Never leave well enough alone.

Spring is in the air, and the team here at metacool world headquarters just returned from a week-long management retreat where, among other things, we decided to revamp the way we go to market.  It’s time for some market segmentation.  Instead of delivering metacool goodness through just one tube called metacool, we’ll now be delivering metacool goodness through two of these tube structures which we’re told make up this internet thing.  More than double the fun, and a new way for me, I mean us, to investigate some passion areas without boring the majority of you all to tears.

If you dig my coverage of the more visceral aspects of our designed environment, please tune your radios to my new blog called Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness.  Where metacool is all about the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life, Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness is focused on the visceral side of things.  If I were to imagine a Venn diagram of sorts, then this new one would overlap 90% of its area with the older one.  One can’t understand the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life without understand the visceral sides of things, but many folks interested in the art and science of bringing cool stuff to life bore easily when fed gearhead gnarlyness more than once a month.  Hence the segmentation. 

If it helps, allow me to sketch out a prototypical target audience member for each blog:

• metacool:  early forties, with 2.3 years of graduate school; enjoys a fine red wine and dines on gourmet Vietnamese cuisine at least 2x per week; can name the drummer on every Coltrane album; also reads the NYT, Winding Road, the Economist, and Monocle (but is unsure where the last publication is going); recently augmented the 1964 Aston Martin with a Breezer Uptown 8 bike.
• Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness:  mental age of 14 regardless of true physical age; likes music a whole lot but suffers from hearing loss from standing too near to too many aluminum-block Can-Am V8’s;  likes any number of fine cuisines but is equally comfortable with cheese doodles and a fine light beer from Golden, Colorado;  used to read Road & Track, Automobile, Car & Driver, Autoweek, Autosport, Racer, Motor Trend, Car, Air & Space, and Bicycling, but dumped all of those subscriptions for Winding Road alone; recently modified the 1964 Aston Martin with a supercharged Chevy small-block conversion, and added a Boeing Stearman to the internal combustion corral because of the sound it makes.  Secretly prays each night to receive a Ford rocket Galaxie from the Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy.  Or both.

Does that help?  In other words, I am both of these blogs, and they are both me.  I want to have a way to explore visceral stuff more deeply without turning off the rest of you.  I am mildly dismayed when metacool is called a "car blog" (it isn’t — I merely use cars as a lingua franca to talk about innovation), but I would love it if Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness were labled as such.  One of my favorite public intellectuals is Russell Davies, and all I’m really doing here is aping him or Kevin Kelly, each of whom maintain a nice collection of inter-related blogs.  Looking at what Russell does, hopefully Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness is to metacool as eggsbaconchipsandbeans is to we’re as disappointed as you are.

This new blog is a working prototype.  The graphic design is rough, and some of you loyal readers will recognize some older content.  Thank you for patience and feedback as it moves forward.

Let me know what you think by dropping me a line or leaving me a comment.

AFAQS*:

• Why are you wasting your life blogging about cars?  Well, I don’t really blog about cars that much.  But I believe it is vitally important to understand the visceral side of things if we’re going to make much progress on planet Earth.  Why doesn’t everyone drive a fuel-efficient car?  Why doesn’t everyone ride a bike instead of driving a fuel-efficient car?  Why don’t we ride public transportation?  All of these have to do with what I call the challenge of making green red, and unless you dive deep in to our reptilian psyches as I plan to do here, I think you lose the big picture.
• Will there be less Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness on metacool?  No.  But there will be more at Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness.
• Will the character of metacool change?  I think so, but only gradually.  When I started writing metacool, I was but a lad in my early thirties without a care in the world and a hot 240-horsepower car in the garage.  Now I’m an old man with two kids, a mortgage, and a real job, and my hot car now gets out-dragged by a Camry from Hertz.  As I move through the world, I’m actually less interested overall in aesthetics and product-related stuff, and more interested by macro economics, psychology, and organizational dynamics.  I hope metacool continues to be interesting across those domains.

Oh my goodness, this has to be the most boring post I’ve ever written.  Let’s get back to business!

Ship it!  JFCI!

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

* Anticipated to be Frequently Asked Questions