Back in the mists of prehistory, by which I mean 2014, I bought a Timbuk2 messenger bag and spent the next six or seven years loving it into the ground. When it finally fell part Timbuk2 had lost their way as a company, turning into a lifestyle brand at the expense of their product quality, and they didn’t have a meaningful replacement to offer me so it was time to look around.
To review, my requirements were, and are:
- Waterproof for real.
- Holds a large laptop plus the usual extra nerd shit and two days’ clothing.
- Replaceable straps. The straps can’t be sewn in to the bag.
- Quick-adjust straps, to cinch it down and step out of it easily.
- Side pockets I can reach without opening the whole bag.
- Little or no velcro, and
- If the word “tactical” appears anywhere in the product’s page, close the tab.
The Lifestyle Brand Failure Mode seems like something that should be well-understood at this point, and it’s pretty easy to tell which companies are falling into this hole. They suddenly start saying “drops” and “colorways” a lot, and the letter “x” is showing up between their names and some designer or brand in some unrelated domain. Functionally it means “our stuff is available in more colors and falls apart a lot faster”, and I don’t have a ton of time or patience for anyone replacing real quality with artificial scarcity these days. If this is you, then just think of my giving a damn as a limited edition.
Going down my list of candidates, the Chrome Industries people – whose work I’ve long loved – have sadly started to walk that path, and I’ve written Timbuk2 off completely. Crumpler has an interesting story, in that they were apparently recently reacquired by one of the founders after spending a few years in the hands of people who don’t actually carry anything anywhere except the cognitive burdens of making a line go up, so they might be worth looking at again.
I’ve given up on Rickshaw bags after the shoulder strap buckle on my laptop bag broke as I was standing next to a rail line with the train rolling up. I came within inches of getting my laptop run over by the Heathrow Express, and that’s not allowed to happen twice. Rickshaw’s bread and butter seems to be tech company and event laptop bags these days, which is great if “better than average swag” is what you want. It is not what I want.
I looked at Mission Workshops’ Khyte for a while, but their whole oeuvre just looks… fussy. Not a very specific criticism, I guess, but it does.
Beyond that, anything with a velcro “morale patch” surface got the boot immediately, which narrowed my options less than you’d think. Just about everything with a morale patch surface is being advertised by some performatively stern, joyless dude jumping out an SUV with Raybans and two guns, and that crowd is already off the list.
Ultimately, after considering and dismissing these and a bunch of other options, I went to a company called Greenroom136, clicked “custom”, clicked “JunkMonkey” and turned all the knobs I could see as far up as they’d go. it took about six weeks to arrive, but I’m very happy with the decision. Once you’ve got a bag with FidLock or Austrialpin buckles everywhere, you do not want to go back to not having that.
I did replace the strap it came with with one I’d bought from Defy Bags to replace the main strap on my old Timbuk2; the metal buckle is just a bit nicer, and the strap is just a bit more adjustable. I’ve also had to make a few tweaks and additions, as one does. But the material is great, the build quality is great, and we’ll see how long it lasts.