Never mind the questionable decision to compare baseball with war — these Warstic Baseball Bats ($80-$110) will keep you looking classy as you enter into combat in your intraoffice league. Forged from Northern White Ash or Canadian Maple with straight grains selected for better performance and durability, they’re available in a variety of colors and styles to better match your swing.
If you’re skating your way to work, odds are you’re already doing pretty well on the eco-friendly scale, but you can take it one step further with the Stalk It 58Five Landspeed Longboard ($585). Made with a 100% CornBoard core and vertical laminated ash and poplar top and bottom sheets, this sleek speedster also features an aluminum speed stabilizer bar laminated into the core of the board for increased stability and rigidity, Abec 11 wheels, Pareis trucks, and Swiss Fire bearings, and comes with a Triple Eight Brainsaver helmet, Stalk It T-Shirt, and, of course, stickers.
It was only a matter of time until we saw electric surfboards, but Wavejet ($TBA) isn’t quite what you’d think. Instead of strapping an outboard engine to a crazy-large board, the Wavejet is a Personal Water Propulsion (PWP) engine that attaches to and can be used with a variety of watercraft, including kayaks, boogie boards, and, yes, surfboards. Its twin-lithium ion battery pack is good for over 30 minutes of cruising, and offers 20 lbs. of thrust, or enough to make it 2 to 3 times faster than paddling and a helluva lot more fun.
Avoid a dreaded duplicate boardshort meetup by picking up a pair of Quiksilver Custom Boardshorts ($100). Handmade to your specifications in Huntington Beach, CA, these simple shorts offer standard features like high-performance, quick drying polyester nylon, a double-up closure, and eyelets for fast drainage, as well as your choice of colors and fabrics on the left and right, front and back panels, waistband, pocket flap, threading, drawcord, eyelets, logo, and embroidery — pretty much anything you’d want.
Nope, it’s not some new sport-oriented flashlight. Instead, the Adidas AdiZero Crazy Light ($130) is the three striped company’s latest basketball shoe. Touted as the “the lightest shoe in basketball,” the Crazy Light weighs just 9.8 ounces, or just slight more than a normal can of Red Bull, and features a Sprintweb exoskeleton upper that’s less than a millimeter thick, a Sprintframe external heel counter bonded to a Torsion System for maximum energy return and motion control, load-bearing eyelets, nearly 360 degrees of ventilation, and one of four eye-popping colorways.
Between the two of them, Simon Cowell and Simon Fuller have no shortage of successes to claim their own. Many of those accomplishments revolve around reality television programs like “American Idol,” “X Factor,” “So You Think You Can Dance?” and “America’s Got Talent.” Bernie Ecclestone apparently thinks quite highly of their show business acumen, and is now reportedly recruiting their talents to bring an added dose of showmanship to Formula One racing.
One idea Cowell and Fuller have reportedly put forward to the billionaire F1 chief is to cut the three-day grand prix weekend to two, and to replace the customary Friday practice sessions with a second preview race.
Cowell is a known racing fan and automotive enthusiast, while Fuller has been actively involved in the sport previously. The producer/promoter headed up the Honda F1 Team’s branding initiative several years ago, and recently signed former world champion Lewis Hamilton to his talent agency alongside the likes of David Beckham, Sir Michael Caine and Jennifer Lopez.
No, not the history of snowboards — history on snowboards. These Great Dudes Of History Snowboards ($400) by YES feature the visages of some of modern history’s most noteworthy dudes, including Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Einstein, Haile Selassie, John Lennon, and JFK, while offering plenty of performance thanks to a power wood core, an asymmetrical shape, and a stone and diamond structured base for maximum glide and durability.
Lucas Ordoñez won the first GT Academy time-trial contest, giving the gamer-racer his start in the FIA GT4 series. Now he’s signed to Team Signatech Nissan, and will compete in the 2011 24 Hours of Le Mans. Mind-blowing.
Ordoñez’s rise from virtual anonymity to a major series could be the ultimate digital coup, or at least the validation of the virtual realm as a source for the next generation of racers. Ordoñez, who’s said he had “a little bit of racing experience” in his native Spain before competing in the Gran Turismo time trial, will pilot Team Signatech Nissan’s ORECA O3 LMP2 car in the 2011 International Le Mans Cup, which includes the 24 Hours of Le Mans this June. He’ll make his series debut at the 12 Hours of Sebring later this month.
Have you ever wanted to own an Formula One team? Usually that would cost you millions upon millions of dollars, the kind of cash that only an automaker (like Ferrari or Mercedes-Benz) or an incredibly wealthy individual (like Richard Branson or Vijay Mallya) could afford. But the Williams F1 team is offering an unprecedented opportunity to get in on the ground floor.
For the first time in F1 history, the team will offer publicly-traded shares on the open stock market – in this case the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. It’s part of an effort to raise capital and ensure the team’s future as its leadership – Frank Williams and Patrick Head – are growing older.
Most companies release a simple, limited edition product to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Cabela’s, on the other hand, appears to have released a limited edition anniversary version of everything they’ve ever sold. Okay, not really, but amongst the range of Cabela’s 50th Anniversary Fishing Gear ($3-$2,200) you’ll find lures, rods, reels, hats, guns, vests, coffee mugs, jackets, rifle scopes, t-shirts, shot glasses, and a bunch of other stuff that you probably don’t need but is sure to raise your cred at the local fishing hole.