Duffy's Brew Original Beer Shampoo

Hops, barley, malt…when enjoyed properly, these foundations of beer can be a splendid addition to the life experience. But who knew a mug of suds could help achieve beauty?

The original minds at Duffy’s Brew did.

And we are not talking about a cold one creating aesthetic pleasance via beer goggles, either. Duffy’s Brew has brought beer into the shower, and your mother would never be prouder. Why? Because of that Kennedy-esque mane, of course. With their Original Beer Shampoo, Duffy’s Brew has turned an old wives tale into a grooming revolution. The DNA of the crafts and lagers found in bars and grocery store aisles consists of vitamin B, proteins, minerals and botanical extracts of aloe leaf and acai berry; essential elements that heal hair and add body. Amino acids give our follicles a brilliant sheen, and the yeast and hops protect against date breaking entities as dandruff and flakes.

Seattle’s Elysian Brewing Company provides the stout for the shampoo and conditioner (a damn fine drink on its own merit) and Duffy’s Brew Original Beer Shampoo operates as a vegan outfit with green sensibilities.

The raw Americanism of the entire concept needs no further words.

Silver Tear Campers

Call it homage to greatness.

Handcrafted American teardrop campers were all the rage in the burgeoning days of the automobile’s transition as a mainstay and necessity to life. A hitch, a buck or two in gas and a fishing rod were the basic requirements to an outdoors excursion. Silver Tears Campers, based in Roanoke, Virginia, has resurrected the classic road-to-nature accessory. A Silver Tears camper is a throwback (’32 Ford fender, ’39 Ford teardrop LED tail lights) with modern world amenities (stainless steel ice box, hot water shower system, propane stovetops). The interior of the campers are a lesson in mahogany styled refinement; the exterior an eternal teardrop outline, a myriad of customized choices, from the sleek Black Dog to the iconic Woodie. Essentially, a Silver Tears camper is a tagalong to a man’s oneness with nature-with all of the refined accoutrements of future world refuge, should it be required.

As the folks at Silver Tears Campers say best; you'll travel light, but smart, with everything you need and nothing you don't.

http://www.silvertearscampers.com/

Sponge Balls in Pools

Summer has many measurements. Fireflies. The advent of the ice cream man. Schools close. Pools open, unfolding a three month hydro-utopia under the sun – where trials and tribulations and adventures of childhood take on a chlorinated tinge, and time is observed in aggravating adult swim periods every hour on the hour. And sullen droves of non adults clamor to the snack bar window, pavement below their bare feet darkening in the damp as water drips into dark grey blobs. The whistle blows, and the throng erupts in triumphant cheers and fist pumped “yeses!” and the disobedient run and cannonball in, and the obedient dutifully race in an awkward power walk back the pool’s edge.

One of the benchmarks of this summertime pool culture is the sponge ball. These polymer spheroids have been volleying back and forth across pools for summers on end, and remain an enduring artifact. Their inherent safety makes them a somewhat universally allowed thing in pools across the nation – an innocuous foam ball – harmless, and simple. A squeeze of the light porous material underwater instantaneously increases the weight, and subsequently the inertia of the ball. A wind up and throw from water, waist or chest deep and spirals of drops rips across the shimmer of the pool’s surface. A solid aggressive catch of the ball, and the recipient gets a satisfying dousing.

A missed catch and the ball kerplunks in the water with a deep, resonant sound evocative of the depth of summer itself. Science shows theoretical asteroid and meteor impacts with an uncannily similar splash and trajectory of debris into planetary surfaces. The sponge ball is perhaps a model of space and time, and its motion and use gives subtle insight into primordial origins and the galactic infinity of life.

As the carefree nature of childhood weans into the uncertainties of adolescence, the familiar trapping sponge ball becomes a ploy that might go something like this:

Boy A purposefully overthrows to Group of Girls C in a plausible attempt at a toss to Boy B.

Boy B apologizes to Group of Girls C for Boy A’s blunder, and a bashful conversation commences, making the sponge ball a prototypical wing man device.

For years Nerf made these simple foam toys, and several other brands followed suit. The sponge ball remains an inseparable aspect of summer pool life.

Third Coast Surf Shop

Surfing. A trope of summer, speaking of sandy beaches, sun, boards darting and bobbing in the roar of the wave. It is traditionally thought of to be a saltwater enterprise. Probably tropical in nature. But not so, well, at least not completely. Small clutches of surfing fanatics have been catching waves on the Great Lakes for years.

The Great Lakes, sometimes called the “third coast” or the “north coast” can produce powerful and sometimes large waves – which are perfect for surfing. The Third Coast Surf Shop has a store located in St. Joseph, Michigan, and a new store an hour outside of Chicago in New Buffalo, Michigan.

Due to weather patterns, and the grand hydrodynamics at play in the Great Lakes, the best times to surf, ironically, are every season but summer. Rough, turbulent swells batter the coastlines, with waves in shorter succession than their oceanic counterparts. Buoyancies and water densities are different. Surfing forecasts for even well established surfing areas on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts are still somewhat chimerical. Consequently, the third coast surfer is also part weatherman.

And, the Great Lake surfer is part daredevil. Braving the most vicious of windy days. Donning neoprene wetsuits rated to the coldest of conditions. Strapping tether to ankle, and paddling supine into a battery of waves. There’s something daring, and macho, and, ultimately whimsical about brashly charging into the icy maw of a Great Lake, while people around are bundled and swaddled in layers of coats. Brows are more than likely furrowed under knit caps, watching from a safe distance.

Third Coast Surf Shop is a harbinger of Great Lake specific surf outfitting, offering an array of long and short boards, body boards, and lessons. Their website serves as a forum for the Great Lakes surfing community – discussing tips, observations, and the unique spin on surfing the Great Lakes creates.

Fisker Automotive

If honest, most people applaud the idea of green sensibilities in automobiles, but the applause is reserved for others; hybrids have simply never been sexy.

Fisker Automotive is giving us a reason to give ourselves a standing ovation. Sex sells.

It began with a blank sheet of paper and a half century of refinement. Henrik Fisker co-founded the company in 2007 with business partner Bernhard Koehler upon securing a few relatively small investments. A plug-in car was not their invention, but their take on the concept very well may have been. We do know this-it is changing the industry. Henrik Fisker, the man charged with designing such legendary high end cars as the Aston Martin DB9 and the BMW Z8, saw no reason the revolution towards the future could not be merged with his artisan four wheeled mastery. Fisker Automotive was established on this premise.

The Anaheim based fabricators of ingenuity have turned the possibilities of a lithium ion battery upside down. Refined, polished and sleek, passion projects such as the Karma, Atlantic, Surf and Sunset have undertaken their aggressive and futuristic venture into automotive history with an appreciation of Mother Earth. Translation: the only place to see Arlo Guthrie, Henry Ford and George Jetson simultaneously is in the driver seat of a Fisker.

If this is sustainability in the modern era, we call shotgun.

MetroShip

The housing crisis looms. Living spaces upside down in mortgage payments. Brick and mortar structures festooned with realtor signs dotting cul-de-sacs, urban cores, and everywhere in between. But what if “curb appeal” was somehow transmuted into “waterline appeal”?

Started in 1995 by British marketing and reality TV pioneer David Ballinger, the MetroShip is U.S. made, and is popping up in urban water environments around the nation and globe. The simple shotgun design is space conscious, aware of light and the feel of openness, modular, and, above all: mobile. In a size comparable to a one bedroom apartment, a young urban professional can dwell on the water – at a fraction of the cost of what a typical apartment in most urban cores would go for.

And the MetroShip doesn’t skimp on creature comforts. The designs boast appliances and mechanisms from the likes of Viking, Sloan, and Gaggenau in the kitchen; Kohler, and Italian curved glass vanity design in the bathroom; Sony flatscreen TVs, Jamo-Danish made wall speakers; LG washer and dryer; all on par with wants of the most chic and discerning palettes. Patrick Bateman himself might have found himself eyeing one of these crafts.

Living in a boat, moored to the shore, and able to putter about in docks and harbors, taking in sights and sounds has an undeniable romantic air to it. Island hopping, perhaps. Evocative, maybe, of a 1980’s detective show with a well-meaning, roustabout protagonist. There is also a paradoxical “slowness” to living on the water in the center of a throbbing metropolis. The MetroShip allows the owner to do those things. Want a front porch view of Manhattan? Or Chicago? Or San Francisco? Or maybe troll up a river or canal somewhere. Don’t like your neighbors? Pull up anchor and shove off there matey. Talk like a pirate even. Big fireworks show or concert coming to town? Position your house to be front and center. Send your friends a text, and have them come on out.

Bill's Khakis

Bills Khakis is headquartered in a quaint and largely nondescript brick building in Reading, Pennsylvania. Its previous claim to fame was that it housed the Reading Hardware Company; the building itself is now listed on the National Historic Register. It is a throwback, an American company that employs 20 and could easily fit inside the frame of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Just the way we like it.

In a world that covets nostalgia, lives in the present and dreams of the future, Bills Khakis embraces all three. It started when Bill Thomas was connecting to his past at an Army surplus store. It was a simple pair of khaki’s, hand-stitched, durable and comfortable,that caused him to lament the state of the khaki in the present. And that was when the future changed.

Like most American tales, his came with great risk. Quitting an advertising job in Chicago and moving home to Reading to start Bills Khakis in 1990 was the quintessential first step to his American dream. The next few steps included painting bridges and operating a ski lift for seed money; with time, the venture rocketed from car trunks to that aforementioned vacant hardware building. The rest was history, the future was now.

Bills Khakis are available throughout the United States in over 500 select men’s specialty stores. All of Bills products (pants, shorts, jeans, shirts and jackets) are produced in the United States with the same attention to detail and elbow grease of the proud generations before us. Bills Khakis has been named to Inc. Magazine’s Inner City 100 on five occasions as one of America’s 100 fastest growing inner city businesses.

At the end of the day, they craft one fine pair of khaki’s. And we know our forefathers would approve-past, present or future.

New England Shirt Company

New Englander’s will never get with the times. This is an utmost compliment.

In Fall River, MA, they eschew a dirty little word that lurks in our vernacular. “Trend” may as well be thrown in with such dastardly terms as “King George” and “New York Yankees”. And when it comes to clothing, they may as well be living in the 1800’s.

Another compliment.

At the New England Shirt Company, the style is the same as it has always been; effortlessly cool, comfortable and classic. And for 75 years the company has been crafting their meticulously tailored clothing at a factory that has operated a spinning mill since 1811 alongside the Quequechan River. Artisan sewing reminiscent of an era when durability and pristine detail were the standard is what gives the otherwise utilitarian building life. That, and the dedicated team of impassioned locals, garment professionals with the elite stock of old world thread maestros streaming through their veins. The entire operation is a documentary of American know-how, set on pause.

It is a simple transference of New England life onto authentic Stars and Stripes craftsmanship. New Englanders live by a code of honesty, integrity and pureness. And it is these tenets that pour into the finished product of a New England Shirt Company project. And though the company name rightfully suggests a plethora of refined sport and dress shirts, a full wardrobe of a man’s prestigious closet is available for a heaping dose of definitive New England style whether a man sells insurance in Albuquerque or brews coffee in Portland.

The New England Shirt Company are purveyors of a timeless and inextinguishable culture through their clothing. And if they never “trend” on Twitter, all is right with the world.

Images courtesy of We Are The Market

Duluth Pack

It was not that long ago that life was perhaps a grittier journey. As we often commend modern American companies for their commitment to durable and dependable products, there was a time when such quality was the norm, not an anomaly. So where did we all go wrong? Likely the first day we shipped our interests off to some Chinese warehouse. But as the pride of the American manufacturer is slowly but surely returning to its glory, we must note that some companies never lost it in the first place.

Count Duluth Pack as one of them.

It began in Duluth, Minnesota in 1870 and has ceased to stop since. At first it was shoes and other wares necessary to traverse the land, but it was when a new type of packsack was patented that sent the company into folklore. A canvas sack was invented with a closable buckled flap and new-fangled shoulder straps to compliment the traditional tumpline, as well as a revolutionary sternum strap and an umbrella holder. It became an instant northwoods classic; today it is revered as the original Duluth Pack.

While the Duluth Pack has always been the crown jewel, the company of the same name has become the standard for rugged, hands on workers and sporting folk. From blacksmiths and loggers to hunters and weekend warriors, Duluth Pack is one of the world’s premium suppliers of dependable and authentic American-tough outdoors accoutrements. With the company’s growth, the roster has expanded from tools of the trade to wallets, biking gear, cabin essentials, dog accessories, clothing-and pretty much anything else that comes to mind. And the meticulous and precise effort that Duluth Pack pours into each piece makes their lifetime guarantee very believable, whereas such claims from an overseas competitor merits only rolled eyes and a dismissal.

Maybe we should send them a Duluth Pack tote. When their giant factory sewing machines break down, they’ll need something strong enough to lug around the scrap.

Fine Paints of Europe

Don’t be fooled by the name. Fine Paints Of Europe is an American company that parralels many of us; nephews of Uncle Sam, with European roots.

It began with founder John Lahey’s frustration. Seeking high quality paint to use on his family’s eighteenth-century home, he was reminded of the depth of the colors and the gorgeous finishes he witnessed overseas. In search of European quality, he found no answers in stateside products. He discovered a culture within the industry that promoted price over quality-and he would have none of it. His quest took him to the mecca of paint, Holland, and their 300 years of mastery in the genre inspired him to start a company that catered to discerning American homeowners like him.

That vision has served Fine Paints Of Europe well. Since 1987 the company has forged an indellible bond with the American public that is both in our faces and unheralded. We’ll brag for them. The elite paints of Fine Paints Of Europe are a humongous source of pride, covering such important landmarks as the Mount Vernon Estate, the President Lincoln and Soldier’s Home Monument, and Dodona Manor. And while the Vermont based company initially serviced historical restorations, as witnessed above, the privately held brand has branched out into commercial and residential applications. Which means that now, even our three bedroom cottages and fixer-uppers can be treated to the same fanfare of a national treasure. And the aesthetic brilliance is worth every penny.

As they like to say, “There is nothing more expensive than cheap paint.”