Bag It Up

I’ve used courier/messenger bags of one sort or another since I was 13 for just about everything: schoolbooks, weekend trips, laptops, records. Like many, I’m passionate about my choice of bag. After all, a bag is an ever-present companion, at once an expression of personal style and one’s approach to utility.

I’ve never had aires about my explicit use of messenger bags. I have no courier aspirations. Hell, I haven’t even owned a bicycle in ages. No, I always went with messenger bags because of their maneuverability on public transit. A backpack is liable to crowd other passengers, but a good courier bag will hug your body. Spend a few months wearing one day-in and day-out and you’ll find that you can reach most everything in the bag sight unseen, even in tight situations.

But what good is all that if you’re constantly in a car? When I bought the MacBook, suddenly the heavy buckle on my Chrome began to look more like a potential cracked screen than a handy feature. Moreover, it’s hard to find a laptop sleeve with enough padding to give me peace of mind while it rattles around in a courier bag.

So, for the first time in nearly a decade, I bought a different kind of bag. This Burton DJ bag doesn’t have the svelte appeal of a courier bag; indeed it looks more like luggage, as a friend remarked. It certainly doesn’t distribute weight as comfortably across the shoulders, padded strap or no. But, for the price, it’s got an amazing number of purpose-specific pockets and compartments that fit the multitude of gear I carry to the coffee shop, hackathons, and (soon) to DJing out.

I’d heartily recommend Burton’s DJ bag to other laptop musicians, or at least nerds with a bulky pair of headphones who can’t stand anything rattling about freely in their bag. Avoid the other materials its available in, though, or risk hefty fines from the Department of Sartorial Reparations. Honestly: faux crocodile, Burton?