Daniel Varghese is a journalist based in Brooklyn, New York who has written and edited stories about menswear, endurance sport, urban design, tech, and travel for publications including The Wall Street Journal, GQ, New York Magazine, Escape Collective, and Conde Nast Traveler. In the fall of 2024, he started Leg Day, a newsletter about the pursuit of joy as a city cyclist. For day-to-day updates on what he is interested in, you can follow him on on Instagram, BlueSky, and Strava. For more detailed (but far less frequent) dispatches, subscribe to The DV Digest.
How It Started
Varghese’s journalism career began in earnest at Wirecutter, owned by The New York Times, in 2017. He developed a knack for efficiently evaluating products across a wide range of categories, which he further honed in future positions as the Tech and Lifestyle Commerce Writer at GQ and an Associate Editor at The Strategist, the product vertical of New York Magazine. Later, he served as the Gear and Gadgets Editor for Off Duty, the weekend lifestyle insert of The Wall Street Journal. In his tenure at the helm of that section, he assigned and edited pieces about topics as varied as the flip phone renaissance, high-design gardening tools, spearfishing equipment, and over-designed multitools.
In 2023, after years of being too afraid, Varghese decided it was time to try riding a bike in New York City. Within minutes of getting back in the saddle, Varghese had rediscovered the unbridled glee he had last experienced as a kid biking around the suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky. After spending a month reporting on the state of cycling infrastructure in New York and the U.S., meeting the owner of his neighborhood bike shop, and trying out some innovative new safety solutions, he wrote “How to Become a Cyclist WIthout Even Dying.” The piece was published in the WSJ on March 31 and appeared as the front cover of the Off Duty section on April 1, though its editors decided it should have a more optimized (and less morbid) headline.
How It’s Going
After leaving the WSJ in the summer of 2024, Varghese started Leg Day, a newsletter that follows his journey deeper into the hobby of cycling and its rich culture. He has written about his mixed feelings regarding hardcore spandex-clad cyclists, profiled a local cycling team that centers queer and non-binary athletes, and eulogized his first vintage bike. He has hosted near weekly group rides for subscribers at what he refers to as “Jalopy Pace,” a beginner friendly speed that can be maintained by anyone on any bike—even one of the clunky non-electrified Citi bikes. Recently, he hosted one of these rides for Bikepocing, a group organizing bikepacking trips for new and experienced cyclists in New York and New Jersey.
Varghese has continued to write about cycling, menswear, urban design, running, tech, and travel for other outlets, but especially GQ, Conde Nast Traveler, and Escape Collective. He currently serves as the Managing Editor of Field Mag, a digital publication for lovers of good design and the great outdoors. He is currently open to further writing, editing, project management and consulting assignments. You can contact him via his work email, which is just his last name, his first name, and the initial “r” with no spaces or punctuation between them @ gmail dot com.