Is it appropriate to ask your phone the weather?
Great waxed-cotton caps and bags, S-tier approach shoes, a based weapon in the war against screencuckery & more
Our interviews with Cameron Winter of Geese, Ryota Iwai from Auralee, SC103, Nathan Fielder, Sarah Squirm, Adam Sandler, Evan Kinori, Brendan from Turnstile, MJ Lenderman, Jockum from Our Legacy, Maya Hawke, Camiel Fortgens, Bon Iver, André 3000, Eckhaus Latta, Matty Matheson, Laraaji, Tyler, The Creator, John C. Reilly, Father John Misty, Michelle Williams, Steven Yeun, Conner O’Malley, Clairo, Christophe Lemaire, Pusha T & more are here.
Our guide to the Japan’s Best Clothesmakers is here.
If you are a well-traveled player with intel on Delhi, Bologna, and/or the Basque Country, please bless your fellow Spyfriends in the Global Intel Travel Chat.
Here’s what you learn about how to get dressed when you wear all black for a month.
— Jonah & Erin
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Blackbird Spyplane back with you. Today we’ve got:
Banger waxed-cotton caps, great bags & more from a young post-GORP designer
Extremely rare elite-level-swag approach shoes, and a salute to the great shop that put us on to them
A wealth of inexpensive ceramics from Picasso’s homie
A based weapon in the war against screencuckery
And more
Let’s get to it —
Last week Esquire published a story about how “It’s Now Lame to Be on Your Phone All the Time.” Staring at our devices, hunched over and filmy-eyed, the writer argued, “We all look subhuman. Prone. Weak. Uncool.”
We’re in total agreement here at the Plane, to the extent that, months ago, we published a smash-hit sletter about how “You don’t look cool looking at your phone.”
If Esquire had wanted to make their case truly airtight vis a vis the no-sauce aura of device-beholding? They could have cited our post as Exhibit A.
But what are you gonna do, sometimes things slip through the cracks of scholarship. Erin and I are just happy to see more people spreading the truth that a powerful remedy for phone addiction is considering how wack you look when you’re on your phone.
Putting this truth into practice can take time. I know firsthand. One of the most frightening stats cited in that Esquire piece is that “nearly 90 percent” of people “look at their devices within the first ten minutes of waking up.” This is horrible, but thankfully very easy to fix by charging your phone outside your bedroom and starting the day with a good book or, if you prefer, some stretching, a walk, or other exercise. Something I’ve been doing with fantastic results is reading for an hour or so every day before I come into contact with a screen. Several Spyfriends have thanked me for changing their lives with this One Ingenious Trick.
As part of getting your phone the f--k out of your dreamscape, I recommend an alarm clock — we rounded up a gang of cool bedside clocks here, including my no-frills Braun joint below left.
And that’s not all. The other day I took things a crucial step further and copped an outdoor thermometer, because it is untenably screencucked behavior to look at your phone to find out the temperature when you could, much more basedly, and much more accurately, look at a thermometer.
We walked over to our great neighborhood hardware store, where they had a bunch of different thermometers for sale. We chose the smallest, simplest option, above right, which you just pop on to a window in a place that doesn’t ever get full sun. It cost us $2.79, it’s aesthetically inoffensive, and it has already increased our daily happiness by ~33.3%.
No, a thermometer doesn’t give you a forecast for the whole day (and you can’t read the new Blackbird Spyplane on one, either) but in the war against screencuckery, every bit helps.
Meanwhile —
Baseball caps. Every time I think I’ve got more than enough, a new banger crosses my radar that gets me thinking about expanding my flotilla of dome-ensconcers.
Case in point, a tight cluster of fantastic new 6-panel caps — including an extremely Jonah-coded olive-green waxed-cotton gem — just dropped from a young post-GORP wizard we’ve long admired, along with a beautiful boxy-cut waxed-nylon rain jacket, some excellent messenger bags and more: