Welcome to the first edition of our “City Spotlight” series, designed to highlight the various cities in America, a diverse melting pot of ethnicities, ideas, and cultures. American cities are some of the most vibrant and unique in the world, and AfterShokz would like to salute them. In each edition of the series, we’ll look at an appropriate marriage between active lifestyle trends and music trends specific to the city of focus. Our bone conduction headphones are the perfect channel for joining the two because, in a city, you have to keep an ear to the streets, both figurative and actual. In this edition, our first entry, we’ll talk about New York. With AfterShokz you can hear the pulse of the urban music and the pulse of the traffic simultaneously.
New York City!
The Music, Then and Now
With a rich history of immigrants finding their ways in America, New York boasts a fascinating hybrid of musical cultures from all over the world. You can find any kind of music and any kind of personality nestled somewhere in a pocket of the five boroughs. New York had a huge role in conceiving and popularizing hip-hop, indie rock, and basically any pop cultural movement you can think of. We have New York to thank for everything from Run-D.M.C. to The Strokes. Everything big to come from New York set the standard for a big portion of today’s music. For instance, there’d be no Beastie Boys without Run-DMC and there’d be no The Strokes without The New York Dolls.
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These days, New York is a host to a variety of art rock bands and hip-hop revolutionaries with mainstream clout. We have New York City to thank for psych-pop duo MGMT, noise-rock-turned-dance trio Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and, of course, the legendary Jay Z. The New York sound is somewhere between opulence and poverty, high-art aesthetic and dirty sound, and war and peace. It’s at once an introverted lamentation and an extroverted exercise in braggadocio. In short, it’s all over the place, but it’s all smart and culturally relevant, and a pair of AfterShokz urban headphones mimics that duality.
Brooklyn, in particular, is a hotbed for indie, lo-fi music that’s ten years ahead of its time and the hardest-hitting hip-hop. It’s a lot to keep track of, so make sure you have some open-ear headphones, or you won’t hear the cab roaring around the corner as you shuffle from The National to A$AP Rocky.
The Active Lifestyle and Urban Headphones
For its exciting and bombastic music scene, New York City matches pleasure with fitness, with an equally intensive active lifestyle. The largest marathon in the world is the ING New York City Marathon, and its participants run straight through the metropolitan clutter, covering all five boroughs. Indoor cycling dojos like Soul Cycle enjoy wild success as the city comes inside to escape the hustle and bustle. Bone conduction technology lets you hear the instructor and your beats. NY Parkour teaches participants how do the nearly impossible urban acrobatics we thought could only be done in movies. I mean, just look at this stuff. Are you serious?
The possibilities are endless in New York City. We salute this city and its unbridled ambition! Keep yourself grounded in the complex maze of metal and concrete while you listen to its shifting soundscape with our sport headphones. If you’ve never been, do yourself a favor and dive into this rich piece of American history; it’s a hub for the entire world, and contains elements of the entire world inside it.
What’s your favorite New York band of all time? Tell us in the comment box below, or you can get in touch with us on Facebook and Twitter, and keep reading our blog for more Urban Spotlights!
