I can be a ridiculous person. I also have ADHD. These two facts are strongly correlated.
I’m hard on sunglasses. REALLY hard on them. And the ones I don’t break, I tend to lose.
I never thought a lot about sunglasses until I started driving. To be fair, it was actually Flying magazine that introduced me to important topics like photochromic lenses, polarization, and blue-light filtering. It was in that magazine that I believe I first saw ads for Serengeti sunglasses and their Drivers lenses. With only a few excursions, these are the sunglasses I’ve now worn for 30-plus years.
Serengeti Drivers turn the world a very comfortable shade of sepia for me, they darken in bright sunlight, and they lighten when it’s less bright making them perfect also for overcast days. Combining polarization with the ability to lighten, they also work wonders while driving in rainstorms.
The excursions
I did field research in graduate school, so I switched primarily to cheap and sturdy models I could get from any corner pharmacy. These humble tools put up with gallons of sunscreen and frequent light sandblasting of soil driven by Central Texas winds. Not to mention ridiculous heat both in ambient conditions and when left inside the cab of my 1998 Ford Ranger XLT. (You know this post had to have at least one vehicle in it.)
When I showed up as a young careerist in DC in the early 2000s, these corner pharmacy specials earned me ridicule. A boss literally told me they had to go. So I got back on the fancy sunglasses bandwagon again.
I tried Ray-Bans
What can we say. Ferris wore them.
So do Ferrari.
And the Men in Black.
I spent a decent amount of time with Ray-Ban’s Aviator Classic. I loved them. But like so many others we’ll learn about below, they are no more. Would I buy them again? Absolutely.*
I spent much of the 2010s trying to be a bit more thrifty since I had come to the realization that sunglasses were not durable goods for me. Instead, they were disposable items. This led me to my next experiment.
Bollé
According to my Amazon order history, found Bollé in 2012. I managed to snag *two* pairs for just $136. This began a trend of buying two pairs at a time. Because they would surely get lost or broken. And when it came time to buy them again, they might no longer be available. Just like these “Malcolms”.
I really liked these sunglasses. They had composite frames and lenses so they were super light. But the lightweight frames and lenses were also easily damaged. After marring a lens squarely in the middle my focal area, I relegated them to outdoor activities and picked up another pair of Serengeti Drivers for automotive use. Over time the Bollé pair developed a haze that I could no longer remove by cleaning. This taught me that the expensive metal and glass I was trying to avoid might actually be more economical in the long run.
Some brand I picked up in Seoul
At least one of the Bollé pairs managed to survive until 2019. After multiple repairs, the right earpiece terminally dissociated from the frame while I was out for a run in Seoul. So I popped in a sunglass store for a new pair. I didn’t recognize the brand – but they were even lighter than the Bollés and had great color. My only gripe was that they stood off the bridge of my nose, letting quite a lot of light in the sides.
What happened to them? I have absolutely no idea. Which brings me to:
Losses
I lost one pair when it worked its way out of my overcoat pocket in a New York Taxi Cab. Another was taken by waves at Surfers Paradise while on my honeymoon. Another pair, I left on a pew after Bible Study at my church, only to find later that they never made it to the lost and found. (It remains a fallen world.) And these are just the ones I recall losing.
Breakage
This list is even longer. I dropped pairs many, many times – resulting in numerous scratched lenses and a couple of shattered ones. It turns out that tucking sunglasses in the neck of your collar isn’t safe if you’re going to need to lean over. Neither is placing them for “safekeeping” on top of a stack of boxes that you’re going to move.
I once flattened a pair in the inside jacket pocket of a suit by crossing my arms. Actually, I think I’ve done that on at least two separate occasions. I crushed others inside backpacks after I misplaced their cases. My favorite is when I slammed a racket into my face reacting to a volley during a tennis class in college. These were composite prescription lenses with Autoflex frames. They were deemed most likely to hold up to all the abuse I would throw at them. They did an admirable job and put up with a lot before this direct assault proved to be their undoing.
At the track
As I started track driving, I discovered that most sunglasses don’t really work with helmets. I mangled another pair of Serengetis wedging them between my temples and the helmet foam.
I found that SPY+ had a solution for just this problem in the Dirty Mo.
They’re a little small and feel quite tight against the temples of my admittedly large noggin. They also let in more blue light than is comfortable for me, but they certainly do the job. They fit inside a helmet and feel sturdy. They improve visual clarity and eye comfort even around changing light conditions with sun and shade on different parts of the track. And they’ve held up well to this point.
Summary
What have I learned from all the sunglasses I’ve gone through in the last three decades? First, quality matters. Second, if you’re as hard on them as I am, it helps to have a lightweight pair for active pursuits and save the really good stuff for driving, flying, etc.
What am I wearing now? What else, Serengeti Drivers. Why do I keep returning to them? It’s the photochromic lenses. They are perfect for me, essentially irrespective of the weather. There have only been a handful of occasions that I wished that they were darker – and correspondingly few that I wished they were lighter.
That said, I have only one functional pair at this writing – plus three others in various states of disrepair.
I do still have the SPY+ Dirty Mos and reserve these for track duty…or when I’ve misplaced the last of the Serengetis.
* Disclaimer: No sunglasses brand compensates The Autoverse in any way.
