I was just reading about Margiela’s new man-bags… pictured below. I got mildly interested in man-bags (man-purse? Murs?) this past year but couldn’t get myself to buy one.

Here’s the thing. DJ’s need bags. Traveling international men of mystery need bags. I’m both, I need a good bag. I’ve had backpacks for years. It’s the obvious recourse for DJs… and backpackers, duh. Don’t think I’ve forgotten my roots. In the vinyl days I used to carry those Shure or Technics backpacks with a heavy load of wax in them. Remember Esdjco? (Whoooaaa they still have my picture from when I was 16 on their site!!) Their bags were even bigger. 

I can recall the first time I went to the Stretch & Bobbito radio show on WKCR in 1997, Lord Sear was clowning me and my brother. He was the first person to make fun of my non-existent shoulders. “Yo what’s holding up that backpack? You got no shoulders!” He was also the first person to say that Dave looked like Paul from The Wonder Years. But I digress. (How about GLC rapping “If you’re feeling like a pimp, man / go and take your shoulders off” to me at a rehearsal?)

The point is: despite what Newtonian physics would have you think, I can carry a backpack. But I get tired of backpacks. They kill my back. They make me look/feel like I’m 16. That said, you know what’s good about a backpack? Compartments. And that’s what stopped me from making the dandy-man move to the man-bag in 2008. Man-bags don’t have compartments and it seems that in order to keep yours looking spiffy you can’t fill it up too much. That doesn’t work for me, I carry a ton of junk and need it neatly filed.

So there you have it, my thoughts on bags.

More on Margiela bags at Selectism.