If you haven't heard of Mission Workshop before now, you've been doing some serious sleeping. Located in the heart of SF's beautiful Mission district (my old band played a show in the back of the old Mission Records store a decade ago!), Mission Workshop was founded not too long ago by a couple of great guys who've been making bags for cyclists for over 15 years, leaving the comfort of a solid brand they help create (Chrome ring a bell?) to follow their dreams once more and go off on their own.
These guys are off to a great start with their weather-proof backpack that comes in 2 sizes: medium and large, The Rambler and The Vandal respectively. I like to carry a lot and many times need to as well. And being American and all, bigger is always better, right? Right. So The Vandal was the obvious choice from the get go.
The box arrived and the bag looked great (and still does!). At first look, it was definitely tall- I'm 5'10" and it stands to my knees! But it also seemed pretty compact- maybe a few inches deep. I was starting to wonder if the videos were a hoax...then I popped the clip- If evil villains carried backpacks, The Vandal would be their bag of choice. The good guys would get one too- most definitely, except they'd get the green one. It's that genius.
But I dug the Legion of Doom, not the Superfriends (for those of you under...I'll go with 30, the Superfriends were/are Superman and all the other good-guy superheroes). So again- the obvious color choice for me was the grey/black combo, but it's always nice having a color choice period!
All the superhero/villan hub-bub aside, when I popped the clip open, the beauty of The Vandal starts unfolding- literally. All of a sudden, this bag that was at my knees a second ago is about to tap my ass! And it wasn't just a standard cover flap doing the tapping- surprise! !t was a super tall bag of it's own. Totally rad. Go ahead & leave it open if you need to carry something really long, because you can! But if you've got something that's just a little long and comes to the top, you can roll the flap over and there's a velcro flap that will keep the weather out! Brilliant.
But there's a lot more to the Vandal than that- we're just getting started here!!! With the first flap up, you find way more than a bag as long as the top flap will reach. Let's get down to what this bag is really about- carrying anything & everything- I'm talking about the expanding cargo compartment, my favorite feature for sure. Double zippers unzip to turn this compact bag into a pony keg carrying monster, going from 1800 cubic inches to 4000- 30 liters to 65- 6.75 gallons to 15...get the picture?
Your load might not be that big every day, so this compartment opens as much- or as little as you want- it's up to you. There's a strap with the toughest locking clip I've seen on each side with a small, simple logo on the lock.
Leave them unclipped, or clip up and pull the straps to fit your load. That compartment zips shut too if need be, and both zippers are urethane coated and weatherproof too. But if you need to leave it open, this is the one pocket that features a drain hole in the bottom. Nice touch!
So the first flap is still up, and under the expanding cargo pocket is another clip to close the rest of the bag up- that clip is attached to another flap- lift it up and there's another zippered pocket that I'd say is the size of your standard backpack! The beauty of the flap on this pocket is that you can fold it down and clip it shut, leave it up and use the original flap to clip shut, or if you need the room, go ahead and leave it up!
And once again, there's one more flap- this time clip-less. It's the smallest zippered pocket this bag has, but again- it's pretty big. Smaller than a regular backpack, but I'd have to say it would hold a gallon sized zip-lock bag stuffed as full as possible, with more room to spare. And again, you can leave this pocket with the flap up, or with the flap down. It's up to you and what you've got to carry that day! Talk about choices!!!
But wait! We're not quite done here. There's still some magic happening, and it's in the strap that clips the bag together- it stretches! And not only does it stretch, but it's also adjustable! So many possibilities...it will hold a bike (done in the video for it, which i highly recommend watching!), it can stretch to 2' to hold a large pane of glass (as John Prolly demonstrated on his site, prollyisnotprobably.com), damn near anything you would ever need or want to, and sometimes just for the hell of it!
The end of the top strap is hemmed a couple inches long with vertical stitches of reflective thread for safety. The base of the bottom strap goes into a fairly skinny, deep pocket with another one just like it on top of that! Use it for tools, pens, etc. That's another little feature that I really like, that the majority of cargo type bags don't have. Topping it off with one classy little rubber logo sewn on the front, just to the right of the strap in the middle of the bag.
So that's the bag part of The Vandal. The back has something thin & stiff in it to keep it's shape & stay comfy. Then the back itself is padded, with a mesh covering over the top half to keep it breathing.
The straps are padded and mesh covered, and adjustable at both ends with plenty of strap to accommodate most anyone, with webbing sewn down the middle of both sides for whatever accessories you've got! Then finished off with a chest compression strap that can be vertically adjusted too. Available in five different colors.
My only con is that the waist strap is a separate accessory. It's something I feel is a necessity- especially when carrying heavy loads. But that's it. Thankfully, it's an available option ($30) for those that want one.
Mission Workshop takes the gold for cargo packs in my book, hands down. Not a backpack person? Not to fret- they recently released their large, rolltop messenger bag, The Shed. I haven't seen it in person, but from what I've seen & read on the interwebs, it's a pretty choice bag in it's own right.
-Brandon
need a website? go for a ride with greeze!
