Eskuche Control’s Avocado

AC Gears is proud to be the first to release Eskuche’s new Avocado color for its popular Control series headphones. There are plenty headphones out there on the market, but how many do you know spin a light green avocado? Well, we the headphone experts at AC Gears have encountered none just yet! So for all your hipster and hipster-haters alike, these are some unique colors to rock out with. Look out for new products released this coming fall! You can get the new Avocado Control’s at AC Gears for $59.99.

The Holga Goes Digital

For you kids who love the look and feel of a vintage, light-leaking camera but feel hassled by the thought of having to drop film off at the processing lab, this one’s all you. Don’t get confused – it’s still the Holga, for all intents and purposes. Like its analog predecessor, the Holga-D cuts out all the bells and whistles burdening traditional cameras.

The appeal of the Holga design is in how welcoming it is to novice and pro alike – its bare-bones simple invitation to hold it, point and shoot. You won’t find much to get in the way of that here in the digital version. It’s even absent a viewfinder screen, digital or otherwise, lending your pictures the same amount of mystery you get from a roll of film. In this case, the mystery last as long as it takes for you to upload your pictures to a computer – no processing required. If this unsettles you, it’s compatible with a viewfinder accessory, but where’s the fun in that? Just pick it up, point and shoot.

The Big Caption

The web moves fast. With everything available, all of the time, it’s getting more confusing trying to figure out what’s actually worthwhile for us to see. The Big Caption is proof that picture-heavy, Tumblr-style blogs aren’t all along the lines of Michael Buble Being Stalked By A Velociraptor (which, while being everything its title promises, wears a little thin by page three).

The general premise, at first glance, is simple. One picture, taken from the media, with a large caption thrown on top. However, it succeeds by going above and beyond on two levels. One is the quality of design. While these are not works of art, they’re also clearly not slapdash works put together in Paint by people with zero background in graphic design.

More importantly, it works because it has something to say – about politics, about responsibility, about our world. It’s not all as dour as that, of course. Sometimes, it’s a jab at the shirtless guy in the photo, and seemingly nothing more. But it’s by taking these news images that resonate with us because, deep down, we know they’re supposed to mean something and assigning them a meaning in bold, eye-catching type as if to say duh, it shakes us out of our stupor by making us laugh, cringe or, at its most successful, feel a very real something in our guts.

Headphone Sale – Buy One, Get One 50% Off

Right now, we’re giving you a pair of headphones for half price when you buy one at retail, but you’ve got to come into the store to take advantage of this deal. Seriously. Come see us. We miss you. We know you’re there when we call, but you let it go to voicemail, and you don’t return our texts anymore. What is it? Did we do something wrong? You and us, we had something special. It can be that way again. We can change!

But if you’re going to be like that about it, well, fine. You can get 20% off online headphone orders with the coupon ACGSUMMER20. Check out the site for more details and the fine print. You jerk.

Summer Time Love – m-flo

We are playing a lot of J-Pop these days thanks to Gian and Grace sharing their music at our stores. The summer’s in and it only seems fitting that we shed little a little summer gleam of what we play here at AC Gears – Summer Time Love from m-flo, featuring Emi Hinouchi and Ryohei.

Music is probably the perfect example of the mainstream, melodic J-Pop that we have come to know. The MV is not new, but it does remind us of how Asia was before the recession. If you’ve been to a pool party somewhere in Asia, yup, summer time love was probably like that. Oh, please take no offense with DJ Taku using some girls’ booties as turntables … He is silly like that.

Holy Ghost! and Bike Jousting

More as part of Adult Swim’s singles series, a video for Holy Ghost!’s remix of Drunk Girls features Portland kids acting out a cultural ritual: bike jousting. Have you ever seen someone riding these chopped-up-and-reassembled tall bikes? There was a small group of bike enthusiasts back home that threw these things together, a bike on top of a bike on top of a bike, and you’d see them pedaling around town 15 feet tall.

It’s a weird visual accompaniment to this disco-tinged version of the garage-rattling LCD Soundsystem original, but so were the panda bears. Give it a listen – the remix itself is great and doesn’t show up on their recently-released (and fantastic) Static on the Wire EP. The video is dedicated to the late Jerry Fuchs, a star in the NY music scene, who had recorded drums for this track before suffering a tragic elevator accident late last year.

Target on the Move

Amsterdam gets their trains re-invented as art. New York gets a train re-appropriated for an ad. Hey, it’s America – commerce makes it all go ‘round, especially for the MTA, who could use the money right now. Target shelled out $250,000 from this deal, a first for the New York subway system, which  has seen ad-wrapped cars before, but never an entire train.

As far as branded-transportation goes, it could have been worse than Target, which is usually a pleasure to visit compared to the other big retailers. Although, with cars that sometimes smell like a wet cat relieved itself on the floor, I suppose a Wal-Mart decorated train would have been more true to life.

Kaws at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art

Kaws’ work has been everywhere, and influencing everyone, over the last few years. Now, it’s time for his first solo museum exhibition, which you can visit at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT.

The exhibition will serve as a career retrospective, spanning the years from his street art appropriations to his product lines and designs of the recent past, as he has helped pioneer the concept of adult toys as mini-sculptures now so prominent in Japan and among streetwear aficionados. The show also features Kaws art heretofore unseen.  This all comes on the heels of Kaws’ recent feature in Interview, where the artist spoke with friend and fan Tobey Maguire. And who better than Spiderman to appreciate a culture-definer who has such a strong eye for pop iconography?

The National, Terrorism and A Clock

Over the course of the last few years, The National have been on a steady path to becoming the best rock and roll band in America. And now, right after the release of their much-lauded new record High Violet and their first headlining performance at Radio City Music Hall, frontman Matt Berninger is finally ready to be mistaken for a terrorist.

Hey, it’s how you know you’ve made it – remember the Cat Stevens/Yusuf  Islam airport mixup a few years back? It seems you’re no star until you’ve been detained by airport security as a potential threat. Blame the Banpresto DangerBomb clock — at least, that’s my reasonable assumption based on Berninger’s description. I humbly submit Exhibit A:

“I had bought a novelty clock in Tokyo, some sort of MacGyver, goofball alarm clock that happened to look exactly like a bomb. And it was in my suitcase,” (Berninger) says, describing the memento he bought for a pal. “I had the Honolulu Airport evacuated for about 45 minutes. I ultimately had to surrender the alarm clock to the TSA but they were very pleasant and professional. They had done a great job and I thanked them and they let me go.”

While it makes for a great story with a thankfully happy ending, it would have saved Matt a hell of a lot of hassle to know he could pick up this goofball clock right here in the city. You live in Brooklyn, man. Come see us sometime!

Waiting for the Sun – Wood Glasses

A few Parisians have gotten together to produce sunglasses made from teawood. It’s part of a line they call Waiting For the Sun, in a possible nod to The Doors’ song of the same name. The frames themselves look great and come in three classic frame styles – something for every face! The site is pretty easily navigable and is worth the clicking around for the model-videos showing people trying on each of the three frames, including one slightly hairy shirtless man who puts on his sunglasses before making a phone call.