“Watches, Stories, and Gear” is a roundup of our favorite content, watch or otherwise, from around the internet. Here, we support other creators, explore interesting content that inspires us, and put a spotlight on causes we believe in. Oh, and any gear we happen to be digging on this week. We love gear.
Share your story ideas or interesting finds with us by emailing [email protected].
A New Pack from YETI
We’re big fans of both YETI and Mystery Ranch around here, so when it was announced in early 2024 that the former had acquired the latter, it had many of us curious about what the future would hold for the storied backpack brand. Rumors have circulated for months that YETI would be phasing out the Mystery Ranch name, and it looks like a new pack introduced recently could provide a preview of how these brands might live together in the future. The Yeti Bozeman 27L Backpack has a design that will be familiar to many Mystery Ranch acolytes because, as you’d expect, it was designed in partnership with the Mystery Ranch team. While the small aesthetic details are all YETI, the functionality, including the “RipZip” opening and adjustable harness system, are clearly attributed to Mystery Ranch. You can find more information on the Bozeman 27L Backpack right here.
Is Enron Back?
Earlier this week, a chill went down the spine of many who are old enough to remember the Enron scandal, and the dramatic fall of the Texas based energy company. It all fell apart in the early 2000s when it was revealed that Enron management had engaged in what you might call creative accounting to support a vision of a company that was far healthier than it was. The extreme fraud led to Enron’s bankruptcy and the scandal has become a kind of shorthand for bad corporate behavior that has, unfortunately, only continued in many circles in the ensuing decades. An apparent relaunch of the Enron name went viral on social media this week, and you could be forgiven for thinking it was “real” (stranger things have happened). But as Inc. reports, it’s all an elaborate joke, with the brand name under new ownership (it’s the team behind “Birds Aren’t Real,” naturally). Enron living on as an active parody of itself and corporate shenanigans weirdly kind of checks out.
The M1 from RVNDSGN
We’’re always interested in novel ways of telling the time on a watch, so we wanted to highlight the new M1 from RVNDSGN, which is now live on Kickstarter. The watch has a futuristic look (it immediately made us think of Ressence) and takes a fundamentally new approach to visualizing the time. The “incremental time display” shows you the time in 15 increments, and is meant to force the wearer to slow down, enjoy the moment, and not be so beholden to the constraints of our calendar. In a nutshell, the outer ring gives you the date, the middle ring represents an entire day’s worth of quarter hours, and the interior ring displays the current hour (it also jumps instantaneously). The M1 runs on a modified Sellita movement and can be backed on Kickstarter for $949, a $1,000 discount on the retail price.
The Sauna Watch
At some point over the course of your watch collecting, you’ve probably heard a warning not to bring your watch into a sauna. The extreme humidity of a sauna can wreak havoc on the gaskets that are meant to protect a watch from moisture ingress, and even if those gaskets don’t fail in the sauna, they will no doubt be worn down much faster with such prolonged exposure to moisture in the air. Leave it to Casio to solve this very specific problem. Found on Uncrate, this new CPP-002 Sauna Watch is meant to alleviate those humidity concerns. We’re not really sure if this is meant as something you wear temporarily while you’re in the sauna itself, or if it’s conceived as something you wear all the time and simply don’t have to worry about, but either way, it’s pretty clever.
The MagFlip Hood from PolarPro
The new MagFlip Hood from PolarPro is a fairly ingenious accessory for Leica Q3 shooters who might need to swap out filters on a regular basis but don’t want to sacrifice the utility or aesthetic quality of Leica’s familiar squared off lens hood. The MagFlip has the same square appearance, but when it’s screwed onto the Q3 it flips down, enabling the photographer to quickly add, remove, or switch a filter without physically removing the hood itself. It’s a small timesaver but exactly the kind of thing you’ll wonder how you lived without after giving it a shot. More information on the MagFlip and the accompanying grip set (the “BaseGrip”) right here.