Why are the big outdoors stores all in cities?

I recently went to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. There were large stores in each of those cities – as well as in Denver, where we started our journey with the plane ride east – for all the big outdoor retail companies. There’s an incredible, sprawling, multi-level store in downtown Denver for REI, and we found another one in D.C. The one we hit in New York was even more impressive. We also wandered the racks at Filson and LL Bean in Boston. The REI in Denver and the Filson and LL Bean in Boston kind of make sense to me. You don’t have to go very far outside of Denver to find untrammeled wilderness – though it’s starting to get harder to find a place in Colorado where there aren’t a lot of other hikers, campers or adventurers. And Filson and LL Bean in Boston make sense, because Filson is designed more for nautical pursuits than wilderness adventures, and LL Bean is based right up the road in Maine.

But it still seems weird to have these paragons of outdoor adventure crammed in between Lois Vuitton and Dolce and Gabanna stores. And some of them are selling out to the city crowds, too. Just down the block from Filson and LL Bean in Boston, the Fjallraven store windows were crammed with all sorts of gear that would be right at home on the streets of Boston, but wouldn’t be worth their extra weight (or their inflated price tags) in the wilderness. It was disappointing, because Fjallraven used to have incredible outdoor gear.

There was one surprise, though. As we were walking through LL Bean, I got whipped in the forehead by a fishing rod being carried by one of the other patrons. He was in looking for a good rain coat on his way to go fishing off the piers of the Boston harbor. So at least there still are some of us out there – even in the big cities – who still use that stuff for what it was made for.