Watches are the Devil's Accoutrement!
In these overclocking times, watches are nothing but a giant wad of burned cash hanging on your wrist. They're like a vulgar codpiece of consumption, but, like, on your arm. They are, almost, evil.
They're heavy. They're annoying. They're pretty much duplicative. They're one more thing to sweat under in summer. They leave very awkwardly shaped tan lines. Also, yes, sometimes they're very pretty!
Watches are all status, all symbol and not really much function. I mean, they're a timepiece? Since you already have an iPhone and a BlackBerry clipped to your belt (oh my God, do you really? Come on), you already know what time and day it is.
And yet, there are wonderful moments for them.
On an airplane.
If you are like me, and of course you are, you want to know how much longer that flight lasts. As soon as you are "safe" to use "approved electronic devices"—which, I really try not to think about how my Bose noise-canceling headphones might possibly interfere with takeoff and ascent! Because I know the answers! —I set a little countdown timer till landing. But that system is prone to failure (unlike hydraulic landing gear), because then you have to turn off your electronic devices again at the end. This is when a watch is really handy! Get a cheap Swatch!
In a sauna or steam room.
You don't want to overstay your steaming welcome. Time both crawls and flies in there and you don't want to lose an hour and four gallons of bodily moisture. Also you want something to look at in a bored manner if someone is giving you the sexy side-eye and you don't swing that way.
In court.
Just to look nice. And also you shouldn't pull out your phone with the judge in the room, it's bad form.
Around rich people.
Rich people love watches more than any other kind of person! When you're around rich people, just mutter "Vacheron Constantin, Girard-Perregaux" over and over and they'll love you and accept you. Those are also, if I were a person who could stand to have a watch on or near me, the only makers of watches to whom I would give my money.
On the plus side….
The one really good thing about a truly expensive watch is that, like with diamonds, you can easily flee the country with them and exchange them for cash when you arrive at your new home in non-extradition territory. Disasters only happen to poor and therefore unprepared people!
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I took three flights last summer, and bought a watch before the third one because I was going crazy not knowing what time it was! But then there was a little decorative border around the little window that showed the date, and it popped out and started interfering with the hands. That was six months ago, and I haven't gotten it fixed. Ho hum.
Counterpoint: You can have my Patek Philippe when you pry it off my cold, dead wrist.
@TheRtHonPM I dated a Patek Philippe salesman. He sold 3 of his own to buy a Breguet. He really liked watches and his ex-wife.
Guess I'm just analog in a digital world.
what watch should be worn with assless chaps? a friend wants to know.
@roboloki: A Tennis Watch, I think.
<- pocket watch
@HiredGoons My mother has one she inherited from her (great?) grandfather, who was a railroad man. I've been covertly lusting after it since, forever.
You can't go wrong with a Casio digital watch. No seriously! I own this one and I LOVE IT.
@Bettytron Unless, of course, someone believes you to be a terrorist.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-files-casio-wristwatch-alqaida
Choire, your circa 1985 Swatch with full wardrobe of changeable bands is nothing to be ashamed of. You can check it to see what time you're due back at the Home.
My watch was a gift and I'm keeping it. It gives you something to check when you are passing by someone in the hall at work and don't want to make eye contact.
@scroll_lock
This strategy is equally effective without a watch.
@gumplr – I always feel silly when I don't have mine on (rarely) and look at my forearm anyway.
Watch is just an excuse for me to wear a big wristband as a sort of a masculine camouflage for my girly-thin wrist.
@Niko Bellic I have the same problem (thin wrists), but I always felt like a big watchband just made that fact even more obvious!
This guy I was hanging out with recently (because that's what we do now, we "hang out" because dating means too much, but it was more than friendship) … anyway, he was wearing an old imitation Swatch that had stopped working years before but had sentimental value to him. I from time to time wear my Dad's Rolex which was his sole inheritance to me, hospital bills having eaten all the cash. It also had stopped working years ago, and I told my hang out buddy about it. We smiled at our moment of similarity and returned to the pulled pork sandwiches we had picked up that night. It was nice.
@Rod Townsend@facebook we "hang out" because dating means too much, but it was more than friendship
Remind me to not be your friend.
1) An elegant watch isn't heavy. It's thin to a degree that it's almost another dermal layer. A chrono-dermal layer, if you will.
2) It doesn't have to sit on your wrist. You can get a pocket watch, and place that "vulgar codpiece of consumption" adjacent to your codpiece. And then ask strangers if they want to hear your lap tick.
3) We Olds – who can not tell time with your fancy iBerries and Bluepads and Shoephones – have been conditioned to look at our left fore-arms when we need to know if we're late for work.
@BadUncle Yup, I got a gunmetal-grey Skagen as a gift a few years ago. Very simple, VERY thin (like 1/4 inch) and gets lots of compliments.
@BadUncle – Some Olds sure are CUUUUUUUUTTTE, what with their timepieces and all. You had me at chrono-dermal layer.
@scroll_lock And also with our hair pieces.
@BadUncle – Merkin?
@BadUncle My daughter decided that the thing to get me for Christmas was a leather bracelet/wristband type thing (I know, alert the fashion police). So now every time anyone asks me the time, I look at this freaking wristband.
@SeanP Hey, Dad of the Year, what time is it in Leather Town?
Rotating, looking at your wrist to find the time: elegant, effortless.
Fishing out your phone, waking it from sleep mode to find the time: awkward, shifty.
@Clarence Rosario
Select whichever you prefer from the following list:
1) THIS
2) +1
3)zOMG yes
@Clarence Rosario Precisely. I say that as someone who already spends waaay too much time fiddling with my phone.
Plus, Choire forgot: At the Beach
Vincent Vega would still be alive had Butch not returned home for his father's watch.
True story/ies: My very first girlfriend told me (once we were an Item) that she thought I was bored on our first few dates because I would glance at my watch now and again (when really I'm just OCD and compulsive about everything, for no good reason, especially what time it is). Mortified, I resolved to (I thought) subtly take my watch off before social engagements with people I wanted to not offend (which, let's be honest, meant "dates" like 100 percent of the time). Then years later, another girlfriend, noticing that I did that, got me an antique pocket watch for my birthday.
Then we broke up and the pocket watch stopped working and I got a cell phone and I was like, you know what, fuck watches.
@jfruh Don't know about you dude, but if I had a history of relationships with women who thought they knew me while they really didn't, my conclusion would not be "fuck watches".
@Niko Bellic I actually found the fact that the second lady got me a pocket watch really touching! She saw that I did a thing, and then thought about it, and used it as the basis for a gift! Writing that sentence makes me realize how very, very low my standards for lady-friend behavior were circa 2000-2001. Now I'm married to a lady who has made zero watch-related relationship-gestures to me, lifetime, so things are looking up.
Can someone tell me how to pronounce that fancy watch so I can pretend to be rich? Also, is there anything I can pronounce that will help me pretend I'm cold?
@C_Webb This here is the key to watch snobbery. You gotta learn how to say "VA-cher-own CON-stan-teen," and "Yaeger-Le-Coul-TREY" and "U-liss Nard-ANN," and "Blahnk-PAN" until your soon-to-be-former friends have had an hourglassful and toss you in the lake to make your Timex stop ticking.
RIP "Two hairs past freckle"
I always wear a watch and have several (and yes, they are all Swatches – seriously! Though the last one I got, which is very handsome, is impossible for me to read with my old eyes. But I digress…)
Anyway, not too long ago I was reading up on formal wear and came across this advice in Wikipedia: "Traditionally, however, visible timepieces were not worn with formal evening dress, because timekeeping was not supposed to be considered a priority."
I like this sentiment very much and have stopped wearing a watch when I go out in the evening (not in formal wear!). I heartily endorse this course of action. And since I'm an old, it never occurs to me to check the time using my phone!
@ejcsanfran – Also a no-no for a bride to wear one with her wedding attire/dress. Remember this when you put on your hoop-skirted confection of tulle.
@scroll_lock: So just from my writing you were able to deduce that I'd be the "woman" in the "wedding"? Well-played, sir.
@ejcsanfran- Pegged you some time ago!
Well now you've just crossed the line into hateful, Choire.
I like the old Hamilton ones very much, on a man, with just a leather band. A plain, beautiful gold watch! They are nice. Those monstrous newfangled zillion-dollar ones are gross, though.
@barnhouse It's getting those cleaned and working again every 6 months that is a pain.
I actually prefer not knowing what time it is on an airplane. Clock-watching makes boredom worse.
I have a Fossil watch. I love it very much, and wear it every day. And last time I checked, you people decided I was a young. So There.
Timex Indiglo, $20. In my case it is very functional for work. Checking the time by looking at my phone while writing on a clip board is not handy. I'm an exception though. I'm exceptional.
I have an extensive collection of watches, valued somewhere between $10 and $40 each. They are all amazing, and a fine, tactile man accessory.
Back in the day, what watches were for was tapping down your cigarette. Get your choke packed nice– necessary for, say, a Pall Mall or a Phillip Morris king-size, to get it to draw right. There were two schools of thought: should the watch be on the inside of the wrist, or on the outside. Two entirely different cigarette-tamping postures.
Nowadays, of course, one sees the youngs madly tamping down a whole pack of some weak shit like Marlbouroughs or post-'86 Gauloises, on the steering wheel, as if it made any difference.
Bonus points, there's that post up above about Paris and Woody Allen. In Paris these days everyone wears a dive watch about the size of a medium Bouzigues oyster or a café saucer, and hardly anyone smokes the available approximations of real cigarettes. A fair number of men also wear business suits with their shirt-tails hanging out, all collar variations.
@toondeef I was under the impression that the face on the outside of the wrist was the "correct" position.
However, my father worked as a delivery truck driver when I was a baby, and later in a factory. He says that wearing the face out, he was forever smashing the crystal on doorjambs and shelving and such, so he turned his watch so the face was on his inner wrist.
Growing up, and taking my cues for how to behave and act from my Dad, I wore my watch face-in, too.
It was only years later that I realized many consider that "wrong" or "weird." But to this day, it just doesn't feel comfortable on the outside of my wrist.
Those big, fancy watches are for douches. Rich people like watches that are in inverse proportion to the age of their money. NRs like the big chunk-fucksits you mentioned, colonial-types like stuff they find in the trash, Uncle Leo-style, or that they got off a dead German. In all cases they won't mind much talking about them but you will then be known as the person who talks about watches and that's pretty much the same as a gigolo.
@My Number Is My Address well said.
We must be beyond time. Anyway a watch is useful and I prefer Sturling.
Ladies. This one! http://www.amazon.com/Casio-Womens-Casual-Sports-LA670WGA1/dp/B000PSOSIW
although you can find it for cheaper. Or just rock the naffest Swatch you can locate.
Watches are the only way to wear time on one's wrist.
I disagree. I started wearing a watch again a few years ago, and I'm glad I did. They look cool, and they are totally utilitarian, which makes them even cooler. Also, if I only want to find out what time it is, do you realize how much easier it is to glance at my wrist than dig in my pocket and unlock my phone? We're talking vital seconds here!
I also kinda miss my old Timex, because I think "indiglo" might be my favorite color ever.
I like the two watches I own – nothing grand but they are stylish. I much prefer them for time keeping than my phone.
I prefer to see my time on my watch because it is emediatly available and is stylish and showw something about wearer
I gotta disagree. Watches are one of those classics of formal dress, especially at the office. It conveys to superiors and others you interact with professionally that you value time, especially that of others. Keeping time with a phone looks infantile in a professional setting and it's a bad sign of the trend of casualization, if you're going for formal. I don't have to dress formal for work anymore but I defend the division in the work place between the two, if it's a formal shirt and tie environment. I've also noticed that the most successful job interviews or interactions with work clients that I've ever had were when I remembered to wear a watch. One employer who was a bit older even told me that it was universal years ago that people who didn't wear one to an interview were judged a bit harder since it showed that they might not be time conscious about work.