Tifosi Sunglasses: affordability in a world of ‘five-dollar milkshakes’
Tifosi is not a sponsor of this newsletter. They just make cheap glasses that don’t suck.
There is one movie scene that I think of a lot.
It comes from Pulp Fiction. In the famous scene, two characters go to a 50s-themed diner called Jackrabbit Slims. At the diner, they sit down for a dinner that is the ultimate cinematic expression of a-date-that-is-not-a-date. The man is talking out the wife of his drug dealing boss, a drug dealing boss who maybe threw another man off a balcony after he maybe gave his wife a foot massage. Maybe.
While that scene is chalk full of amazing moments – including one of the great dance sequences you will ever see – it is a discussion of a milk shake that I always come back to. Scratch that. A conversation about A five dollar shake.
At this diner that presumably sits just one a notch higher than an Applebee’s in terms of quality, Vincent Vega played by John Travolta is baffled by the cost of a simple shake. Five dollars was a lot back then and a milkshake is, after all, just ice cream and milk, as he articulates to his female date-not-a-date companion Mia Wallace played by Uma Thurman.
This small conversation that Quinten Tarantino put in his movie about pop culture-styled gangsters, mobsters, and gimps is more than just a throwaway piece of dialogue, nevertheless, it has bounced around my mind more than any other lines in a movie that’s filled with memorable quotes because, unfortunately, metaphorical five-dollar shakes are constantly coming across my plate. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the bike world where everything is getting dramatically more expensive with each new product cycle – looking at you, SRAM, with your $600 cassette. In a metaphorical sense, there are five-dollar shakes around every corner.
So, when a product came across my laptop from Tifosi for their Vogel SL $39 performance sunglasses I was intrigued. Almost as intrigued as I would be if I went out to an ice cream parlor now and saw an actual milkshake for $5 instead of the eight dollars it would probably cost. I decided to buy the glasses, out of equal parts necessity and curiosity, and haven’t replaced them since. Here’s what I liked and what I didn’t.
Cheap in price, brilliantly forgettable in feel
Cheap cycling sunglasses have a feeling to them. They’re brittle, inflexible, and always fit just a little bit wrong. They might fall off your nose, pinch the skin behind your eyes, and break at the first moment of strife. They are glasses you get to be a bridge to the glasses you want.
When I put in the order for the Tifosi Vogel SL that was my expectation. Yet out of the box, it was different. The flex felt intentional, the feel was intentional, and the glass felt like it might put up a bit of fight before shattering in my face. The nose piece was the one pitfall, and I have never gotten the glasses to be quite as stable as I would have hoped, but then again I have been told I have a dainty nose. Adjustable nose pieces get the axe to cut the costs, I guess. But really, it was a small price to pay. Above the other attributes, it was the fact that I seldom noticed anything about the glasses that kept me putting them on and avoiding a purchase of one of those inexplicably priced eyewear alternatives.
I could go on about the review of the light pink tint of the lens, or the full view that comes from the frameless design around the eyes, or the ability for the glasses to handle heat, humidity, and snow – but who am I kidding? These glasses are passable in quality, but with that price point passable is unusual. All you really need in a pair of everyday sunglasses is for them to feel forgettable. So save the money and grab a pair – it’s best to save money on something you won’t notice.
For your eyes and ears
For the past two weeks I have been deep in the reporting process for a few big stories that are coming up. I wish I could talk about all of them here and now, but some are still to come so I’ll bite my tongue for now.
Stories I can talk about is the one that also happens to have the biggest relevance today. This weekend the UCI will host its version of a gravel world championship in Belgium. The big talking point? Most of the top US gravel pros won’t be there and that’s a problem. I wrote about it for Cycling Weekly.
Also in the spirit of the UCI Gravel World (read. European) Championships, I delved deep into a story on the tech divide between UCI (read. European) Gravel Racing and US gravel racing. Delving into the details of two concept bike builds from the dirt road racing on either side of the Atlantic reveals several things: 1) gravel racing is a devil when it comes to its details; and 2) oh, how the times are a changing. I had so much fun putting this together as I got to build two separate bike builds with some of the nicest kit in the business.
In other news of very, very different levels of seriousness:
On Instagram, cycling comedy accounts are a mixed bag. But the king amongst men is @road.toads and I don’t think its close. One of his best reels is on cycling pain faces and it is God Tier content creation. It is also a good reminder of Fabio Aru existing. I still think that his Vuelta a España win was a fever dream that aliens implanted in my mind.
SBT GRVL:’s future is hanging in the balance. Lots will be decided with the public permit hearing next Monday, but get caught up with it all via this story from Betsy Walsh at Velo.
Swiss junior cyclist Muriel Furrer died after a crash at her home world championships only 8km from her house. The crash sent her off the road and it has been reported that it took over an hour for anyone to find her. Cycling deaths are sometimes part of a very dangerous sport, but this one felt very preventable. Benji Naesen and Patrick Broe of the Lanterne Rouge Cycling Podcast put together some great perspectives on their episode after the news was announced. They also discussed an interesting bike race, but that is obviously of lesser importance.
A side of something else
*Fair warning, I am about to swear a lot. You were too if you were me. Also, welcome to 2024 suckers.
Some of my earliest memories in life are from Oakland Athletics baseball games at the Oakland Coliseum. Last week the A’s played their last game there and it turns out I am not the only one with a whole lot of nostalgia for the home that Reggie Jackson, Dennis Eckersly, Ricky Henderson, Barry Zito, and Aaron Sorkin built. The saga has been many years long with so much good sports journalism around it, as it was a true Goliath fucks over David and all of his dear friends for the promise of wealth in a new city where no one wants a new baseball team, John Fisher you asshole story.
It’s hard to boil it all down to one piece of media to sum it up, but for me, the Athletic has been the best outlet in terms of coverage of the whole saga as they have meticulously followed the arc of this shit storm from soup to nuts. One of the last stories, however, did a nice job of sampling some of the A’s most famous fans to offer insight in the far reaches of the team and just how dumb the whole move actually is.
Alas, I still had a nice cathartic time reliving my moments of doomed A’s fandom, chief among them being the video of Barry Zito singing the national anthem. Never has a man (me) cried over such an ok rendition of a 19th-century song.