incredibly detailed, largely handmade automotive projects, from painstakingly refurbished vintage Land Cruisers and Broncos to its “Derelict” line of reimagined (and visually unrestored) classic cars. But while Icon’s founder, Jonathan Ward, is best known for his uncompromising automotive restorations, he’s also spent the last three years dabbling in leather craft, a labor-intensive process he calls his “therapy hobby.” That sideline recently found its way into Ward’s day job, as he brings the essentially defunct tradition of hand-dyed leather back to the inside of a car. “The tradition’s all but dead,” Ward says of hand-dying, “because it’s too artisanal. It takes too fucking long.”

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Ward was introduced to the technique by artist Kathleen Fiorito, of Oregon. (Ward signed up for her very first class.) After he posted an example of his handiwork to Instagram, a client who had commissioned a Nashville-inspired 1949 Hudson contacted him about swapping the car’s planned stingray trim for custom hand-dyed crocodylian. Ward agreed. The trim starts out as tanned-but-not-yet-dyed skins, a condition known as “crust.” Pigments are then applied by hand. In the case of the Hudson commission, this involved a suspension made of pigment and denatured alcohol (a layer Ward describes as “almost like shoe polish”); dyeing wax; and a layer in powdered form that’s applied using materials as diverse as fingers, sea sponges and old t-shirts. The leather is then given an invisible protective

p h oto s c o u r t e s y o f i c o n 4x4

Icon 4x4

MOTORING

layer of aerospace-grade ceramic nanoparticles to shield the final product from the searing effect of UV rays. The complete process takes about 40 hours of work, and there are no shortcuts. The only way to hand-dye leather is by hand. Or, as Ward puts it: “There really is no sort of computer-controlled, automated volume solution for such a varied and uniquely charactered patina finish.” Every piece Ward creates using the technique is unique, no matter how much his customers might wish otherwise: vagaries in temperature, humidity, even the tick of the clock can change the composition of the appliques. “It all must be done at the same time or it will never be an exact match,” Ward says. “This shit is so dynamic.” — WILL SABEL COURTNEY

“I can never repeat the exact recipe, no matter how hard I try.”

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H A N D -P O U R E D M E TA L F I T N E S S E Q U I PM E N T

Acme Sledgeworks itness technology is a booming business — it seems every day there’s a new activity tracker, sleep monitor or bioscanning kit hitting the market. But there hasn’t been much innovation when it comes to good old heavy metal. Dumbbells and kettlebells look much the same now as they have for decades, and for good reason: such essential fitness tools are best when kept simple. But simple doesn’t have to mean basic. Since 2016, Mark Ruddy of Acme Sledgeworks has been handcrafting unique weights by molding recycled rebar into forms we don’t typically think of when picturing modern exercise equipment, like maces and sledgehammers. Today, Ruddy’s beautifully functional creations would be as at home at a CrossFit gym as on an old Game of Thrones episode. Ruddy makes each of the weights himself in a 2,000-square-foot hangar at a private airport in the San Francisco Bay area. It takes four to five days of welding, sawing, molding and pouring to make a single piece. Weights aren’t Ruddy’s primary gig. For more than 20 years, he’s designed furniture, stairs and other decorative elements for bars and restaurants under his Vendetta Deluxe brand; finely crafted and obscurely shaped weights are just a side hustle. But Ruddy says he’s constantly surprised by the excitement around recycled rebar. Acme Sledgeworks continues to add new designs, like bronze pours of its mini-sledges and Acme knuckles, to its growing catalog of fitness accessories. To weaponize your own fitness routine, give Ruddy’s personal favorites like sledges and mini-maces a swing — and don’t worry about being gentle with them, because they’re built to outlast you. “I have my first hammer ever made,” Ruddy says. “I’ve had it for almost twelve years. It will probably break the person before the person breaks it.” — M E G L A P P E

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photos chandler bondurant/acme sledgeworks

OUTDOORS + FITNESS

“I’ve always loved rebar. Different countries have different styles. That’s what makes our products unique — none of them are the same.”

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H A N D - ST I T C H E D B O O T S

“I have a big archive and look at it and spend time with it, like I’m in a museum.”

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photos chandler bondurant/yuketen

Yuketen

ST Y L E

t age 18, Japanese designer Yuki Matsuda relocated to Los Angeles, California, to become a vintage-clothing dealer, selling his finds at the Rose Bowl Flea Market while studying various aspects of Americana. In 1995, inspired by an old L.L. Bean catalog, Matsuda founded Yuketen with a line of hand-sewn, moc-toe footwear loosely adapted from traditional American hunting boots designed to help trappers withstand harsh northern winters. To find craftsmen capable of reinterpreting this old-school American footwear, Matsuda traveled across the country from his home in Hermosa Beach to Maine, where local footwear brand Quoddy produced Yuketen’s boots for the first year,

until Matsuda set up his own shop in the state. Matsuda remains committed to the local artisans. “I’m working with the best-of-the-best guys in the U.S.,” Matsuda says. “If we don’t have these people, I cannot make my shoes.” Yuketen’s shop is located in Farmington, about 100 miles north of Portland, and employs three shoemakers who execute a range of tasks — cutting leathers, insoling, bottoming and finishing the shoes — as well as five hand-sewers who work from home. The average age of these craftspeople is around 70 years old, and each has about five decades of experience. A regular moccasin-style shoe can take a single artisan up to two hours of stitching; the All Handsewn style, which only

two sewers are capable of making, takes around three hours. Yuketen’s flagship Maine Guide Boots have evolved — slowly — over two decades, and feature premium components like a vegetable-tanned leather tuck under the insole, American-made Vibram soles and Italian vegetable-tanned leather midsoles. It’s all crafted to Matsuda’s exacting level of quality, which puts a premium on the handmade: “I don’t think a machine can make the shoes we can make,” he says. But despite Yuketen’s old-world techniques, Matsuda remains admirably committed to quality and wearability, instead of historical accuracy. “If I find more things to make Yuketen better, I will add them,” he says. — J O H N Z I E N T E K

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T R A D I T I O N A L JA PA N E S E JO I N E RY

Miya Shoji f Hisao Hanafusa had his way, he’d spend several decades working on a table before it left his workshop in Queens, New York. For practical reasons, he has to settle for just one. Hanafusa, 83, is the owner of Miya Shoji, New York City’s sole authentic Japanese furniture manufacturer. Founded in 1951, his shop sells all the mainstays of a traditional Japanese home: futons, room dividers (called shojis) and tatami platforms. But the highlight of the 68-year-old operation is its striking collection of handcrafted tables, starting at around $10,000. These are made with locally sourced wood that’s been cured at least 10 years, so it can “find its shape” before assembly. “When you’re using dry wood, you can work with it better — it cuts nicer,” says Hanafusa’s son, Zui, a former art director who left a career in publishing to help his dad run the family business. While many modern-day carpenters rely on kilns to artificially speed the aging process, the father-son duo prefer to let nature run its course. “With a kiln, the wood sweats faster and you might have some discoloration, purple hues or sweat marks,” says the younger Hanafusa. “If you air dry, you’ll have a more natural color.” That means storing large slabs of wood in their workshop, sometimes for decades. The tools employed by the brand’s small team of carpenters include planes, hand-forged chisels and Japanese pull saws, which cut on the pull stroke, unlike Western saws. These are used to fashion precisely interlocking joints that rely on gravity, instead of glue or metal screws, to stay connected. Given wood’s tendency to warp with changes in humidity, these joints allow the furniture to settle with seasonal shifts.

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photos chandler bondurant

HOME

“When you know which way the tree grows, you can work with it. Always with, never against.”

“Metal doesn’t shrink or expand — it also rusts,” says Hanafusa. “Joints move with temperature.” This style of carpentry, defined by such sophisticated joint structures, dates back to medieval Japan, where it was used to construct many of the country’s prized shrines and temples during the 12th to 16th centuries. And it is here, in part, where Miya Shoji gets its name: In Japanese, people who specialize in this type of work are called miyadaiku — the “miya” in Miya Shoji. But such a technique, despite the exquisite craftsmanship involved, does have its drawbacks. “It’s actually bad design,” Hanafusa says. “You know why? It lasts forever.” — JACK SEEMER

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C U ST O M I Z A B L E M E D I U M-F O R M AT CA M E R A S

Dora Goodman

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he camera is not a device normally associated with artisanship. Almost invariably, buying a decent camera means choosing a comprehensive ecosystem carefully managed by the likes of Sony, Nikon or Canon. Once you pick your body and lenses, there’s little room for creativity or building out a bespoke setup. Right? “You’d be surprised how many people modify their cameras,” says Dora Goodman, an Austria-based builder of beautiful, handcrafted cameras. “Many like to customize their old and even new [cameras]. This ‘let me change this’ and ‘let me improve that’ has always been part of photography. I find it inspiring that photographers have the need and motivation to customize their gear.” Making a camera from scratch is normally a long, complicated

photos courtesy of dora goodman

“The customer only has to buy the magazine and the lens, and it’s all ready to be assembled.”

TECH

process, but Goodman has created something of a wormhole for avid photographers and made it much easier for them to build their own cameras. All her creations are open-source, meaning anybody can download the blueprints for free and create their own version. If that person doesn’t have access to a 3D printer (which, to be fair, most people don’t), Goodman also sells preprinted camera kits. “I print the whole body, provide all the necessary elements for assembling it, with all the instructions, packed in together in a stylish box,” she says. Her first open-sourced modular camera, the Goodman One, was designed for 120-format film. It’s just the framework, of course: photographers can easily add their own lenses and bellows for focusing, as well as a digital or analog back. But while her open-sourced designs vary in complexity and assembly time, all of Goodman’s cameras are similarly medium-format and modular, to give the owner creative control over the type of lens or the back, and whether they want to shoot digital or film. Aside from being more affordable, Goodman’s modular printed designs are more lightweight than conventional medium-format cameras, and easier to carry on the shoulder; mainstream models are clunky, heavy and expensive — a bad combination for portability and spontaneity. “You feel much more at ease with them than with [a camera] that costs a fortune,” Goodman says, “but the pictures are of equal quality.” — T U C K E R B O W E

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Known for fantastical bladed weapons built to real-world standards, Montanabased Zombie Tools has created a wildly unorthodox business through ingenuity, imagination and a heroic amount of beer. text by dan pund photos by chandler bondurant

Joey Arbour is appalled. Or maybe he’s feigning it, I can’t really tell. I’ve known him for only eight hours and we’ve been drinking beer for the last five. He’s staring at me, blue eyes wide, brow furrowed. For the first time all day, there’s an uninterrupted silence. It had seemed like a reasonable enough question to ask: If you’re going to have an artist create a portrait using only beer as the paint, why choose Nicola Tesla as the subject? Joey lowers his can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, nestled in a coozie reading “A Fist Full of Fuck Yeah,” to the arm of the second-dirtiest chair in all creation. The dirtiest is to his immediate right. Finally, he blurts an answer: “Because he’s fucking awesome!” About this there’s no disagreement from any of the five of Joey’s employees sitting around an enormous table stacked high with empty PBR cans and rapidly filling ashtrays. In fact, the group considers Jo-

ey’s opinion of the Serbian-American inventor to be manifestly true, along with the contention that Tesla’s rival, Thomas Edison, was kind of a dick. Other things that the crew believe to be true: if you’re going to drink and smoke, your goal should be to do so until you sound like Tom Waits; physicists suck, David Bowie was great, Hunter Thompson was the best; and that, at more than 1,000 pages, Carl Sandburg’s only novel, Remembrance Rock, is a little tedious. Oh, and they believe in beer. And in fine, sturdy, sharp swords and knives. But as far as I can tell, none of the 10 employees of Joey’s Missoula-based company, Zombie Tools, believes in zombies or the zombie apocalypse. This despite the fact that the company, in business now for 11 years, with a dedicated following and some 15,000 blades sold, once used the tagline “Accessories for the Apocalypse.” Also, “zombie” is right there in the name.

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Truth is, even 10-year-old Joey didn’t care about zombies. Instead, he was transfixed by the massive sword he saw in the hands of a fully-inflated Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian. Joey would pull up fence posts and swing them around in pitched, imaginary backyard battles. Shortly afterward, he “fell in love with stabbing people” (his words). Luckily, that was still mostly in the realm of fantasy. He joined the Society for Creative Anachronism, a deeply nerdy national organization that splits up the U.S. into imaginary kingdoms — as depicted on a faux-medieval map with a fierce-looking sea monster destroying a ship off the coast of Oregon — and holds mock battles in full costume, with sword fights and such. It was at these SCA events that Joey discovered an interest in rapier fighting. When he moved to Missoula in 1996 at 22 years old, he was a sword fighter with no one to sword fight. During the day he toiled away at the Missoulian newspaper. During the course of his 10-year tenure, and without any formal training, he went from an entry-level gig at the paper to a position as a graphic designer, which he followed up with five years at a local print shop. But at night he listened to crust-core bands like Neurosis and frequented dive bars. It was at just such a dive, the Flipper bar and casino, back in the year 2000, where he met a like-minded and darkly creative fellow named Maxon “Max” McCarter. Together, the two formed what they called the Drunken Jedi Pirate Circus, which mostly amounted to Joey and Max going at each other with rubber-tipped swords and bamboo sticks while wearing fencing masks and some basic body padding. But the swords were expensive, so they decided to try to make their own. Around 2005, Joey and Max held what they called the “Giving Up Heavy Metal for Sharp Steel” sale, where Joey sold his Peavey bass and bass amp. “I could only keep a rhythm for thirty seconds,” he says. The profit from that, plus whatever Max sold (Joey can’t quite remember, explain-

ing that “the beer and the whacks to the nog have made those years a bit of a blur.”), was enough to buy a belt grinder and the basics for sword making. The pair constructed the “world’s most dangerous forge” in Max’s carport: a half-barrel filled with blazing hot coals attached to a shop vac running in reverse, designed to stoke the device to terrifying temperatures. They managed to not burn down the carport, and also to not make very good swords. Joey still has his first blade. It’s inside a case in the shop office, buried under a pile of Aflac pamphlets (Zombie Tools recently started offering its employees health insurance). The duo persevered, honing their skills. Ever the fan of jocular titles, they named their blade-making operation the Bloody Dick Armory, ostensibly named after Montana’s Bloody Dick River. “We figured we should be wrong, but we should be Montana, too,” Joey says. The ribald double meaning was lost on no one, and the company didn’t last more than a year. “The old-timers really didn’t like that,” Joey explains. Later, the name would be changed to Thanatic Swords, a reference to Thanatos, the ancient Greek personification of death. A longtime player in the dark arts, Max produced some local live-action horror shows — performance art by way of blood and gore. At one such event, Joey’s girlfriend lay on a table surrounded by people wearing raven masks while Max pretended to pull her heart out. (The organ was actually a buffalo heart sourced from a local butcher.) Later, they were hired to build a horror set called the Wild West Zombie Brothel. “So we had zombies on the brain,” Joey says. This was in 2007, before AMC’s The Walking Dead turned the entire American populace into mindless, slavering fans of the undead. Along the way, the pair picked up another friend, Chris Lombardi, a sword-curious photographer for a local online news outlet. At a party in October of that year, Joey, Max and Chris began planning their new blade-making company. They weren’t

left pa g e

Dan Griffin, Joey Arbour and Josh Eamon make up nearly a third of ZT’s crew. Their metalworking skills come from training. Their skills at posing come naturally.

“MAN, WE DID A LOT MORE DRINKING BACK THEN,” SAYS JOEY, DRINKING. interested in making reproductions of historical weapons, or fantasy swords. In a moment of clarity, they decided that if they latched onto the zombie thing, it would allow them to indulge in the dark side to which they were so clearly drawn, while also treating the whole endeavor with their characteristic lack of reverence. They would build weapons of whatever size and shape and style they liked. They would build solid, usable blades — not wall hangings. They would be, in the parlance of blades, “battle ready.” The three men would have fun doing it. And they would drink beer.

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ZOMBIE TOOLS IS A COLLECTION OF CRAFTSPEOPLE MAKING ARCHAIC WEAPONS BY HAND, OSTENSIBLY TO PREPARE FOR AN APOCALYPSE THAT IS CLEARLY NOT COMING, TO BATTLE A MONSTER THAT DOES NOT EXIST. It was the resurgence of the zombie as an entertainment and cultural trope that inspired the company’s name. It also nearly led to the founding trio’s stardom. In 2011, in the midst of zombie mania, the three founders made a pact with the devil. They signed up to film a reality television program on The Science Channel called Surviving Zombies. “It was a real education in reality TV, which isn’t reality,” says Joey. Instead of focusing on the shop and blade making, the producers wanted the trio to build an apocalypse bunker out in the hills, which the guys didn’t know or care about. With two episodes in the can and facing the reality of shutting down the shop in favor of shooting B-rate TV, the guys quit. Or as the Zombie Tools website puts it, they had to choose between being “jerk-offs on TV” or “continuing to be jerk-offs making blades and growing our business.” The handmade blades sold by Zombie Tools show a similar disregard for artifice. They don’t look like the cartoonish props that have come to define the niche-withina-niche of zombie-killing weapons. (Even established blade makers like Ka-Bar produce zombie-themed knives.) Most of the weapons that rode the wave of undead obsession are pure junk, stamped from inferior metal with outlandish serrations and simulated bloodstains — a source of derision for blade aficionados. At one point, Joey bought three such knives so that he could make a video of a Zombie Tools sword cutting the junk blades in half, but he never got around to actually doing it. Instead, they sit on a shelf in the low-ceilinged office, their blades shining like cheap chrome plating, the handles

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covered in loose-fitting, neon-green cording. It’s obvious even to a complete knife ignoramus that these are novelty items with an extremely limited service life, like a prize one might win at a carnival, albeit still highly dangerous in impudent hands. Their scary shapes and potential for (and glorification of) violence, even if technically only against the walking dead, led the United Kingdom to ban all so-called “zombie blades” in 2016. By contrast, ZT’s stuff looks wicked. Their blades are unpolished. They wear a near-black mottled finish that makes them look simultaneously new and as if they’ve been slashing through hell for years. And they are heavy hunks of steel; you’ll find no fencing foils among the 22 blades in the company’s current catalog. Weapons range in price from $185 for The Mauler, a compact knife with a radically curved, 4.5-inch blade that looks designed to cut linoleum, to The Diphos, a $650 sword with 25 inches of blunt hacking power. (The Diphos product page on ZT’s website explains the sword’s capability like this: “The Diphos could fuck some shit up, if shit were in need of fucking.”) And while every design is created by Zombie Tools, nearly all are rooted in various traditional blade styles from cultures around the world. The Mauler is inspired by the Malaysian karambit commonly used in Filipino martial arts. The Diphos is ZT’s take on an ancient Greek sword, with its characteristic swell near the tip. The shape of The Spit, a terrifying sword/spear hybrid, mimics a weapon carried by Zulu warriors, and The Kraken is similar to a Norse war axe. There are blades drawn from Bowie knives, Japanese katanas, cavalry sabres, Chinese war swords and the Nepali kukri. (If there is reverence anywhere in the Zombie Tools crew, it’s for blade history, but even that reverence has its limits: when the company decided to create a short, stout blade inspired by the Japanese armor-piercing tanto knife, it of course became The Tainto.) The brand’s wildly disparate styles and sizes are united visually by ZT’s charac-

The five blades seen here, all made to order, represent a tenth of ZT’s average weekly output.

teristic dark finishes, and more fundamentally by the steel from which they’re made. Steel is not a single product. It is a broad range of alloys with dramatically different characteristics. According to the World Steel Association, there are more than 3,500 varieties, and steel nerds exist the same way cast-iron nerds exist and typography nerds exist and bird-watching nerds exist. Steel is essentially iron mixed with carbon. Varying the amount of carbon, or elemental ingredients like chromium, changes the characteristics of the finished metal — harder or softer, more or less durable or resistant to corrosion. Traditionally, steel has been classified using a numerical code that reveals the chemical makeup of the metal in question. The naming scheme, set down in America by the Society of Automotive Engineers and the American Iron and Steel Institute, uses the last two digits to indicate the amount of carbon: 1095 steel, for example, is a plain carbon steel with 0.95 percent carbon mixed into the iron base metal. Generally, the more carbon, the harder the steel. But add too much carbon and the steel becomes brittle. ZT almost exclusively uses 5160 steel,

which adds some chromium to the recipe to make an exceptionally stout metal, providing a long blade the flexibility it needs to spring back into shape after bending. It’s that flexibility that has given similar varieties of steel the nickname “spring steel,” since they were often used in automobile leaf springs. The company also uses a chromium-vanadium steel for its axes, but according to Joey that’s only because they can’t get 5160 steel in plates large enough. For the first year of production, ZT cut the blade shapes by hand using a plasma cutter. It was too much work, and besides, the results weren’t up to the quality everyone wanted. So they contracted a local shop with a water jet to cut the ZT designs; this remains the only part of the sword-building process ZT doesn’t do in the four bays of a bare cinder-block building it shares with an auto mechanic and various other small and decidedly dirty hands-on businesses. The blank — little more than a knifeshaped plaque — is first heat-treated in Bay 8, to increase the hardness of the steel. It then goes into a kiln and doesn’t come out until it reaches 1,540 degrees, at which point it’s quickly quenched in a vat of warm oil. This hardens the steel but also makes

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it brittle. To bring back some of the steel’s ductility (that is, the ability to bend without breaking and then return to shape), the blank goes through two rounds of tempering, which involves bringing it up to a relatively modest temperature — 450 degrees, in this case — and then allowing it to gradually cool. The edges are then ground to a smooth, 90 degree angle. From there, it’s off to Bay 12, where Joey or one of the two other grinders, Dan Griffin and Josh Eaman, clamp the blank and use a nine-inch angle grinder to cut the bevel of the knife. This is always done by hand, and always at an angle of 19 or 20 degrees. It’s the most time-consuming step, and the one that requires the most skill. When Dan, for example, moves the heavy grinder back and forth over the blade, his speed and angle never perceptibly vary; such is the studied smoothness of the move that it appears as if he has a lateral joint in his back. (Though one look at the Wall of Shame, covered in blades gone wrong, and it’s clear that even the experienced guys at Zombie Tools screw up from time to time.) A turn at the belt grinder cleans up the bevel; another go at the grinder, now wearing a different belt, brings the blade to its ultimate sharpness. (Bay 12 is a particular sort of hell for an uninitiated human. It is oppressively loud. Gold-orange sparks pour down from the belt sander and radiate out in a great hot disc from the angle grinder. Everything that is not painted black becomes black anyway — including, I discovered late in the day, the insides of my nostrils — thanks to a thick coat of steel dust. Steam rises from a water-filled barrel used to cool the blades between grinds. Sensibly, the guys wear hearing protection, safety glasses, respirators and heavy aprons. They might be nuts, but they’re not crazy.) The blade then heads to Bay 11, where other employees affix the aluminum handle pieces to either side of the full tang and pin them in place. Zombie Tools uses 6160 aluminum to keep the weight of the finished product reasonable. (Also, Joey notes, “Wood is a pain in the ass.”) This is

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also where the company makes the Kydex thermoformed plastic sheaths that come with all Zombie Tools blades. What the material lacks in visual flair, it more than makes up for in toughness. It is, as such, the perfect material for the ZT aesthetic. (You can order a leather sheath from ZT’s website, but it will be made by a trusted third party.) Back to Bay 8. The blades are sprinkled with aluminum shavings and coated in ferric chloride. This acid etching gives the steel its characteristic dark gray, mottled appearance and, because it’s similar to the process of corrosion, actually gives the blade a bit of rust resistance. But, like most proper knives, a ZT blade will rust if it’s not treated correctly — that is to say, it needs to be stored clean, dry, and with a thin coat of oil. Finally, the handles are wrapped in black leather strips. Using this process, the company’s 10 employees can finish about 150 blades every three weeks — about 2,500 blades per year. All blades are made to order and wait times fluctuate between four and 12 weeks. The blades are considered middle-ground in terms of pricing: high-end swords are generally more than $1,000 while low-end ones can be as cheap as factories in China and Pakistan can afford to pump them out. It’s a comfortable spot for ZT, which prides itself on its hand-crafted, made-in-America status. Joey and company also want people to actually use their swords and axes and knives, but absent an apocalypse or even a single verified zombie, it’s a fair question to ask what, exactly, they want their blades used for. That’s where the beer comes in again. Maybe you saw that coming.

BAY 12 IS A PARTICULAR SORT OF HELL FOR AN UNINITIATED HUMAN.

Zombies are notoriously easy to kill. They are slow and comically dumb. (Also, they dress very shabbily.) In most depictions, they are unable to muster the wit to use any sort of weapon. And since they’re humans stripped of their humanity, they’re not just physically easy to kill but also ethically so, not unlike the bodies that pile up in a first-person-shooter video game. They are moaning, leg-dragging props in your master-warrior fantasy. Gore without guilt. But since actual zombies are in short supply, Zombie Tools’ tools must slice other things. Judging by the two independent ZT fan pages on Facebook, owners mostly just take pictures of their blades for others to gawk at. When not doing that, they are typically chopping tree trunks, slicing flying potatoes, taking whacks at bamboo sticks or slicing aluminum cans. Perhaps not quite as heroic as saving the planet, but it makes for a fine internet video. In fact, that’s probably the single biggest factor in getting the Zombie Tools ethos and products in front of paying customers. ZT’s swords and knives aren’t typically sold in stores. Instead, the company sells direct from their website and from a booth at the lone blade show they attend every year. Zombie Tools, then, is a collection of craftspeople making archaic weapons, largely by hand, ostensibly to prepare for a variety of apocalypse that is clearly not coming, to battle a monster that does not exist. Yet the company relies entirely on that most modern of technologies, the internet, to market and sell its product. Joey is appalled — and not for the last time today — that I have never seen a video that he, Max and Chris produced in 2011, called “Destroying The Deuce.” The video’s roughly six minutes contain all the essential elements of the Zombie Tools universe: a long-bladed chopper named The Deuce; beer; loud music; and the wanton destruction of items, including a pickup-truck hood, phone books, a wooden pallet, an air-hockey table, a bicycle, a cinder block, a television and a baguette. Then, with the tip of the blade in a vice, Max bends The Deuce to a cringe-worthy 90 degrees.

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The video finishes with Joey chopping at a concrete Jersey barrier until, after all the absurd abuse, the blade finally snaps and nearly hits Chris, manning the camera. It’s mayhem and metal. “Man, we did a lot more drinking back then,” says Joey, drinking. In 2015, Max parted ways with Zombie Tools in a not-entirely-amicable break. A couple years after that, Chris took a buyout of his stake in the company. But ZT continues on in the same vein as ever, although it is, apparently, considerably more productive than it once was. The chemistry of the crew is the easy rapport of bartenders, or at least a group of people who met at the bar while drunk. Or who think that working

with people who care about what they’re creating is a damn fine thing. The entire ZT employee manual consists of 22 words stretched over four pages. Page one: Zombie Tools Employee Manuel [sic]. Page two: Don’t be a dick. Page three: Hot things are hot, sharp things are sharp. Page four: The eye of tightness never blinks. Watching the seven men and three women go about their business — prodding each other, listening to the Beastie Boys (Thursday, the day of my visit, is throwback hiphop day) as they roll in and out of the shop as needed — it’s obvious the group takes their work, if not themselves, seriously. They are stewards of a righteous thing, sailors aboard a pirate ship, co-conspira-

tors. A largely self-taught pack of craftspeople who have been successful enough to support their off-kilter lifestyle by creating tools ostensibly made for what amounts to an internet meme run amok. But it was never about the zombies, was it? It was about grabbing two fistfuls of fuck yeah in the rush of a suitably dark, fun moment in pop culture. Zombie Tools may be a company built on archaic weapons, but theirs is a uniquely modern story. Around noon, Joey calls for an impromptu lunch, and five of us head to the nearby German-themed brew pub. The Zombie Tools folks are familiar faces. By the time we’re done, we’ve had enough beer that I wonder how Joey and the others could possibly continue working with very dangerous machines to make very sharp things. I needn’t have worried. No work gets done that afternoon. People start congregating in Bay 9, a de facto clubhouse and company showroom. Beer continues to flow freely. The conversation veers wildly. By 6:30 p.m. I have to go, and so I do. The party shows no signs of stopping.

THE CHEMISTRY OF THE CREW IS THE EASY RAPPORT OF BARTENDERS, OR AT LEAST A GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO MET AT THE BAR WHILE DRUNK. T H E C RAFTS M AN S H IP ISSU E G E A R PATROL

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JIM Murra� HAS A Metho�

T�e of by chris wright p h o t o c o u r t e s y o f j i m m u r r ay

Colorful whiskey critic and author Jim Murray opens up about his ascetic tasting methods, the “utterly vile” horrors of sulfurous whiskey and the power to start the occasional fistfight in a liquor store. im Murray wants to talk to me about the Bible. We’re sitting in a small conference room in a hotel in Longview, Texas, where Murray will soon be spreading the gospel. He’s dressed in a white jacket and a fedora, with a ruddy face and a Cockney accent so thick it nearly drips onto the table. His contentment seems palpable. But when I bring up the question of who publishes his Good Book — that is, his divisively popular Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible — his white whiskers twitch. “I’ll show you a picture of a publisher I know,” says Murray. “Give me a moment.” As he scrolls through his phone, searching for the picture, I think, What the hell do I care what his publisher looks like? Murray turns his phone and shows me a picture of a vulture. Which is to say: Jim Murray is a goofball (and, for the record, an amateur ornithologist), and he is very sure he will only ever self-publish his intricate and shockingly comprehensive Bible, which he’s done annually since 2003. In the process, Murray has become one of the world’s most influ-

ential whiskey critics, and his Whisky Bible has become one of the longest-running whiskey-review collections in the world. It contains three main sections: a short but extremely methodical guide to whiskey tasting using his rigorous and proprietary “Murray Method;” some 350 pages of scores and extensive notes on over 4,500 Scotches, bourbons, ryes, Irish whiskeys and others; and a short list of that year’s top scorers, topped by a single, definitive best whiskey, dubbed “World Whisky of the Year.” Murray’s decisions regarding those winners can rock the spirits world and cause bedlam at liquor stores. After Murray named a $30 bottle of Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye the best whiskey of 2017, reviewers and fans worldwide argued viciously over the decision — but the whiskey sold out everywhere, and even caused, according to Murray, “a fight over the last bottle in one Canadian store.” The police, Murray says with relish, had to be called in to restore order. On the surface, selecting a sole winner across all whiskey categories in a given

year — not to mention the feat of tasting almost 1,500 new whiskies, which he slogs through in his basement “whiskey lab” in the English countryside — can seem like hubris, or grandstanding. But watching Murray in action suggests otherwise. At the bourbon tasting in Longview, I observe as he holds a roomful of thirsty Texans in check, forbidding them from swallowing a single drop of the sweet stuff, or even talking, for over an hour. Instead they sip, spit and take notes while “listening to the whiskey.” The Texans start out frustrated. Then they turn awestruck. Murray has immense industry expertise, a convincing personal brand and an established soap box from which to shout his commandments. Search him online and you’ll find a battle raging among whiskey nerds: Murray is either a powerhouse taster or a self-serving hack. To his credit, Murray handles it all with his oddball sense of humor and an insistence that drinkers try his method before deciding for themselves. His gospel is simply a reflection of its author: former journalist, master taster, raconteur and, above all, whiskey fanatic.

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You self-publish your book. Why?

I don’t like publishers. The Jim Murray name is protected. It is trademarked. The “Whisky Bible” is trademarked. And I've learned from experience that having other people publish your books is extremely painful. I can control what goes into the book, and what doesn't go into the book. By owning the publishing company, [I can make sure] that people don't renege on what they’re going to say and put in advertising, which then compromises me. It makes me look as though I'm someone’s stooge. So it's a question of control.

Where are you at right now in terms of getting the new Whisky Bible ready?

I’m frighteningly behind schedule. I was doing some shows in India, and I didn’t actually leave the hotel I was staying at, didn't take any chances catching anything, right? I took certain foods with me from England, everything was prepacked. And then two days after I got back I was really, really ill. I had a virus and I couldn't work for a month. So basically, I have been doing twenty-five whiskeys a day, every single day. It is really hard work.

What's a good day like when you get through and taste all twenty-five?

I try to do them in batches of five. Then I rest my palate for a while, go back to taste another five. If I'm going to eat, then I will probably select a whiskey that I know has at least a fifty percent chance of having some sulfur on it. It may be a whiskey that's been matured in a sherry cask. I will usually have one of those before I eat, because that gives me a chance for my palate to be restored. And that means I can get through the sulfur ones.

What does it taste like, sulfurous whiskey?

It’s filthy, horrible, disgusting, mouth-numbing, vile. I mean utterly vile. There’s no particular words that can describe it. Even those words aren’t as accurate as you want them to be because it’s just a unique disgustingness.

Do you taste the whiskeys blind?

No, I’ve got to know who they are. I will look at the distillery and say, “Okay, it's Glenn-whatever, twelve years old.” Well, I know what scope they've got for twelve years. I know what the first- and third-fill bourbon tastes like, and then what sherry first and third sherry tastes like. What it’s like when you blend them around, what they’re going for. You can't judge what the blender’s trying to do if you're doing it blind.

“BY THE TIME I GET TO BED, I'M MENTALLY DEAD, BECAUSE OF THE CONCENTRATION THAT'S GONE INTO IT”

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Tell me a little bit about the craft of whiskey tasting.

“THAT WHISKEY IS SINGING TO YOU, IT'S ON YOUR LAP, KISSING YOUR CHEST”

When you’re tasting for the Whisky Bible, you know full well that if you write a really bad review, that whiskey may not sell. It could certainly impact it. Just imagine how some bloke who’s mortgaged his house to the hilt, and his wife’s not happy about that, but he says, “I gotta do this,” and she supports him. And then I give that whiskey 3.5 seconds of my life, and I’m in a bad mood, and I say, “Well, this is very average.” What’s gonna happen to that distillery, that person, that marriage? If my throat isn’t working right, I don’t taste. The responsibility that comes with what I do is quite scary. So I treat every whiskey the same. I’ll give it the same amount of time, and the same amount of respect. If my taste buds aren’t right, I won’t work. Which is another reason my love life is shit. Because if you catch a cold off a girl — [from] the moment you get a sore throat [to] the moment you get rid of your cold is, on average, seventeen days. You’re then behind schedule for half a month. Basically, I’m the most antisocial bastard for most of my life.

I don’t think it’s a science, because I’m about the most unscientific Your tasting setup, it sounds person you can possibly find. Do you know soccer? laboratory-like. You talk about controls. It sounds scientific. Is whiskey tasting a science or an art?

Sure, a little.

What’s your favorite team?

The New York Red Bulls.

Let’s say you go over and you train for six months with the first team at the Red Bulls. Would you get on the first team?

No.

Because you don’t have inherent skill. You haven’t got the thing that cannot be trained. If I train with a [whiskey] blender, all I can do is teach him or her how to actually understand the whiskey: to get their palate sharpened, how to translate the whiskey, how to spot problems. You can only do that to a degree. If they haven't got the empirical skill, where they actually feel the whiskey, you can only teach them so much.

Who do you craft the Whisky Bible for? What are your guiding principles?

I stay away from other whiskey writers because I don’t think they’ve got the same perception I have. My natural instinct is to write for the public. The whole point of the Whisky Bible is not for the industry; it’s so people don’t buy a shitty whiskey. I want to promote and make the guys who make good whiskey feel good, because I think they deserve a pat on the back. But I have no qualms about kicking a distillery that makes bad whiskey — and they might make good whiskey, but produce a bad whiskey — I have no problem whatsoever with kicking them in the nuts. When you’re writing, you’ve learned as a genuine journalist, you write for the public. And the Bible is writing for the public. I can’t say that other people that write about whiskey are [necessarily] doing that. So I keep my distance. I do my own thing. And if it means I don’t get on with people, I don’t care.

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You still sound like a journalist.

I’m just interested in doing the best I can to make the Bible as complete and honest as it can possibly be. At least for the Bible, if I criticize someone, they’ve been criticized in a way that they’ve gotten the fairest crack of the whip. And equally, if they’ve been praised, it’s not because I just love that brand. I spend a lot of time looking for the faults. You look for the faults of a whiskey before you look for anything else. If you don’t find the faults, you move onto the next stage, and the points start piling up.

What do you think of the state of the whiskey-review world right now?

To be honest, I don't try to look at it too often, because I don't want, subliminally, to have a view of a whiskey until I’ve tasted it, if that makes sense. But I don't get, for instance — you know these competitions where you go off and get an award, gold, silver, you know? You get a bunch of people to taste sixty whiskies in one morning. I don’t get it. How can you judge sixty? You've only got to get one of them that's got a bit of sulfur on it, and then your taste buds are fucked. I mean, it takes me half an hour minimum to get the bloody sulfur [off] my palate. I read tasting notes from other people, just out of interest. Where have they tasted it? Have they tasted it in their kitchen? Have they just eaten a spicy meal? When people buy the Whisky Bible, I can tell them: The food that I’m going to have eaten beforehand will be the most boring food they’ve ever seen in their lives. A cheese roll is about as exciting as it gets for me when I’m writing. I don’t smoke. The area in which the whiskey is tasted is a controlled area. If there are any aromas coming in, I stop. I don’t wear aftershave. Everything is totally controlled. It’s never tasted at the distillery, so you don’t get that extra romance.

“KENTUCKY MAKES THE BEST WHISKEY. NOT JUST IN THE U.S.A. BUT THE WORLD”

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Have you ever regretted a decision you've made in the Whisky Bible? In picking a winner, or how you reviewed a whiskey?

No, I’ve never regretted it, because I think every single one has been done honestly, and I would stand by it. And every single one I've ever tasted, I've never gone back to it and thought, Oh, God, I’ve got that completely wrong. No, I've never regretted anything. I've sometimes cursed that I've given an award to someone who I don't like. You know, the point is you can’t punish the child because of the parent. So it doesn't matter whether you like the owner or not. It's the whiskey you're judging, not them.

How the hell do you pull off choosing a single best whiskey of the year?

I can't tell you how hard that is. Actually, sometimes, the whiskey is so damn good that it just leaps out and you think, Okay, this is the winner, but I'm going to have to try against everything else, because it may be me who is wrong. And then you try against all the others, but [it] just absolutely walks it. And then there's other years where it really is a battle to find that winner. And you think, Well, which one is giving me a hard-on? And you know that one is doing it. It is something inside you. It's like a whiskey song. And you can feel it.

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“THERE IS A BOOK IN WHICH I MAKE A NOTE OF HOW MANY WHISKIES I DO EVERY DAY. IT'S GOT EVERY SINGLE THING FROM THE LAST FIVE YEARS. THAT WILL GO ON EBAY FOR A BIT ONE DAY” Do you feel like you know the winning formula for making whiskey? The winners that you pick are so broad: Japanese whisky, Canadian rye, Texas whiskey. Is there something that connects all of them, the fabric of a good, consistent whiskey maker?

I think there is. I’m a consultant blender as well, and you can tell a whiskey that has been properly blended. And the blender in me, I think, can feel it. You actually feel the whiskey. So if I tried to create whiskey as a blender, I actually just close my eyes and think about the whiskies that they’ve got. And I literally just contemplate it and picture it in my mind and I feel it. I can feel it. I'm thinking, Christ, I can feel what the blender was doing with it. I can see what they are doing. Then you actually feel the whiskey. That may sound complete and utter bullshit. But it's true. It's like a piece of music. You know, you get a piece of music, and it absolutely just goes into every pore of your body and goes through your spine and through your brain. And it's exactly the same with the great whiskey — you feel it. That's how I can tell whether it's great whiskey.

The Murray Method reminds me in some ways of meditation, in that it tries to remove every outside influence possible and make you really focus on the liquid.

I can always look up the day that John Lennon was shot, because I'd actually spent that night with a woman who was a hypnotist. And I said to her, “Is sex better when you’re hypnotized?” And she said, “Well, let's find out.” So, she hypnotized me. And Christ, it was. The Murray Method is a bit like that.

You’ll have to explain that.

Because it brings everything out more vividly, doesn’t it? You know, instead of it just being a whiskey sitting in the glass, suddenly it's a lot more. And this is the same when you're having sex when you’re hypnotized. It suddenly becomes a lot more.

One of the most distinctive things about you and your brand of tasting is that you tell everyone exactly how you do it, and how militant you are about it.

Absolutely. You know, every whiskey is tasted with the Murray Method. Every single one. I will never taste the whiskey within the distillery. I wouldn’t do it. It'll always be somewhere neutral. And to be honest, I haven’t got time to worry about how other people do it. All I know is that it takes my entire life to do what I do. I haven't got time for other things, and I just concentrate on doing what I do, absolutely right.

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In a small town in the Hoosier State, Janus Motorcycles builds charmingly pure bikes with the help of (very) old-school local craftsmen. text by will sabel courtney photos by chandler bondurant

About a 45-minute drive from South Bend and just nine miles from the Michigan border, Goshen lies in Elkhart County, in the part of Indiana known as “Michiana.” In addition to boasting a sizeable Amish and Mennonite population, the area is home to dozens of recreational vehicle manufacturers; more than 80 percent of such vehicles sold in America are made around here, earning the city of Elkhart the unofficial nickname of “RV Capital of the World.”

IN THE BEGINNING... Janus Motorcycles grew out of a moped gang. Founders Devin Biek and Richard Worsham were both riders of the small, oft-maligned two-wheelers when they met in 2007 in Elkhart, Indiana. Together, they began building custom mopeds, but the desire for something more kept tugging at them. “Everyone wanted us to take a moped and turn it into a tiny motorcycle,” Biek says. When the Great Recession crippled the market for fancy mopeds, the duo relocated down the road to Goshen (population: 33,000), where they found success

designing exhaust pipes that unlocked extra sound and power from the engine- and pedal-powered machines. That led them to craftsmen within the local Amish community, who could build the parts more efficiently than they could themselves. This, in turn, gave them the manufacturing base to push into building their own motorcycles, starting with a run of 43 50cc bikes. Today, the company makes three separate models — a scrambler, an early 1900s Gran Prix-style bike and a classic motorcycle reminiscent of a Brough Superior — all powered by the same 229cc single-cylinder motor.

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GO SMALL OR GO HOME Richard’s background in architecture is clear in the clean, straightforward lines and minimalist forms that define Janus designs. While the bikes may seem retro, that’s due more to convergent evolution than homage: just like motorcycles of nearly a century ago, Janus’s models only recently matured from simple pedal-powered machines. That design not only makes them light (the best-selling Halcyon weighs in at 263 pounds), but easy to maintain. Unlike homegrown giants like HarleyDavidson or Indian, Janus lacks the resources to go big, with a design “just as influenced by our manufacturing limitations” as anything else, according to marketing head Grant Longenbaugh. The company’s small-town headquarters, a former drive-thru laundromat, are roughly the size of a one-story house, and the shops that make its various components are not much larger.

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The drawings splashed across the walls of Janus’s headquarters during our visit were created using all sorts of media: pencil, pen, CAD. What they don’t reveal, however, are the many metals used to build those parts: the air box and fuel tank are aluminum; the frame and forks made from mild steel; the exhaust hammered out of stainless steel.

AT JANUS, EVERY DAY IS THROWBACK THURSDAY The Amish guard their privacy religiously; they won’t be named in print, and they won’t be photographed — not their faces, at least. Hands are fair game. Those hands stay busy, too: one family uses a generator, located beside the chicken coop in an oversized garage, to churn out the aluminum and steel pieces that will puzzle together into the bike’s skeleton. (Church law forbids a connection to the power grid.) Another cuts the leather for the saddles, by hand, in a one-room shop heated by a wood stove. Yet another machines fine parts on decades-old analog equipment, the acrid sting of burning metal mixing with the sweet smell of grass drifting in from the cornfield just outside the open door.

MIGHTY MITE PART MAKERS Janus found most of its suppliers the old-fashioned way: word of mouth. One recommended another, who recommended another, until they’d assembled a team capable of producing a bike. As a result, the vendors are all located within roughly 20 miles of the factory, in the heart of Indiana’s Amish country. While some also crank out matériel at impressive scale — the welding and laser cutting shop also slices out parts for pontoon boats and buses — they’re generally small family concerns; some are as small as a single worker. Many have been building out their own operations specifically for Janus.

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THE CAREFUL WORK OF PAINTING THE DETAILS TAKES TIME. “A BIKE LIKE THIS WITH THE DOUBLE PINSTRIPE TAKES MAYBE THREE OR FOUR HOURS,” BORDEN SAYS.

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Painting the details onto the aluminum and steel of each bike falls to Kelly Borden, the tattooed artist who must balance speed and precision when applying the fast-drying pinstripe paint. ri g ht

Final assembly is done by Ryan Roberts and Kevin Hathaway on a simple stand in the middle of the shop floor. The facility, rich with gun-store odors of wood, metal and oil, is spotless, a testament to twice-weekly afternoon cleaning sessions.

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( ri g ht , cont . ) Once assembled, each bike is taken for a quick spin along the local country lanes (except in winter, when a dry run through the gears suffices) before the machine is handed off to its new owner. And there are more new owners than ever. Last year, the company sold 160 motorcycles; by the middle of July 2019, Janus had already moved 94 bikes out the door.

PULLING IT TOGETHER The finished pieces are brought to the shop, where they’re stacked alongside similar components in a tiny room the team calls “the supermarket.” Here, the small assembly team (the entire Janus workforce is just 11 strong) turns 150 to 200 parts into a single, cohesive machine. Not everything is Hoosier-sourced. Due to federal regulations around motor vehicle

parts, a few pieces — electronics, wheels, the engine — can’t be made locally, or at least not affordably. The motor, a 229cc single-cylinder that can trace its roots back to a Honda motor half its size, from the 1970s, comes from a no-name supplier in China. It’s a simple, durable power plant designed for developing markets where its 14 horsepower is more than sufficient.

The leather that goes onto every Janus bike comes from one man, who works out of his barn next to the kennels where his children breed beagles. He’s also responsible for the leather-and-waxedcanvas bags the company sells, which they used as fodder for the Kickstarter campaign that helped launch the brand. “We took a saddlemaker, and asked him to make bags for us,” Biek says.

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Co-founder Devin Biek (left) has been enamored with two-wheeled machines ever since he saw his first Vespa as a teenager. That passion eventually spurred him to create Motion Left Mopeds, which in turn paved the way for Janus Motorcyles.

BUILDING BIKES BUILDS COMMUNITY The Janus Halcyon 250 classic motorcycle seen here is the company’s best-selling model, accounting for over 80 percent of orders since the company started building larger-engined bikes. All three motorcycles start at the same $6,995 price, but the options list runs long. Longenbaugh says most buyers wind up adding $800 in amenities like LED headlights, pillion seats and polished exhausts. There’s no dealership network (“our YouTube channel is our dealership,” Longenbaugh says, only half-joking) so buyers either have their motorcycles shipped to them or come to Indiana to pick up their rides in person. When the bikes require maintenance, Janus refers owners to trusted mechanics in their area. The small community of owners also takes care of one another: there’s a private Facebook group for Janus buyers, and for the past two years the company has held an annual owners’ rally in Goshen.

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SMALL BIKES, BIG PLANS According to Biek, the company has considered venture capital to help them grow, but has so far largely avoided it; VCs are hungry for short-term returns more than sustained growth, he says, and they have no intention of flipping Janus for a big payday. Instead, the company has leaned on local connections. Besides Amish builders, Janus counts a homegrown ally in the form of an ex-Honeywell engineer who helped design the fuel-intake system, leaning on his prior experience working on the afterburners for the supersonic SR-71 Blackbird aircraft. “We’ve

had so many people help us along the way,” Biek says. Janus will be profitable at the 250-bikesper-year mark, according to Biek; at double that sales pace, the company might expand beyond motorcycles. “Rich and I want to do cars — we want to do three-wheeled vehicles,” Biek says. A tall order, sure. But considering how far they’ve come in the last decade, don’t be surprised if, in another 10 years, you pass a striking and elegantly simple Janus automobile on a road somewhere far from The Maple City of Goshen, Indiana.

INTEL

It’s great to be a connoisseur, but why not pick up a craft yourself? It can be as simple as curating your own custom style (p.164) — or, breaking out the toolbox and building a fire pit, or a sundial (p.186). Maybe glassblowing (p.180) is more your style? Even as arcade diehards and badass bowyers (p.166) work to keep fading arts alive, technology is transforming how we’ll interact with the cars of tomorrow (p.188) thanks to things like self-driving capability and open-source schematics. Or maybe your true calling is something that not even the most powerful quantum computer (p.192) has yet imagined, in any of its infinite parallel universes. The possibilities are endless. 163

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SIGNATURE STYLE, SIMPLIFIED photo by chandler bondurant

Crafting a considered personal style doesn’t have to mean spending thousands on madeto-order gear. Many brands specialize in endlessly adaptable items that bridge the gap between mass-produced and fully bespoke. Choose your own combination of material, color and style for a one-of-a-kind creation, or pick up some aftermarket modifications to customize what you already own until it’s yours, uniquely.

facin g pa g e , clockwise from top left

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ENLIGHTENED EQUIPMENT REVELATION CUSTOM TRAIL QUILT $215+

TECNICA PLASMA HIKING SHOE $150+

ATELIER SAVAS DENHAM LEATHER JACKET $2,500 V-MODA CROSSFADE M-100 MASTER HEADPHONES $250

NIKE BY YOU SNEAKERS $95+ HAWTHORNE COLOGNE SET $100

SCHOOLHOUSE HARDWARE $34+

PHILIPS HUE WITH BLUETOOTH, WHITE AND COLOR AMBIANCE $50

INCASE HARDSHELL IN WOOLENEX FOR MACBOOK PRO $70

QUODDY TRUE PENNYLOAFER $345 CARE/OF CUSTOM VITAMINS $5+/MONTH PREMIUM POPSOCKET GRIPS $15+ BAS AND LOKES CUSTOM WATCH STRAPS $160+

DIE HARD From bows made with animal guts to sports cars made from wood, these boutique brands are helping keep alive products and techniques that might otherwise fade away forever.

HANDMADE BOWS Wander off the grid near Mt. Hood, Oregon, and there’s a chance you’ll stumble upon the solarpowered Raptor Archery workshop where Ted Fry handcrafts bows and arrows from wood, animal sinews and sharpened stone. And according to Fry, those aren’t the only ingredients: “A craftsman puts his heart and soul into every piece.” In addition to the material (and metaphysical) components, time is also a factor. From felled tree to finished product, Fry spends up to 60 hours crafting one “self” bow from a single piece of wood — and that doesn’t count the time necessary to age, say, a Pacific Yew log to perfection before construction even begins — which can take years.

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Bows require an exact balance of tension and compression for performance, and wood is a dynamic substance. To foster the continuation of the craft, Fry teaches classes to everyone from troubled youths to Native American tribal councils. His lesson, aside from the actual bow-making, is that crafting something with your hands is its own reward — and that it’s often much, much harder than it seems. “When schoolkids see the finished bows with $700, $1,000 price tags, they say ‘I’m gonna get rich,’” Fry says with a laugh. “By the end of the class, they say I don’t charge enough.” — Steve Mazzucchi

photo by chandler bondurant

Raptor Archery Mt. Hood, Oregon

POCKET WATCH MOVEMENTS

photo courtesy of coggiola

Coggiola Watch Roma Rome, Italy

After growing up in California, Sebastien Salvado got a doctorate in medieval music, but today he lives in Rome where he spends long hours laboriously crafting custom wristwatches from antique pocket watch movements. Salvado started his watchmaking company, Coggiola Watch Roma, despite having no formal training, aside from sourcing vintage watch movements for Christie’s auction house — a job that brought him money but not fulfillment. “I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to take a chance here, at something I want to do,’” he says. Salvado starts with an antique English pocket watch movement from his own collection, which he repairs and refurbishes to painstaking detail. It’s a complex job. “Usually, back then, it was an entire family working at making parts, then putting them all together

and doing the finishing by hand,” he says. Salvado then fashions a unique case for the movement from blocks of bronze, brass or steel. The handmade cases are more an exercise in sculpture than traditional watchmaking, and each project requires custom tools, which Salvado also makes. Coggiola Watch Roma produces at a cautious pace of six watches per year, and for good reason: for one case, Salvado worked on just the lugs for three months. For now, Salvado’s work isn’t profitable, which isn’t surprising given that he sells his bespoke timepieces for under €2,000 each. But it’s part of a plan to make his own movements, and eventually entirely custom-made pieces, under the Coggiola Watch Roma name. In the meantime, Salvado considers the work an apprenticeship with himself. “It’s a privilege,” he says. — Chris Wright

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ARCADE MACHINES Classic Arcade Restorations Staten Island, New York

photo istock

The heyday of the corner arcade filled with coin-op machines clanging and screaming for your quarters is over, but demand for those classic games is on the rise among gamers who have outgrown the single play and can now afford to buy the whole machine. With the likes of Asteroids and Galaga long out of production, it falls to die-hard fans like Jeffrey Matthews to maintain and restore what cabinets already exist, which he does from Classic Arcade Restorations, his workshop in Staten Island, New York. “The restoration of the cabinet is the easy part,” Matthews says. “What really becomes a challenge is to make sure it works as it should, because no matter how good you are and how careful you are restoring the electronics, there’s always a gremlin in there somewhere.” Despite the ever-dwindling supply of retro electronics, repairs have actually become easier. “Back in the late eighties it was very difficult to find parts,” Matthews says. “You would have to scavenge from one game in order to fix another.” Now, with the help of the internet, Matthews maintains a just-in-case collection of whatever components he can track down. “When you need them, they’re impossible to find. So my inventory for the classics is extensive to say the least,” he says. For Matthews, the reward isn’t just saving the cabinets but preserving the joy those machines bring. “When you deliver that final product, you get a smile from a person amazed, and that makes your day.” — Eric Limer

WOOD-FRAMED CARS

photo courtesy of morgan motors

Morgan Motors Malvern Link, England When H.F.S. Morgan crafted his first namesake vehicle, in 1909, his product was modern: an ash frame affixed to a steel ladder-frame chassis under metal body panels was in line with English coachbuilt autos of the era. More than a century later, as sleek electric cars roll off robotically-assisted assembly lines elsewhere in the world, some of Morgan Motor Company’s century-old woodworking tools are still in use at the brand’s Malvern Link factory in England’s West Midlands. The new cars do have modern touches — today’s Morgan chassis is made from strong, lightweight aluminum instead of the traditional steel — but the core of the vehicle’s body is still made from rigid, durable ash wood. That traditional approach is a point of differentiation for the brand, and also a point of pride. One need not fix what isn’t broken, the company thinking goes, and a wooden frame keeps the machine lithe, a coveted attribute in a sports car. (The company also claims its wooden

frames receive superior crash-test ratings.) Wood is also relatively simple to work with — though that’s not to say the process is easy. Each component is marked from a template, cut, routed and joined, glued and sanded. As the pieces come together, the larger unit is dipped in a treatment solution and then hand-sanded before a quality-control inspection. Finally, aluminum body panels are added atop the structure. The process requires eight weeks of labor, and Morgan’s 180 workers complete around 800 cars per year. And aside from necessary wiring, there’s virtually no plastic in (or on) a Morgan vehicle. If you’re wondering how well century-old automotive manufacturing techniques hold up, Morgan reports that when a Roadster model built in the 1950s was recently delivered to the factory for a refinishing, the frame was devoid of rot or other imperfections. Try saying that about a Chrysler Imperial from the same era. — Sean Evans

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WORK/WEAR Modeled on Brooklyn-based artist Othelo Gervacio and interior designer Niya Bascom, fallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best layers are comfortable in the studio, on the town and wherever life takes you in between. styled by john zientek p h o t o s b y r ya n p l e t t

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18 East coat, $265; Los Angeles Apparel t-shirt, $24; Cheap Monday jeans, artist’s own; Dr. Martens 101 Gusset boots, $145

Vintage hat, designer’s own; Randt long shirt, $233

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Los Angeles Apparel t-shirt, $24; Cheap Monday jeans, artist’s own facin g pa g e

The Elder Statesman cashmere sweater, $1,665 at Mr Porter; Big Smith overalls, artist’s own

OTHELO GERVACIO 35-year-old Virginia Beach native Othelo Gervacio has been living in New York since 2005, when he began working for tattoo artist Scott Campbell. Though he once worked as an art director for creative agency Alldayeveryday — Gervacio studied communications and art direction at Virginia Commonwealth University — his most recent career, as a multidisciplinary artist, has garnered a lot of attention lately. With subjects ranging from precisely rendered skeletons to pop culture tropes to photorealistic flowers, his work has found a diverse variety of homes, including the Joshua Liner Gallery, in Manhattan; Numbers Edition skateboard decks; and t-shirts from Virgil Abloh’s Off-White label.

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Visvim Dotera coat, $2,335 at Mr Porter; Faherty henley, $68; Kapital Monkey Cisco jeans, $405 at Mr Porter; Arvin Goods Ribbed socks, $32; New Balance 990v5 sneakers, $175; Tiffany 1837 Makers ID chain bracelet, $5,500; Tudor Black Bay chronograph, $6,800; Barton Perreira Thurston sunglasses, $395

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NIYA BASCOM Niya Bascom was born in London but grew up in New York City. He studied photography and film at NYC’s Hunter College, and subsequently worked in the film industry doing set design. Bascom has also held positions in several art departments and worked as a photographer, displaying his work at Danny Simmons’ Rush Arts Gallery and the Polish embassy. In 2008, Bascom co-founded Ishka Designs with interior designer Anishka Clarke. Specializing in restaurants, residences and multi-use retail, the duo has garnered glowing recognition for their eclectic, minimalist aesthetic.

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Vintage hat, designer’s own; Comme des Garçons Shirt long tunic, $343; Monitaly trousers, $374; Greats Court sneakers, $179; Tiffany 1837 Makers cuff, $3,800, 3.1 Phillip Lim 31 Hour bag, $995

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Vintage hat, designerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own; Randt long shirt, $233; Ashya Anjuna belt bag, $595

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Vintage hat, designer’s own; Yashiki Uminari Knit coat, $527; The Brooklyn Circus tunic, designer’s own; Homme Plissé Issey Miyake trousers, $335; S.W.C. Dellow Canvas sneakers, $89; Tiffany 1837 Makers cuff, $3,800

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AT WORK

MICHAEL DAVIS GLASS text by will price photos by henry phillips

Every morning at 8 a.m., in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge, Michael Davis arrives at an ivy-covered brick compound in Long Island City. Inside his studio you’ll see basic glass fabrication and repairs, but Davis is known mostly for his replicas. Century-old chandelier components and other ancient glass oddities come through his workshop for painstaking duplication. But even the simplest of shapes demands mastery; glassmaking is a sequential, teamoriented and highly time-sensitive process, and failure at any point means starting from scratch. The gaffer leads the dance — sometimes this is Davis, sometimes not — by gathering melted glass from a 2,000-degree furnace onto the end of a long, hollow rod. In the brief moments the glass is outside the blaze, the gaffer shapes it into a cylinder by rolling it against a flat surface before blasting it again in a gas-fired crucible. The glass must always remain in motion, so an assistant glassmaker turns the rod continuously as

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the inferno does its work. A visible wall of heat bursts forth when the furnace door opens, and the gaffer once again sets to work, this time with oversized tweezers, called “jacks,” that are used to coax the piece into its final form. Once the gaffer is satisfied, the blowing process starts, expanding the hot glass with air like inflating a balloon through a massive straw. It’s a multistage process; at the first nascent signs of a bubble, the glass is plunged yet again into the crucible for another round of heat. When the mass is pulled from the orange-red interior for the final time, the tension in the shop rises. The gaffer wields a blowtorch, applying a precise ring of heat to detach the shaped glass from the rod. At the moment of truth, the rod is tapped and the glass snaps free, plunging into an assistant’s gloved hands before being whisked away to cool. Only after all this is even the most simple piece — in this case a humble orb — considered complete.

HOW TO DIY i l l u s t r at i o n s b y h a i s a m h u s s e i n

How to build, dye, make, erect and dig it.

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BUILD A BETTER KEYBOARD 5

1. Switch on: The physical switches that give a mechanical keyboard its satisfying feel come in several flavors. Tactile switches register a small, subtle “bump” as you press down; linear switches travel smoothly from top to bottom and are the quietest you can find; and clicky switches emit a sharp click you can feel (and hear) from the other side of the office. 2. Pick a kit: Keyboard kits come with all the components you need, and in a variety of sizes. You can start small — a humble number pad with barely a dozen keys — or just spare, with a “60 percent”-style keyboard that’s popular for its compact design that omits the function keys above the number row. Full-size boards have everything you could want (and more) but require a not-insignificant amount of soldering. 3. Solder in formation: Snap your switches into your keyboard’s metal plate and place the plate carefully onto the printed circuit board (PCB) that contains all the keyboard’s wiring. Solder each switch to the PCB at the points where the switch’s two metal legs poke through the board.

WARNING! Once you start soldering, it’s very hard to undo.

4. Case the joint: When the soldering is done, the bulk of the assembly is, too. Place your hard work inside its case to protect the sensitive electrical parts from dust and grime.

5. Finishing touch: Take your keycaps — the plastic bits with the letters that your fingers actually touch — and gently press each one down on the cross-shaped stem of its associated switch. Later on, for a keyboard that feels like new, you can swap out your original keycaps for one of hundreds of aftermarket sets that suit your style. 6. Type test: Plug your keyboard in with a USB cable and start banging away.

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MAKE AN ENERGY BAR 1. Pantry raid: You’ll need honey, peanut butter and a mix of dry items to form the base — a mixture of organic raw oats, dark or milk chocolate chunks, and raisins is a good start. 2. Melt ’n’ mix: Place peanut butter and honey in a saucepan over medium heat and stir together until soft and runny. Meanwhile, mix together dry ingredients. 3. Remix time: Add peanut butter and honey mixture to dry ingredients and stir to evenly combine. 4. Play with your food: Using your hands, form the mixture into whatever basic shapes you like. Refrigerate overnight on a nonstick surface and you’ll have delicious and energy-dense workout fuel in time for breakfast.

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PRO TIP: Vary portion size for more refueling options later says Kate Schade, founder of Kate’s Real Food, and hand-rolled bar-making boss.

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TIE YOUR DYE

1. Gear up: For a straightforward tie-dye technique you’ll need a t-shirt, dye, a few buckets, some rubber bands, a pair of rubber gloves and some plastic bags. When you have everything together, soak the shirt in water for about 20 minutes, then remove and blot excess water with a towel before dying. 2. Do the twist: Lay the wet shirt flat, then twist and fold it to build the base of your design. (If you want a classic spiral pattern, choose twists over folds.) Use rubber bands to secure the shirt in its final, tangled shape. 3. Soak it in: After diluting your dyes according to instructions, spread them all over the shirt. You can apply color carefully with a squeeze bottle or dip big swaths of mate-

rial into a bucket of dye. Don’t worry if the colors overlap a little — it’s basically inevitable. 4. Hang time: Your specific brand of dye will have instructions for exactly how long it needs to sit, but be prepared to wait for at least an hour until the shirt fully absorbs the color. Once it’s done, rinse with water until the water runs clear. 5. Acid test: Once you rinse, soak the shirt for about an hour in a bucket with one to two cups of white vinegar and enough water to keep the shirt submerged — this keeps the colors from fading. 6. Wash + wear: After a solo trip through the washer and an air dry, you’re finally ready to let your freak flag fly.

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ERECT A SUNDIAL

1. Get on the stick: The hands of a sundial are made from shadows, so you’ll need a stick to cast them. Look for a straight stave roughly two feet long and plant it in the ground in a flat, grassy area with all-day sunshine. In the northern hemisphere, angle the stick slightly northward; in the southern hemisphere, slightly southward. 2. Ready, set: In the morning, once a shadow appears, place a stone or draw a mark in the dirt where the “hand” ends. For a dial that can tell the exact time, use a watch to

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mark the exact location on the first hour. 3. Dial in: Set an alarm to go off every hour — or any other interval that interests you, really — and return to mark the hand’s location each time until the sun sets. 4. Good timing: The next time the sun rises, you’ll have a clock that never needs winding, polishing or power of any kind.

CAUTION: Passing clouds may affect readability

DIG A FIRE PIT 1. Get stoned: For a proper pit, you’ll need fire brick — don’t use cheap patio stone, which can’t take the heat and will eventually explode. You’ll also need a few bags of crushed stone, stone dust, high-heat mortar, a shovel and a level. 2. Pit prep: Use the fire bricks to mark the outline of your planned pit, whether it’s a circle, rectangle or square. Use the shovel to mark the ground around the bricks’ outside edge, then remove the bricks and dig out the whole pit about a foot and a half deep to set the shape. 3. Filler time: Mix your crushed stone and stone dust with enough water to make a thin slurry and dump about a third into the pit to cover the bottom, then flatten it with the shovel. Repeat until your mixture is gone and then let dry for several hours. 4. Brick it: Ring the inside of your pit with a layer of bricks, checking to make sure each one is level. Add a few more layers of bricks above ground level to your liking, and set each new layer off-center from the last with mortar in between each brick to lock it all in place. 5. Grate job: Put charcoal inside, a grill grate on top and get cooking.

~1.5‘

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THE CONVERSATION

HACKER & RESTOMODDER edited by eric limer photos by henry phillips and courtesy of adafruit

Limor Fried is the lead engineer and founder of Adafruit Industries, an opensource hardware manufacturing company in Manhattan. She designs and fabricates electronic components for educators and professionals, making the latest electronic technology available for hackers and hackers-to-be.

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Rod Emory is the founder of Emory Motorsports in North Hollywood, California, which has been building bespoke customized Porsches for 30 years using a combination of traditional building techniques and new technologies, like 3D scanning and printing, to restore and modify cars from the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

Limor Fried: When you do a restoration, do you start with a Porsche chassis and engine block or are you actually crafting it from individual pieces? Rod Emory: We’ll go find these cars that are rusty or have been stored in an old barn for forty or fifty years. Then we’ll bring that back to our workshop and upgrade everything from the ground up. So we always start with the original. LF: So, it’s like Theseus’s Porsche? You’re replacing almost all of it, but it’s still the original. RE: Yeah, we have thousands of hours in these cars, which is why the restorations are so expensive. I learned the craft from my grandfather, a coachbuilder back in the thirties, forties and fifties. When we’re rebuilding the cars today, we employ old-school techniques like English wheels and power hammers, but we also use 3D scanning to basically build new models that we can use to recreate those pieces. LF: So, you have basically a 3D scan of every component? You obviously can’t 3D-print a chassis. It probably wouldn’t be strong enough, and definitely not cost effective. But you have everything scanned in, so in a sense you could create a Porsche from scratch if you really wanted to? It wouldn’t be original, but you have all that information? RE: We do. I’ve been in business for thirty years and so I do have probably more data and parts and more access than anybody else on the planet for these vintage cars. When we get a new model in the shop the first thing we do is scan the entire car, which gives us a database of shapes and contours of the cars. From there we can take that information and create a kind of three-dimensional grid of all that data. LF: Are you publishing this? Are you sharing it with other Porsche refurbishers or is it just kind of your IP that you’re keeping private? RE: I get calls all the time from people that say, “Hey, we’ve got an investor that wants to restamp these bodies in Asia and flood the market.” And obviously I’m not going to share the data with them because I don’t want to dilute the brand. But when I was restoring the Porsche that won Le Mans, I shared all of my data with collectors that own related cars. LF: I guess people can always just scan the cars themselves anyway, so it’s not like there’s anything stopping them. I’m sure there are message boards where people post photos and talk to each other like, “Hey, I need to find a source for this component.” With the internet, you can have this far-flung community sharing information and helping each other. RE: What led you down the path of electronics and the digital world as a child? LF: I remember when my parents got a personal computer, like your customers probably remember when they were teenagers and their dad brought home a car. It’s like, “What is this thing?” You would get schematics with them. You would have to tune them and program them, which is very different from today when you get an iPad or an iPhone, and either it works or you’re at the Genius Bar.

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“If people want to cause a lot of damage, there’s nothing stopping them right now.”

There are still large communities of people who work on older computers and restore them. They have to come up with new techniques to read the data off diskettes that are forty or fifty years old. It’s probably like some of the techniques that you’re using. “How do you restore vinyl that’s so old that when you touch it, it dissolves, in your hands?” Same thing, except with bits instead of Naugahyde. RE: What are your thoughts on electric and self-driving cars? For guys like me, it’s kind of a scary thing because we’ve spent our lives behind the wheel and now we’re thinking about cars that are going to transport us around and no longer need gas. LF: I mean, there is some point at which there will not be gas, right? There is a finite amount. It isn’t being made and you can’t get it from the moon. There always will be some gas and diesel vehicles, it just won’t be the primary source of energy for cars. I think that’s just inevitable. There are pros and cons to battery-powered vehicles. Electrical subsystems are more complicated, but you also don’t have an engine box to maintain. I think people will always be nostalgic for old cars, so you don’t have to worry about your job security. There are things that humans may not be able to react to fast enough which cause a lot of accidents. If the car is able to detect that and carefully but quickly brake, it doesn’t take away from the driving experience, but it gives it that extra safety. RE: What prevents somebody from using some type of malicious

app that can get in and disrupt the way that cars are flowing? Here in Los Angeles there are literally millions of cars, and if we get to a point where even the left two lanes are self-driving, what’s going to prevent people from doing that? I’m sure there’s talk about security measures, right? LF: Yeah. There are security measures. I mean, I don’t think cars should be on the internet, that’s probably a bad idea. But I think if people want to cause a lot of damage, there’s nothing stopping them right now. Like, I walk down the sidewalk, there’s nothing stopping a person in the vehicle from running me over. That happens in New York every few years — somebody drives onto the sidewalk and murders five or six people. Vehicle accidents and drug use are pretty much the number-one killers for people my age, so we’re actually already dealing with something that’s extremely dangerous. I think what’s funny is if cars were invented now, they probably wouldn’t [survive] because you’re giving somebody a device that weighs this much, and can go a hundred miles an hour. And what’s stopping you from going 120 miles an hour? Nothing, actually! Also, right now, the cars that people drive are already being driven by a computer. When they turn the wheel, they’re not physically turning the wheels. You know this. RE: Oh yes, I do.

LF: I think that the software quality could be improved greatly. I don’t work on that, but I hope that the companies that do can improve it. But there are trade-offs with any technology. If we have an automatic braking system, we have to think of what happens if it accidentally triggers — but also how many lives are saved when a car doesn’t spin out on the freeway and take out half a dozen more. This is something that does happen in technology: there are trade-off calculations and decisions that are getting made, and it’s really gruesome and nobody wants to think about it. But there are decisions that are made — when we add this technology, what are we going to lose and what are we going to gain? RE: If I look back at the last twenty years, obviously the internet changed all of our lives. Then just the last five, six years, at least in my world, 3D scanning, 3D printing and the ability to manipulate data has changed the game. What do you see as possibly one of the next big innovations that could change the way we live? LF: I think customization of technology is becoming more possible, which is very interesting, especially in the technology space that I’m working in. The accessibility that lets people actually go in and modify and hack their technology. You see this with Tesla and tuning cars. People haven’t really been able to tune their cars in dozens of years, but now you can. But you’re doing it in the software. Just kind of interesting and weird. A lot of technology now is so cookie-cutter. But how do we make technology that can be used by people who have different abilities than us? And how can we have open hardware so that people have the ability to share and hack technology without a company saying “No, no, no, I don’t want you to make this change, I forbid it because I want to maintain the pristineness of my brand”? RE: So, more open-source and shareable technology, so a broader spectrum of people can utilize it? LF: Exactly. I think there’s already a long-standing culture in car modding and hacking which is very vibrant. But in electronics, we don’t have that as much. It was considered kind of a defect that we had to do that kind of modification to get stuff working. People wanted ease of use. But actually, it’s cool to take technology that you have in your life and modify it, hack it. To make it more useful for people. It’s not a defect. It’s a bonus.

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FUTURISM

The computer on your desk does its thinking in “bits” — that is, binary digits that store data as a value of 0 or 1. But quantum computers, like this 2000Q by D-Wave, use units called “qubits” that can hold a value of 0, 1 or a superposition of both simultaneously. This increases the machine’s computing power exponentially, allowing it to solve problems in mere moments that would take conventional computers hundreds of years to complete. With 2,000 qubits, the D-Wave 2000Q, seen here, vies for the title of most powerful supercomputer in the world, and tech behemoths like NASA, Google and Lockheed Martin are scrambling to unlock the seemingly boundless potential of such machines to push the limits of quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. You can’t see it with human eyes, but inside a super-refrigerated circuit, the world of tomorrow is being constructed.

p h o t o c o u r t e s y o f d - wav e

QUANTUM COMPUTERS