As a touring bluegrass musician, Tim Parr was passing through Malibu, California in 2017 when he decided to shop for reading glasses. At age 49, the outdoor industry veteran who’d worked at Patagonia and founded a bike company (Swobo) had never worn glasses before. But, Parr says, his younger band members had been giving him a hard time for having to print out a separate set list for him, one with a bigger font.
“It was always at least two pages, when the other guys had one,” Parr, who’s now 57, told me on a GoogleMeet from his home in Baja California, Mexico, last month, after a morning surf session. “That’s what started Caddis.”
Parr channeled his years working in the outdoor industry and recreating on bikes, rocks, and waves (he’s been surfing for 42 years, hence the house in Baja), combined them with rockstar (okay, bluegrass) sensibilities, and came out with super-cool readers.
“Ninety percent of people over 40 have what’s called presbyopia,” Parr said. I looked it up. The Mayo Clinic website defined presbyopia as “the gradual loss of your eyes’ ability to focus on nearby…
