It’s common knowledge among my close friends that I carry a man purse but I like to call it a gear pouch which is exactly what it is. A long time ago, i started carrying gear pouches because I don’t typically have a ton of pockets on me or pockets that are big enough to hold everything. Secondly, a messenger bag or backpack aren’t always appropriate for dinner or bars but I have to keep certain items on me at all times so it’s like I don’t have any other options.
Enter The Gear Pouch. Pictured above is the iPod Gear Pouch from Waterfield Designs. I’ve known Gary since 2003 when I first started blogging about Macs & iPods (four years before the arrival of iPhone) and have had the pleasure of buying and using nearly every one of their amazing bags which range from small pouches to full size 17″ laptop bags. It’s amazing how Mac-centric his product line is and how well made, designed and thought out their bags are. They fit perfectly into my digital lifestyle and I keep one on me at all times in my backpack or over my shoulder.
Actually, I have 5 Waterfield Bags that sit on my bookshelf depending on my needs for the day. if it’s just my small point & shoot or Flip Ultra camera, the small bag goes with me. The larger bag can hold those items plus headphones and my iPhone battery pack from FastMac. The largest of these gear pouches usually is reserved for toiletries when I go on a weekend trip.
Well, the inevitable happened, a site appropriately named, “whats in your man purse” caught up with me at an event last weekend and interviewed me on my love of the man purse. Sigh. Exciting, right? Well yeah but at the same time slightly unorthodox from what I’m usually interviewed about. My usual interviews involve crime-fighting webcams, the philosophy of Twitter or being first in line for the iPhone.
The site, “Whats in your man purse” did a pretty good job finding background info on me so for that I applaud them. You can read the full review on whatsinyourmanpurse.com but I copied the text below.
How to carry all your gear? Get a ‘grip’.
Can it be? The elusive ‘grip’ (aka the man-clutch)
- Name: Adam Jackson
- Age: 23
- Sign: Virgo
- Occupation: Writer & Consultant
- Location: Startup Weekend in San Francisco
- Hometown: St. Augustine, Florida
I have to admit: I did not spend this weekend writing a new post for “What’s In Your Man Purse.” Instead, the Always Hungry Husband and I spent a three-day weekend at sfCUBE for the Women2.0-sponsored “Startup Weekend” event! (To anybody following my Twitter feed, this is not news. By the way, I am so loving Twitter. Does this make me twitterpated? And I thought it wasn’t going to happen to me.) Naturally, once I arrived at this event, one of the first things I did was try to locate some geek chic in the form of a man purse. In fact, here is my first tweet of the night:
#sw20sf Scoping out the laptop bags at startup weekend. Will tweet if I find any man purse treasures!
Immediately after posting I saw that this had been tweeted just a moment before by someone with the handle of @adamjackson:
adamjackson Heads up: If you’re a single guy in SF. Head to #sw20sf it’s a 4:1 ratio of talented geeky women. Woot! http://women20sf.eventbrite.com/
Correction: talented & HOT geeky women. #sw20sf 4 days ago from Tweetie
Who was this cheeky tweeter? I couldn’t resist replying with my own sassy tweet:
manpurse To all the men checking out the hot geek girls at #sw20sf. I am checking YOU out (that is, your man purses.) How’s THAT for Women 2.0?
I think one of the things that makes Twitter (and other forms of internet communication) so much fun is that you can say what you want from the comfort of your own home, without ever meeting the people you’re communicating to/at. In this situation, however, I was tweeting about people whom I was in the same room with. How weird. It brought back memories of the high school computer lab where I once chatted brazenly and anonymously on some archaic system I can’t identify. I remember feeling delighted as I saw people immediately reacting to things that I felt entirely comfortable typing anonymously to my classmates, but would never say out loud. Another H.S. memory has me chatting on the internet with some classmates while on a break from working on a school video project. I immediately greeted the chatroom with something to the effect of “Christina’s in da house!!” and felt confused and surprised when my classmates burst out into a fit of giggles. Apparently my online alter-ego and I were shockingly different.
Anyways, I wasn’t prepared for people to try and connect the online me with the IRL me. But a certain Mr. Adam Jackson had spread the word that he was trying to find @manpurse. At the end of the day I walked to his workspace and introduced myself.
Mr. Jackson proudly showed me his bag – a gear pouch from SFbags.com. Browsing SFbags’s site, you’ll find the ubiquitous black nylon styles, but also an exceedingly handsome model (did you just get chills after reading those three words? I did…) called the Muzetto
I was impressed to hear how Adam used his bag. Inside this pouch were all his necessary man-cessories : iPhone, Canon Powershot G10
It has been a personal mission of mine to find a man who carries a grip. Ideally, this man would be famous footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo (toting his Gucci man-clutch,)
;)
;)
, 
, keys, wallet, and 
.
I will not bother telling you much more about Adam because it would be redundant. You see, in addition to being a “citizen journalist”, and the author of an upcoming book about micro-blogging, he is also quite possibly the most internet-connected person I have ever met–spending four hours a day on social networks, and churning out content on ten Twitter accounts. So yeah, check him out for yourself.
If the formatting didn’t work totally as it should, I suggest you go to the website to read the full entry yourself (here)