Customize Your Own Grooveking Gear!

We are psyched to announce a brand new addition to our website, the Grooveking Designer. What is the Grooveking Designer? you might ask. After many requests, we have finally done it. You can now fully customize your own Grooveking gear! The Grooveking Designer, powered by Spreadshirt's user interface, includes everything from sweatshirts, to hats, to yoga pants to fully customize to your content. It's everything you need to get your groove on! Click here to check it out and hats off the the team over at Spreadshirt for a great site integration (no pun intended)!

Grooveking New Product Lookout and Featured Designer Double Feature!!! - Alison Wong and Drybike

As you know, here in the Groovekindom we live in a land of design, inspiration, and some ultra cool people with some amazing ideas. Many of the people who have worked on the Grooveking project have some pretty impressive resumes. Today we want to give a little spotlight to someone who helped greatly with Grooveking's web user interface strategy: Alison Wong.

Alison Wong is a designer-of-all-trades. With a mechanical engineering degree from MIT, she has been involved in just about every industry. She's worked at Ford to develop an aluminum Explorer, at Apple Computer in the iMac division, and at Motorola designing new wi-fi cellular phones now available on the market.

Yeah, that's impressive! Besides her engineering ability, she is a human factors expert with a masters degree from Stanford. She worked at IDEO, a design consulting company, and knows how to work with people. Drybike.com sells her newest innovation.

Selecting San Francisco bicycle messengers as a group to observe, she spent time with with them to develop a product that they needed. Her product, Drybike Weathershields, concentrate on solving the problem of keeping hands warm and dry. Many commuters don't like riding in the rain but often have to. After many trials, she developed a new design that can be applied to all handlebars- they work on scooters, and motorcycles as well. She concentrates on useful, practical design that help people.

Besides making tangible products into reality (as if that wasn't enough), she is also an illustrator and graphic artist and has consulted in industries from toys to universities. Her graphic design can be seen on products sold at such stores at REI. She helps teach design at Stanford University and is trailblazing the realm of educational comics. She is spearheading a movement to make the medium become and effective educational tool. One of her books on teaching design is at: www.ahwong.com/comics/comic.html She uses the comic medium to develop handouts on mechanical engineering to motivate students to learn. All I have to say is I wish I had her around when I took high school physics.

Definitely check out her brand new website Drybike.com to get some awesome weather protection for your hands for all you bikers. We are always excited to showcase up and coming designers. Alison Wong is definitely a designer to watch. We will keep you posted with more developments in her product development pipeline (as well as ours).

Not Sure What it is But it Looks Fun To Drive!

Okay, what do you get when you collide Minority Report, a motorcycle, a car, Japanese style, video game racing fantasy, and great fuel economy? You get the Phiaro. What the heck is a Phiaro you might ask. Well, over here at Grooveking we were also intrigued.

In Japan the Phiaro fits into a class of cars that are 660cc that have many advantages over regular cars. The Japanese government wants to encourage the use of fuel economical vehicles so offer a lover tax rate on these cars. Insurance is also low, not to mention that they get great gas mileage 28 km per liter. All now come with many safety features as well, like front and side airbags and high impact doors and crumple zones in the front.

What we thought was crazy was that this thing can output 48kw (658 HP) at 7500 RPM. You would be a blur if you got into one of these! Although the Phiaro is not available currently (only a prototype), it sure shakes up the status quo (which we always like).

Let us know what you think....and as always, Groove-on. We will keep our eyes on the lookout for the coolest stuff around.

Holy Crap! Parkour is THE Coolest Sport of All Time!

Well maybe not the coolest sport (Laser Tag still is tied for first), but when members of the Groove Kingdom saw footage of Parkour, our mouths dropped. Parkour, also known as freestyle running takes Matrix like hyper chase-scene moves and inflicts them on real world urban terrain. It is a must to check out this video of some of the best in action.

According to Parkour.com, Sabastien Foucan developed the discipline of Parkour with his childhood friend David Belle, who practiced the 'Natural Method' of Parkour, Influence by his military father, also a great sportsman. Together Sabastien and David played and put in place a way of being - A Lifestyle - That lasted for more than ten years.

Heavily influenced by asian philosophy, Sabastian decided to immerse himself fully in his art in order to combat negative energy and becoming 'Fluid like water'. Becoming aware of the failings of art without context. He later chose to create his own path by developing the philosophy - His own method of learning based on autonomy, play and positive energy. Conveying to others his messages and philosophy has become Sabastien's quest. Sabastien has become a global ambassador of the Parkour / Free-Running discipline.

According to Sabastien: "Nobody ever invents anything - You're inspired and sometimes you can improve!"Sabbastien believes in the concept of "No violence, No competition, No Groups, No Chiefs."

After understanding the history and philosophies of Parkour, the Groovekindom tips it's crown in respect. Our sources have told us that although this sport has not caught on yet much in the US, people are participating all over Europe.

Hey, if you have any more info on Parkour or any other exciting activities and have some stories, footage, or photos to share, we will be happy to include you in our next post. Bonus if you are sporting Grooveking threads.

Thanks Adam for the heads up on this. Groovemaster Out.