Half size, kind of

On a daily basis, my wallet contains two credit cards, my debit card, my ID, and some cash. Most of you are probably the same. Most of you carry only a few cards. Membership is atomized onto apps and Apple Wallet cards now. Most of you live in cities like Chicago, where your transit card is your phone. Most of you are post-coins, too.

Yet we still have a lot of cards. In addition to my usual cards, I have a business debit card, a second business credit card, a Global Entry card, a passport card, a Priority Pass card that I never use because I have it duplicated on my phone, a Zipcard, and no fewer than twelve transit cards from cities all over the world.

A couple of months ago, I wrote some favorable text about the Civic Access Pouch 2L, which is basically a glorious clown car for tiny objects. One day, I looked at my stack of passports, credit cards, vax cards, yellow book, National Parks passport, etc., and wondered: what would make sense of all of this? And I sort of had the hope that the 1L version would double as a domestic carry object and not a glorified ultra-wallet, but no, it is really just a glorified wallet, the Costanza situation that actually gives order & form to the bits of our lives that we would rather sweep under the rug.

This is not a bad thing, but giving it the same name as the 2L version is a bit of a fakeout. The 1L pouch is a radically different object, with a different form, built for different purposes. With a clamshell flip-out design that’s cleverly held by two magnets on the flap, it shows, not holds. With a pen slot in the middle and two A6-ready slots, it is best for the sort of person who wants to turn their traveler’s notebook into something more post-apocalyptically ruggedized, which truly whomst amongst us, etc.