The Palos Nation was born last summer, during a hiking trip to Arches National Park in Utah.
Boone Hogg, Logan Jugler, and some friends told jokes as they walked toward the Delicate Arch. From his nonsense arose the idea of reviewing a stick as if it were a sculpture or a valuable antique.
Later, Hogg, 30, took out his phone and recorded a video of Jugler, also 30, as he reflected on the qualities of a stick he had picked up off the ground. It seemed more interesting than the nearby sticks—for one thing, it was roughly shaped like a gun—and Jugler found that, to his surprise, he had a lot to say about it.
“It was really worn, and it felt really good in the hand,” Jugler recalled. “He had a good trigger point for your finger. I think I gave it a 7 out of 10.”
In any other era, the idea of weighing the aesthetic qualities of clubs might have been left behind in the field. Instead, Hogg and Jugler created Official Club Reviews on Instagram.
The account, which bills itself as “the Internet’s go-to for club reviews,” quickly attracted 40,000 followers, many of whom offer commentary on the clubs under discussion. (The account now has about 355 thousand followers.)
Hogg manages the social media accounts (there’s also a TikTok), while Jugler handles the content. He came up with the idea of the Suit of the Month, normally selected by the two from the candidates sent to them by users. February’s winner, curved at one end, looked like something a character from “The Hobbit” might carry as a cane.
They have devised various metrics for judging a club, including size, shape, color and texture. One particularly large stick earned just a 5 out of 10 rating because “it could cross the line into log territory,” one commenter said.
One slightly contentious discussion addressed how to judge the beauty of a natural stick versus one that has been cut or modified by human hands. As a result, Official Club Reviews has established separate categories for each.
What started as a country joke has morphed into something a little less frivolous. The act of finding, handling, and appreciating a good club seems to speak to the 5-year-old in us.
In the roughly seven months since they started Official Stick Reviews, Hogg, who works in marketing, and Jugler, a medical assistant, said they have been surprised to find so many fans passionate about pieces of fallen branches. One commenter shared that he inherited the prized stick from his mother after her death.
“We’ve facilitated this common ground that people have,” Hogg said. “You don’t have to lose much ground in this regard, because they are just sticks.”
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