Cheap or Expensive Sunglasses?

I have always had fairly photosensitive eyes. Because of this, for me, sunglasses have always been more about function, rather than form. In my life I have gone through dozens of pairs of sunglasses. Along the way, I have found that the cheap gas station glasses have always lasted the longest. Even though I always wanted to try to look kind of cool, since I was going to have to wear them, I have always had problems with the expensive glasses that I have purchased over the years. Just to add some clarification, I use the terms “expensive” and “cheap” very loosely. I know that for some people, cheap glasses are under $500. When I talk about cheap glasses, I’m talking about the ones that you can buy at a truckstop for under $30. When I refer to expensive glasses that I have purchased, I’m talking about those around the $100 mark. Yeah, I have never laid out for a pair of D&G or Prada specs. To be quite honest, I thought that they were completely ridiculous until I moved to NY and became acclimatized to people wearing them (not as a joke). With the expensive glasses, I always have issues with them pretty much right right after I forked over the cash.. In the 90’s I must have purchases 15 pairs of “micro flys” by black flys. They were like $75ish. I had 2 common problems with these bad boys. It seemed like I would always scratch them within like the first week. I also had a problem with losing them pretty fast. Whether it was at the bottom of a lake/river, or just under the seat of my friend’s car, they disappeared pretty quickly. I had a few pairs of Arnette “catfish” and “Mantis” also; Same problems. I had a pair of cheap sunglasses that I bought one time on the way to Moab, while still in high school. Those beauties must have lasted me for a over 2 years. I did manage to hang onto a black pair of Microflys during the entire 2 years in Brazil. I promptly lost them, however, within a few months of returning to the States. When I first moved to NY, I bought a pair of Hoven glasses at the little surf shop in Huntington Village. They were around $120.

I scratched them, like the 2nd week that owned them. That didn’t stop me from wearing them for the next 2 years until they became super scratched and I eventually lost them. I know this story is getting long, but last summer when we went to Rhode Island to visit some of our homies, I bought these beauties at a Duane Reade.

They were $12. They are “Cosmo Girl” hahahaha. Like the teen girl magazine. Anyway, I wore them all last summer. I never kept them in a lens bag or anything. Then in the end of January this year, I picked up a pair of Spy “Curtis”

at a skate shop in Cedar City, since I was doing so much driving and had forgotten to pack my Cosmo Girls. The Curtises were also around the $120 range. I was like “I haven’t bought any expensive glasses for a while, I’ll make these ones last.” Well, 2 months later, on the way back from Puero Rico, I had them in my luggage and they somehow got munched so that they don’t sit right on my face anymore. I love my Cosmo Girls.