I was in "the city" last week, Somervile, MA to be more precise, & I got to see some urban bike commuters. Since it was still chilly there were several drop bar mitts around. What caught my eye tho, was a guy who had his installed in a novel way. He sped by so I couldn't closely examine his install. Others flew by but they all looked set up like mine normally look. The mitts were installed in such a way as to fully expose the lower portion of the drop bar. He was still protected on the hoods. Maybe he just scrunched them up more?

how I use mine


but his exposed the lower portion. I don't remember if I saw the brake lever or not but I did see a large portion of the lower bar including the curved part. It almost looked like a different product altogether





is anyone using there's in that manner? if so, wutz the trick?

I can see and access a large portion of the drops on my bars with bar mitts on, but there's no trick involved, they're just older handlebars with a longer and deeper shape than the modern compact bars in your picture. As Ghazmh says, if it's cold enough to need the bar mitts I almost never use the exposed parts of the bar anyways... the pogies also block access to the brake levers from the drops so there's that issue too.

I think I found out what I saw by looking at old subscriptions

Retro Bar Mitts