I've been testing fingerless gloves for over 20 years, and while I've doled out lots of advice on the best fingerless gloves, often without being asked for it, this is the first time I've written it down.
Why fingerless gloves?
I live in the Bay Area, where it's often just chilly. I ride a bike. I type on keyboards a lot. I use my mobile device a lot. I like gardening, making coffee and tying my shoes with hands that are neither cold nor completely wrapped in wool.
And while the Apocalypse never seems to quite come, we are definitely living in Apocalypsish-times: plagues, hurricanes, fires, wars, fascists on multiple continents, drivers who DGAF any more, etc.
And no piece of equipment signifies living in the end-of-times more than fingerless gloves (with face masks and sourdough starters are competitors, but still not the top signifier).
Your end times could be Waterworld, Mad Max, a zombie apocalypse, Station Eleven, The Postman, or simply your own personal end time, like being unable to afford housing or looking at the state of polar cap melting and knowing we're all fucked.
Either way, the signifier of choice for those who are surviving? Fingerless gloves.
And that makes sense.
Basically, if you need to get things done while protecting your hands or keeping them warm, you go for fingerless gloves.
In the Apocalypse, you gotta get things done.
That signifier makes sense because NOT wearing fingerless gloves shows that 1) you aren't in distress, 2) climate change doesn't affect you, 3) you have so much money that your hands are soft and basically unneeded, or 4) you gave up on surviving.
There was a great scene in the movie 48 Hours, where Dan Ackroyd got recognized for being upper-class because he had soft manicured hands. No such luck for Eddie Murphy, who at the start of the movie, is pictured panhandling, pretending to be a disabled homeless veteran, and, you guessed it, wearing fingerless gloves.
I'm not totally sure whether the fingerless gloves on poor/homeless people is supposed to be because they wore out their regular gloves or because they have to do stuff outside. Probably both.
But you know, homeless people? They live in the apocalypse.
But fingerless gloves aren't just for crusty punks, people without housing, or people living in some future apocalypse.
Consider people who currently wear fingerless gloves in ways that are totally socially acceptable.
There are specialty fingerless gloves that signify something totally different: that you are a serious exercise practitioner - though somehow everyone pretends those aren't fingerless gloves.
Cyclists and weightlifters wear specialized fingerless gloves, though somehow no one thinks they are fingerless gloves like the ones for the apocalypse.
That's because these athletes need to do stuff while protect their hands: holding onto a handlebar to get around on a non-fossil fuel burning vehicle without getting blisters or nerve damage, or picking up a heavy thing without getting huge calluses or dropping the thing.
Which is basically to say again if you need to do stuff, you need fingerless gloves. Especially in the end of days or when exercising.
A quick taxonomy of gloves for sports:
Biking? Gotta have fingerless gloves. Preferably padded ones so your nerves don't get numb. Also of note, bicycles are the perfect post-apocalyptic vehicle of choice. Mad Max should have been on a lugged steel frame bike with wide tires.
Weightlifting? Totally need fingerless gloves, one on each hand, for wrapping your hands around a metal bar or a foam-covered metal bar.
Golf? Nope, here you totally need ONE AND ONLY ONE full-finger glove for wrapping two hands around a foam-covered metal bar. I don't make the rules, I'm just describing them. I'm guessing no one golfs in the end times.
Baseball? The current requirement appears to be TWO full-finger gloves for wrapping your hands around a wooden bar for hitting. Then you use a separate special glove for catching. Two catching gloves are not recommended. But baseball is also not a sport about getting things done. It's about waiting around for something to happen. No one will have time for baseball in the apocalypse.
Soccer? Nope. Only goalies wear full fingered gloves, but that makes sense because soccer is showing off all the cool athletic things you can do without your hands. Field players in very cold conditions sometimes wear very thin full-fingered gloves. But still, fingerless gloves for soccer playing in cold weather works really well (because sometimes field players do have to throw-in balls that go out of bounds, and fingerless gloves are not against the rules.
Kayaking? Fingerless. Which makes sense, kayaking is serious business.
Tennis? No idea, but I suspect full-fingered or none. Ain't nobody playing tennis in the apocalypse - there's no way to keep tennis whites white, bb.
Pickelball? No idea, but sure. I saw some pro pickleball tournament on TV once and everyone was wearing t-shirts and shorts that looked straight out of Grandma's Goodwill pile. Intentionally slobby. So sure, put on some mismatched fingerless cycling gloves to complete the look.
Rowing? Gotta be fingerless. Oddly, this is the only somewhat aristocratic sport that goes fingerless, but I think rowing is just a throwback to Roman times, when all the people, even the rich folks, had to get stuff done.
Anyhow, the point is fingerless gloves show up in sporty exercise where you gotta get things done.
But outside of people wearing fingerless gloves to do sporty things where those gloves are basically required to fit in, most people currently look at folks wearing fingerless gloves like they are oddities.
They look at such people like they are a 70-year-old who still goes to headbanging shows (that person rocks, btw), a teenager going through a phase, someone who never gave up on acid washed jeans (you do you!), or like a refugee who stumbled out of a 80s-punk movie with rainy urban decay and neon reflections everywhere.
That's just wrong. If there's one thing you take away from this post:
You live in the end times. Accept it. Start acting like it. Start dressing your hands for it.
So finally, like a recipe blogger winding up the portion of the too-long recipe post about how they discovered black bean tacos on a revelatory trip to the outskirts of San Diego before they actually include the fucking recipe for heating up canned black beans, it's now time for the recommendations you have all been waiting for
The best fingerless gloves for most people?
Honestly, any basic, non-athletic fingerless glove will do. Get some cheap $5 acrylic ones from Target or some scratchy wool ones from a military surplus store. Or hell, just start wearing your cycling gloves around the house and to the grocery store.
To paraphrase the billionaire ghoul Peter Thiel, the hard thing for most of you is going from ZERO fingerless gloves to TWO. Any two.
The quality of life change you will get going from ZERO fingerless gloves to any TWO fingerless gloves means the best recommendation for you is basically any cheap pair you can get your hands on and in.
One year for Christmas, my wife bought me ten (10) pairs of tiny, cheap, acrylic fingerless gloves, just so there were always pairs around. We just kept them in our park backpack and shared them with friends on inevitable chilly dog walking/park hangout nights in the lockdown part of the pandemic.
Now that's what I call prepping.
And of course, there are two pairs now in our earthquake kit for when it gets even more apocalypse. They are cheap, acrylic and will be totally awesome after the Big One. When the big earthquake comes, we'll be the envy of all the newly homeless millionaires in the Bay Area.
Other best fingerless gloves:
The best fingerless gloves for aristocrats in the end times or near-end times?
The choice here is some pair of super-soft possum-wool fingerless gloves out of New Zealand. There's a bunch of different ones, that look like this:
New Zealand possums are a whole thing: not wanted, invasive, different from other possums, and have fur that's like 70% warmer and softer than Merino.
These glove are a little baggy, soft and fuzzy, and unbelievably warm. You'll put a hole in them quickly biking around in them, but if you just use them to arrange your spice collection while looking like you care existentially about climate change, these are the gloves for you.
You'll look apocalypse-chic, and you get to talk about how your gloves are helping rid New Zealand of an invasive species. Quoting New Zealand's Deparment of Conservation, "The possum is one of the greatest threats to our natural environment."
Just search for possum wool fingerless gloves, like these and these and these.
The best fingerless gloves for survivors who get things done, protect their hands and stay warm:
The absolute best fingerless gloves that are durable, warm, soft, and form-fitting are the Black/Marl fingerless gloves from Noble Wilde in New Zealand.
They are made of a mix of possum wool, merino wool and some performance stuff (technically 20% soft possum fur, 30% extra-fine merino wool, 36% polypropylene, and 14% synthetic.)
There are also a version called Black/Charcoal, and from the description, they sound the same. They are not. This is a lie. The Black/Charcoal ones are good, maybe even very good, but they are not the same. They are not the best. Trust me, I'm typed the first version of this post outdoors in December, wearing the Charcoal ones and wishing I had the Marl ones on.
The ones with that stripe are the ones you should get.
I don't know what Marl is, who Noble Wilde are, or what Middle Earth magic was invoked in creating the Marl version, but they are the best fingerless gloves you can get. They manage to be luxurious, ridiculously warm without being stifling, and tough, all at the same time. They are the Red Wing and White boots of fingerless gloves.
If there's any way to be casually classy in the apocalypse, this is it.
They aren't wickedly expensive, ($20 to $30), but are only sold in a few places. Check online shops in New Zealand like Possum Boutique, Woolshed Gallery or sometimes EcoWool. EcoWool can be a steal, since you can change the price to NZ dollars (getting a great exchange rate) and they ship for free – but right now, they seem to be out of stock of the best fingerless gloves in the world.
(Please don't @ me about 32 Degrees' fingerless gloves, which are fine, but they aren't particularly warm and they are prone to getting holes).
But don't obsess over shipping costs - just find and get the Noble Wilde Black/Marl gloves.
You can thank me later down the apocalyptic road, outside the trading post with abandoned, rusted trucks in the parking lot, with a fist bump from your warm hand to mine.
