Product Content

In the media world, there's this entire ecosystem of outlets categorized in the industry as "lifestyle" media outlets. BroBible is often considered one of them.

"Lifestyle media" refers to places that cover things and stuff. It's an ecosystem that's an organic byproduct of our consumer appetite for certain products, goods, and services. Audiences want to know certain about stuff. The people selling stuff want people to know about stuff. Thanks to all our varied distribution streams and what's sometimes called "the curiosity gap" (the impulse that gets you to click on a link or watch a video), media outlets are there to tell people all about that stuff in a unique and authoritative way.  

My career at BroBible has often involved dipping my toes in the world of stuff.

It's a generally accepted rule of thumb in editorial circles that people are more apt to read content about people, but they sure as heck also like reading about stuff.

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We sometimes say that BroBible is "like ESPN and Esquire had a baby" in sales meetings. This is the Esquire part of that content formula.

In my role as BroBible's publisher, I spend a lot of my day rolling up my sleeves to talk brand strategy with brands and markets. In these meetings, I like to say that "new is news".

We live in a society where commerce is pretty darned important to our overall day-to-day. It's noisy out there. Brands and businesses lean into innovation stick out. There are a lot of lame ducks out there, all trying to dance to the same tune in the attention economy.

When a brand innovates or makes something new, it's news to someone out there. If it's interesting enough, there's a there there.

For an outlet like BroBible, the stuff that sticks out can be a pretty compelling part of our news cycle. Audiences like to stay in the know -  as long as it's interesting and pertinent to their lives.

As a media business operator, I believe this specific "lifestyle" product information pipeline is ripe to be capitalized on. It's right at the intersection of news and commerce. It informs and educates. It leads to purchasing decisions for brands and builds audience trust and authority over time for media companies.

It's a necessary function of what we do and who we are.

I also like storytelling about brands and products. I think product news is interesting if you want to understand how businesses and capitalism, as a whole, operate. Zoom in and it shows where their priorities with media companies, as a downstream conveyer of messages, sit at the table. From 30,000 feet, looking at an outlet's product news coverage overall gives a sort of "you are here" arrow on a strategic business map.  

This section is all about the way I've personally covered product news. It's my assorted writing about things and stuff. Shoes, clothes, cars, food, spirits, beers, restaurants, electronics, video games. Also, occasionally about people behind these things: The entrepreneurs and consumer-level culture-shapers.  

The lifestyle stuff.

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I talked to Isaac Morton, the Charleston-based founder of Smithey Ironware Company, about how he became obsessed with cast iron cookware.

I also asked him a question that always comes up with cast iron cookware - can you clean it with soap?

Yes, you sure can.

Have you ever thought about the sensory experience of cooking sausage?

There’s the sizzle when you throw a few links in a pan or on the grill, accompanied by the mouthwatering smell of fat and meat on an open flame. There’s the taste and texture – savory, salty, and satisfying. All worthy descriptors for the experience of eating a protein purposefully cased in a tube.

But there’s also the snap. The sizzle is only one dimension of a good sausage’s sonic profile. The snap and crackle that happens when you cut into it with a knife or bite into it with your canines is just as crucial.

Ask any butcher who cares about the sausage-making craft; good sausage isn’t silent. It sizzles and snaps. That unique sound is part of the whole she-bang.

Hiking in lululemon isn’t exactly a new thing; People have been hiking in lululemon activewear for quite some time now. This new collection, however, marks the brand’s very first dedicated line for treks and day hikes.

Why did Stranger Things collab with Quiksilver?

There’s nothing hacky about Quiksilver’s ’80s-collab with Stranger Things.

It honors and builds. It’s fun. It feels remarkably fresh compared to the slap-a-logo-on-it licensing collabs that have thrived in the digital media age.

In 2015, Alex Cree, a former American ex-pat in China, concocted another clever pizza innovation in his kitchen at his home in Los Angeles: The Baozza, a mashup of Bao (Chinese steamed buns) and pizza.

The result was an extremely craveble pizza snack. Baozzas are steamed in the classic Chinese baozi style, but filled with everything you’d find on a pizza. It’s basically pizza fusion. After warming up, they’re gooey on the inside, complete with soft, Italian-herb-seasoned dough, quality sauce, and tasty mozzarella cheese.

I grew up in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, just a couple of miles from the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. If you grew up in that neck of the woods, as I did, you know that Old Bay seasoning is pretty much a lifestyle. It’s savory in the most unique way possible – an extraordinary blend of 18 herbs and spices. It’s tangy, with a kick that can’t be matched on seafood and chicken.

There’s nothing like it in the culinary world, which is why very few try to imitate it.

Ranch Rider Spirits quickly found a fanbase around the Austin area. From there, word got out around Texas that Ranch Rider was the authentic ranch water in a can, quickly embraced on Instagram and TikTok by influential food and beverage personalities.

Compared to other cookie-cutter tequila seltzer brands, Ranch Rider Spirits has a real fan base. They’re normal, everyday people who lean into the brand’s “Simply The West” vibe – a rugged aesthetic that stands out on social media and on the shelves.

“Let’s go out for oysters.”

That magical phrase is a provocation for a great evening out. There’s nothing quite like slurping the night away at the local oyster spot, toasting with delicious bivalves and booze.

Island Brands founders, Scott Hansen and Brandon Perry, started dreaming up their beer brand after a sailing trip from Key West to Cuba.

Two music-loving Deadheads and adventure junkies, the two headed to Havana shortly after President Obama lifted the embargo.

“You can’t drink the water,” Brandon explains. “Cause it’ll make you sick. So you start drinking the beer, you know, to stay hydrated.”

“But there’s only two beers in Cuba – the dark beer and a light beer. And both of them are pretty bad, man. They’re not good. The beers are like low-quality lagers. I don’t even know what the dark one is. It wasn’t good, man.”

State-issued beer totally sucks.

That was the problem. Therein, the opportunity. So Brandon and Scott started dreaming about bringing good beer to Cuba.

They made some lasting friends on a Havana night filled with cigars and rum, putting together a plan.

“When we were in Cuba, we were like – ‘Man, these people are awesome. They deserve better beer,” Scott explains.

“So we started talking to some restauranteurs and some bartenders while we were there. We ended up forging some pretty cool relationships on a rooftop in Havana while smoking Cuban cigars and sipping on some beautiful rum and just hatching a plan to get these guys some quality beer.”

Gameday is one of those moments when a cooler with wheels is clutch; no one wants to throw their back out at the tailgate. The wheels are impact and puncture-resistant, so no worries about carting it around a stony parking lot during a day of hangs.

IPAs have a bad rap to a certain kind of person. But those of us that love them, they’re beers with taste. There’s a reason they’re the second biggest mainstream category of craft beer, right after hard seltzers. In 2020, an economist at the Brewers Association (BA) calculated that IPAs’ market share of the overall craft beer industry clocks in at around 40% overall. And all you have to do is look around to see that breweries of all shapes and sizes pop up like weeds, in practically every part of America. On the tap chalkboards of all of ’em? Their flagship IPA.

Rather than listing off a bunch of new beers this year, we thought we’d pay tribute to the classics. These IPAs are considered bonafide trailblazers in the category. The beers inspired dozens of other breweries to craft their own hoppy liquid art.

Detroit-style pizza has blown up in popularity in recent years. As the story goes, the style was originally started in 1946 by an Italian immigrant named Gus Guerra. The proprietor of a bar called Buddy’s Rendezvous, Gus wanted to make sfincione for the bar’s menu, a Sicilian-style pizza he grew up eating. Rather than using a baking sheet, he used a discarded steel pan drip tray from a Motor City auto manufacturing plant. When he added Wisconsin-brick cheese right up to the edge of the pan on the dough, the cheese caramelized into a frico crust at high heat. Pizza with a cheesy, crunchy golden-brown lace became an instant favorite.

Voilà, Detroit-style pizza was born.

The result was a style of pizza that was thick, doughy, rectangular, and very heavy on the sauce. For decades, Detroit pizza was a regional style only celebrated by Michigan pizza heads in the know, much like a coney. But then it started popping up in pizzerias all over the United States, beloved for traveling well and reheating perfectly as leftovers. Ask pretty much anyone serious about making or eating pizza and they’ll tell you that Detroit style is towards the top of the list of styles to make.

Sliding under the radar of accomplishments: Chuck Norris, the gritty American entrepreneur.

And yes, I got a question in about Chuck Norris jokes.

Polaris recently invited a couple of us out for an off-roading day trip in the California desert. It was a blast; the ultimate out-of-office mid-week adventure.

First, we got a chance to check out the custom Battlefield 2042-themed Polaris Sportsman XP 1000 – check it out in the vlog below.

Then we saddled up in our Polaris RZRs for the trek. The day-long trail ride started in the Johnson Valley OHV, tucked in the Lucerne Valley just east of Big Bear. If you’re not familiar, Johnson Valley is the largest OHV area in the United States, with 188,000 acres of explorable terrain. Our Polaris RZR drive started at the Cougar Buttes, one of the most scenic off-roading areas in the American West. On the guided trip, we continued on a loop past dramatic rock slabs, boulders, steep red rocky mountains, rolling hills, open desert valleys, dry lake beds, and sandy washes.

Overall, we did a giddy-upped on a 60-mile loop.

Scarlet Fire captures the spirit of the song in a hot sauce flavor – it’s a vinegar-based sauce with a unique blend of fresh chilies, including Fresno, habanero, and Thai chiles. It’s not overwhelmingly spicy but still manages to add a pretty nice kick when needed. It can be added to practically everything for a kick – mac and cheese, bloody marys, wings, pizza, burgers, etc.

It’s rare to find the little bitty in a car these days. Whether they use them or not, consumers expect bells and whistle in practically every segment of the car industry, from mid-size sedans to mini-vans.

That’s the genius of of the ElectraMeccanica SOLO – a single-seat, three-wheel electric vehicle targeted to short distance and urban drivers.

It’s little bitty.

Do you ever find yourself scrolling like a zombie through Instagram, noticing ads for different menswear brands and thinking “man… why does this stuff look… the same?”

Happens to me on a daily basis. There’s something missing from the modern menswear experience, where the shopper experiences an item digitally rather than having it catch the eye in a retail environment. There’s plenty of flash and flair – Anyone with some product savvy, a marketing vision, a dropship budget, and the necessary skills with Adobe Suite can engineer a brand’s identity.

So what’s missing from that equation?

Why the emptiness?

Perhaps its the story of craftsmanship – Or the lack thereof.

30-some years later, the ’80s feel like a decade-long fever dream of an 8-bit utopia. It was an era obsessed with the digital future yet captured in analog. You can imagine all the usual hallmarks of the decade – the space shuttle, the cassette tapes, the arcades, the “Tear down this wall!” – replayed via the now-clumsy buzz of a VCR and a synthwave soundtrack.

The ’80s were a defining decade for sneakers. Sneaker culture exploded, with dramatic innovations in footwear design and functionality bookending the decade. Sneakers evolved into a statement; a discussion point on what constituted your personal style. They were everywhere, lionized by the professional athletes and movie stars of the decade, from MJ to Marty McFly.

And it stuck.

In my 10 years at BroBible, I’m not sure I ever remember an alcohol craze quite like the hard seltzer mania of summer 2019. If you like a refreshing adult beverage on a hot summer day, this summer has truly been a “battle for the bubbles,” as my friend Greg puts it.

ANatty Light seltzer entered the space in its own very Natty Light way: Two wildly unique seltzer flavors in traditional 12oz beer cans with a slightly higher ABV at 6%, priced about 20% cheaper than White Claw, Truly, and other seltzers on the market. While other brands positioned themselves as a lifestyle beverage, Natty did what Natty does: Position Natty Light Catalina Lime Mixer and Natty Light Aloha Beaches as the hard seltzer of choice for the economically-minded who like having a damn good time.

Nowhere was that more apparent than this past Saturday, on a yacht at the famed Catalina Wine Mixer. Natty Light wrapped a yacht with it’s Natural Light Catalina Lime Mixer Seltzer logo and threw a party for select influencers and media that you had to take a helicopter to get to.

I love complex flavors. I’m the nerd who smells coffee from all over the world to point out the notes. I geek out over bourbons and rums with a flavor profile that defies the norm. I like bitter. My favorite meals are when the food takes you on an adventure of the palette – spicy, savory, a little sweet. Think true Jamaican jerk chicken, a giant plate of chicken parm, a big bowl of pork ramen, or any number of BBQ styles.

After all, flavor gives life a spark.

This brings us to every red-blooded carnivore’s favorite night: Steak night.

Did you hear the great news from Flavortown? Guy Fieri is ready to take a big swing at established fast-casual chicken franchises like Chick-Fil-A and Zaxby’s with his own chicken finger joint. It’s called Chicken Guy!

Because Guy Fieri is a national treasure, this news took the internet by storm. Chicken Guy! restaurants feature 22 house-made sauces, besting Chick-Fil-A in sheer variety. In fact, when you visit a Chicken Guy! chain, you’ll notice that the culinary TV star refers to himself as The Boss Of Sauce right there on the packaging, which rules in its own kitschy way.

Earlier this week, while on vacation in Orlando, I got to experience Chicken Guy! in all its saucy glory. The flagship location is located at Disney Springs in Disney World, where I found myself doing a little pre-flight happy hour before heading back to California with my girlfriend and her family. This location opened in the fall of 2018, becoming a welcome, affordable dining option in a high-volume tourist area that’s littered with overpriced menus. Margarita Monday can make one pretty hungry, so our crew hit Guy’s Chicken Guy! for a late lunch at the suggestion of a waiter.

Last March, during a streak of frigid temperatures in New York City, my roommate came back from a month in Nicaragua with a duffle bag of colorful souvenirs and a couple bottles of rum. Our conversation on the evening of his homecoming went something like this:

“You have to try this.”

“What is it?”

“It’s rum that’s been aged for 18 years. Flor de Caña. I got this entire bottle for, like, $20 at the airport this morning. Best liquor I’ve ever had in my life.”

“Why?”

“It’s smooth. It’s smoother than the best bourbons you’ve tried. I’ve been drinking it regularly for the last month while down there.”

Smooth is a strange adjective to me. It describes texture, not taste. There are better descriptors for capturing the high and low tasting notes of booze that goes down easy: Flavorful, aromatic, mellow, sweet-yet-bold. Smooth doesn’t hit the pallet. Smooth is just a reaction. Smooth is what people say when liquor hits the tongue without letting the tastebuds properly synch with the synapses in your brain to process the true personality of a spirt. It’s a lazy way of saying “hey, this drink doesn’t have the harsh bite you might be expecting from an 80-proof brown liquor that’s been in a barrel for 18 years.” It’s disingenuous to the true character of a lovingly-made, handcrafted spirit. Smooth is like saying “it doesn’t have teeth” when, in fact, it has monstrous, T-Rex sized chompers in the flavor department.

If you love crunchy flavors and heady jams, prepare to step into the freezer this summer for a limited edition ice cream that benefits a great cause: music education.

Vermont's headiest ice cream company, Ben & Jerry's, just announced a new collaboration with Vermont's headiest band, Phish. Ben & Jerry's signature chocolate marshmellow flavor, Phish Food, has been in dangling its tunic in Uncle Ebenezor's stash for 21 years. Now it's time for a new flavor with widespread distribution.

It's called Phish's It's Ice...Cream, named after a Phish song of the same name, and "...one of the original flavor concepts in the running back in 1997, to become Phish Food."

Spikeball is, without a doubt, one of the best beach and backyard games of the summer. All that radical motion is great for your core, too — Especially in sand where you’re balancing your inertia with an odd center of gravity. It’s great exercise and only going to get bigger and bigger over the next few summers.

Budweiser and Jim Beam announced their beer collaboration to much fanfare earlier this year. When the news came out, I instantly thought of a short-lived Budweiser experiment into the craft beer game back in 2009 with Budweiser American Ale. That stuck around for about a year before it evolved into Budweiser Black Crown.

Both were heavily marketed at the time. Both had commercial spots in prime time to big football audiences. As beers, both had their note positives, but also left a lot to be desired to a craft beer drinker looking for something a little more wild on the pallet. Eventually, they were discontinued. Maybe Budweiser, the King Of Beers, just wasn’t meant to be in the ale game.

A few years ago, BroBible learned that the causal dining institution known as Hooters opened a new location in New York City, where we call home. The snazzy location on 33rd Street was said to have “a great view of Madison Square Garden” – clutch for downing wings and Coors Light before Rangers and Knicks games.

It’s a common trajectory: After years in the NFL, figure out how to successfully start a hustle of your own. For Chris Gronkowski, older brother to New England Patriots superstar Rob Gronkowski, that hustle is next all-time great Bro invention: The Ice Shaker, a vacuum-insulated, stainless-steel protein shaker that holds ice for over 30 hours.

John Elway has car dealerships. Rosevelt Colvin has cupcakes. Drew Brees owns a few Jimmy Johns. Peyton Manning owns a stake in a Budweiser distributor in Louisiana. At one time, he owed 31 Denver-area Papa John's locations.

When “Rowdy” Roddy Piper’s fans asked him what he’d do for a Klondike bar, he knew he’d have to roll his kilt up. In true Piper’s Pit fashion, the wrestling legend ended up kicking ass and chewing bubble gum, nearly destroying a fan’s house before clobbering him with a coconut.

It’s all part of Klondike’s Celebrity Challenge, which features pop singer Tiffany, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star Alfonso Ribeiro, and Rowdy Roddy Piper taking on fan challenges.