A few weeks ago, I was sitting at my desk, staring at the cracked screen of my computer when a brown cardboard box was delivered to me. Inside was a little orange and black rubberized thing with a few buttons on top and a little screw mount on the bottom. Weird, I thought. Then I remembered a funny email exchange I had with a very nice girl named Trisha, who wanted to send something for review.
“I thought you might be interested in trying out the ECOSTONE (launching in March),” she wrote. “It’s s a 100% waterproof, mountable Bluetooth speaker. You can actually mount it to your board, and listen to music while out on the water.”
“My God,” I responded. “That sounds amazing. I’m either going to get barreled with Sarah McLaughlin or do threatening power hacks with 2Pac.”
And so the box was mailed. I was going to build a 2PacMcLaughlin playlist and take it out to my local spot, where I surf with a bunch of old men that probably would not be fond of either Arms of an Angel or All Eyez on Me.
The Ecorox is a little big to be on the front of a surfboard, so instead of mounting it, I decided I’d take it out in the lineup by hand, and hold in over my shoulder like an ’80s boom box. It also floats, by the way. You don’t have to buy any extra foamy bits to glue on the back, or strap it to your wrist where it comes back at you when you fall, knocking out your teeth and turning you into a hideously scarred monster that hides in the bell tower.
Then I ran into a small hitch in my plan: although the Ecorox is bluetooth capable, as are many phones, I have relegated myself to the stone age of flip phones with no capabilities beyond t9 predictive text (which is AWESOME). They do not make waterproof cases for those, because when my phone was made, water hadn’t been invented yet.
I do, however, have friends (seriously). They have those future phones that can go in the water, so I borrowed one, strapped it on, and proceeded to shred the gnar (for one wave… turns out I feel like a bit of a douche cranking music in a quiet lineup) with pumping Pac as my soundtrack. California Love, to be exact.
But that lead me to thinking about the many times – not necessarily in the water – where music is great at the beach. And if you’re not worried about your speaker getting soaked in either beer or seawater, your day just got way better. The Ecorox just sits there quietly, unassumingly making your day better while it sings to you and your friends. Now you’re the life of the party, and all you needed to bring was a little rubber Ecorox and some 2PacMcLaughlin.
