If you want to spot interesting watches in the wild, a cigar bar is a happy hunting ground. That’s doubly true if the OFWGs (Old Fat White Guys) and GOCs (Gentlemen of Color) know you’re a watch blogger. I’ve reported my close encounter of the horological kind with the Lange 1. I recently made my acquaintance with an aficionado’s Jack Heuer Carrera 81, not to be confused with the Carrera 160 Years . . .
Back in the day, Hodinkee published independent watch reviews for horophiles looking for solid intel. Those days are gone. The website now sells the watches it “reviews.” Careful readers will discount Hodinkee’s Lake Woebegone-take on timepieces, where every watch is above average and “criticism” is couched more carefully than Roche Bobois. The uninitiated are on notice: the website’s “Just Because” series is a Hodinkee scam. And it goes a little something like this . . .
As we suspected, Apple Watch production in Zhengzhou, China’s “Apple City” did not resume on February 9. “Apple assembly partner Foxconn has been told by Chinese authorities it cannot open its production facilities,” appleinsider.com reports, “due to the ‘high risks’ of infection determined after an inspection by public health experts.” Even if Apple Watch production facilities weren’t offline, labor is an issue . . .
In the modern era of watch-as-cultural-phenomenon, a timepiece can be reviewed in at least two different fashions (pun intended). You can focus on the actual merits and faults of the thing, or look at it in the greater context of social messaging, group identity, resale value and long-term desirability. In this case, we’ll do both to the Swatch Sistem51 Hodinkee Generation 1986. One of these reviews will be extremely, almost brutally, short.
Five Britons in French ski resort catch coronavirus after contact with man who had been in Singapore channelnewsasia.com reports. The coronavirus is causing consternation in the Southeast Asia island city-state. “Ministry of Health confirmed three new cases of the coronavirus (33 reported so far) that weren’t immediately linked to previous cases,” thehill.com informs. “Additionally, none of the new cases had recently traveled to China, where the outbreak began.” That’s bad bad news for Swiss watchmakers . . .
“As the downturn of the watch industry marches on, the dress watch, once a proud general leading the troops, is now becoming the first casualty.” As the guy who argued that the dive watch genre is doomed, I may not be the best person to criticize Martin Green at quillandpad.com for pronouncing time of death on the dress watch. Oh well. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it . .
Commenting on our post Self-Winding Watches – Don’t Do It!, reader Mark D. Stroyer admits he’s not averse to a hand-wound watch. And then raises the thorny issue of money. “What would one recommend for manual winding at budget pricing?” As Mr. Stroyer is a pioneer in the windswept environs of our comments section, challenge accepted!
