The Yeti Hondo Beach Chair: A Throne for the Exquisite Idler

"It is for those who, like myself, believe that to sit well is to live well, and that a chair, like a life, must be beautiful."

Many lack the originality to lack originality, but the YETI Hondo Beach Chair dares to lack nothing at all — save, perhaps, a touch of humility.

Recently, and in a rare moment where it wasn’t a lawyer or manager demanding we remove a story about their client’s behaviour or face ruin, a marketing person from YETI contacted BeachGrit offering, for free, one of its three-hundred dollar Hondo chairs.

We all know YETI , a company best-known for its coolers given to surfers who score what is called A Perfect Ride, although this Perfect Ride differs from wave to wave, year to year and surfer to surfer.

The ten-point trophy coolers are the famous 82-gallon Tundra 350 with a retail value of $1300. A terrific prize with an excellent resale value as can be endorsed by the late, great Callum Robson.

Some decades ago I decided to be anti-accessory, a philosophical approach that demanded I achieve the required skill before progressing to the new board, new camera, whatever. And, therefore, I ignored the marketing man’s email for a few weeks.

Eventually, I figured, maybe it’ll make a generous gift to fam or friend.

I ain’t one for camp chairs and I generally loathe the idea of sitting, and in an age where vulgarity masquerades as utility, this chair emerges as a monument to the art of repose. The YETI Hondo is a defiant ode to leisure crafted in aluminium and polyester, materials that, though common, are here transfigured into something approaching the divine. 

It is a seat not merely for sitting, but for being — for existing in that rare state of luxurious indolence where the soul may flirt with eternity.

The YETI Hondo, with its “Flexgrid” embrace, cradles the form. Its wide seat and gently reclined back invite hours of languid contemplation while the armrests offer a cushioned perch for elbows weary of lesser thrones.

A cupholder holds one’s libation with the dignity of a butler, whether it be a humble water or a tumbler brimming with ambrosial excess. Here, you sit, book in hand – currently my latest biography – and declare, as I do, that many lack the originality to lack originality — but not this chair, which dares to be splendidly itself.

Yet, let us not be seduced entirely by its charms.

First, the price — three hundred American dollars, although I do believe economy is the enemy of excellence and, often, elegance.

The YETI Hondo is no mere chair; it is a statement, a declaration that leisure is an art form, to be practiced with the utmost seriousness. For those who frequent the shores, the YETI Hondo offers a sanctuary of comfort and durability, a canvas upon which to paint your idleness in bold, unapologetic strokes.

Let’s be frank.

The YETI Hondo is not for the timid or the thrifty.

It is for those who, like myself, possibly you, believe that to sit well is to live well, and that a chair, like a life, must be beautiful.

Let others trudge with their flimsy camp chairs; I shall recline in splendour, and the YETI Hondo shall bear me as a king bears his crown — proudly and expensively.