Watches

if you want to know the time, fuck up a pig

Does anyone wear digital watches these days? And whatever happened to Swatch?

Tch, preternatural - now there's an Anne Rice word.

Although a phone with a digital camera in would impress me rather a lot. I would gurgle over it.

I have two watches. One is a blue Bubbles Powerpuff Gurl watch. The other is a Hello Kitty Baby-G ripoff from Preston market. BOTH RULE. But they R being chunky so I don't tend to wear them much.

Go for anything digital and made from brightly coloured plastic, the chunkier the better.

I can't comprehend spending £200 on ONE WATCH. If I have to spend that much money on telling the time, I'd get 20 cheap watches.

I think I am going to buy a Paul Frank alarm clock.

been on a watch kick lately and i've bought four of the old school seiko 5s off of amazon and jomashop. mostly i've had vintage watches i found at thrift stores but they're unreliable because they all need to be cleaned and oiled and that's expensive. the exception is a late 60s omega seamaster deville that was running fast and i took it in to be cleaned and adjusted because you can't just unscrew the back and fudge with the lever because you have to take off the bezel and get in from the front and i can't do that and they had to do repair work on the mainspring or something and that doubled the cost but i'm like phoebe in that friends episode where she's afraid of riding that bike and ross is all like the bike needs you to ride it, it's dying. if i didn't pay to fix it i'd just have the idea of an omega; now it's fixed and alive and i've got a linchpin to an ok collection. i've also got a couple of late 60s and early 70s bulovas that keep good time but need to be cleaned. they run fine but then stop for like 15 minutes or so, then start up again. just need a good cleaning, but that'd cost more than they're worth. that's the price, though, to bring the past back to like, and that the point of vintage. it's something that was THERE at the time; it SAW things. some guy got it as a graduation gift or his wife bought it for their third anniversary before they started to resent each other because she gave up graduate school to raise their kids and he just accrued general dissatisfaction with life and blamed her and then she tried a new hairstyle and he didn't like it but that watch, it's from when things were still good. i paid 5 dollars for that watch at goodwill and now the residue of history weighs upon my head. i should at least get that damn thing running again so it can tell its story to the world, is how i feel.

the seikos were an alternative to buying a single decent watch. i got the snkl23, snk357, snk381, and snk385. they're inexpensive but there's a reason: the movements are sturdy but don't have hacking or manual wind, the water resistance is only 3 ATM, and the crystal is hardlex and not sapphire. seiko kinda updated everything and the specs are better but everything is way more expensive. i got baton hands, leaf hands, crayon hands, i think, and dauphin hands, blue, black, and silver dials, and stick indices and applied numeral indices. i think i've got a good variety of looks, and i'm in it for the looks. these things look classic, imo. the bracelets are crap but i've got a variety of leather straps. who is right, who can tell and who gives a damn right now? until the spirit new sensation takes hold, then you know. that's how i feel. disorder (joy division). until i dance into the fire, a fatal kiss is all i need. in other words, that'll do, pig. i want to get stuff, but then when i get it i don't know why i still want more stuff. i'll try to enjoy what i got. i think if if paid more for a better watch i wouldn't be able to appreciate the difference, and that's ok.

also i've got some 80s and early 90s swatches but the straps on two of them have dried out and cracked and that breaks my heart. you used to be able to get replacements easily but now i'm gonna haveta get something that's sorta close. one is the 1987 x-rated gb406 and the other is the 1986 nautilus gk102. these are beautiful and so information society and love and rockets and howard jones and the others are the 1990 tristan gb135 and 1984 chrono tech gb304. i have them; they're mine, and i'm responsible for them. i don't really wear the swatches but i like lookin at em.

all said, i'm stiil trying to reap the wild wind. there's still something out there i want that i don't know i want yet.

i got a scratch on the hardlex crystal of my seiko snk381 which is a kinda a reissue of a vietnam-era macv seiko military-issue watch, sooo cool unless you find that problematic no argument, so i took it in to a watch place to get a sapphire crystal replacement. it'll cost about 125 us dollers or so and the watch cost about the same so i'm just wasting money. no regerts. now i just need to spend about 80 to replace the folded-link bracelet with a solid-link one with a milled clasp and i'm all set.there's a seiko mod community on utube that's a real thing and they got to me. for the same price i could have just got a good microbrand with better specs.

i spent 88 bucks to get replacement straps for the swatches. money well thrown down the drain. they're only approximations of the og straps but that's ok. they're the 80s swatches so there's a lot of color blocking and memphis group style going on, so you can more or less get close-enough solid colors and it works. i have an early 90s tristan that's giving versace with the rococo filligrees and whatnot and the straps are very specific to the dials so if those go there's no way i could get suitable replacements. so i can't wear it. old swatch straps dry out and crack and then i killed cultural history. i still have it and can look at it.

those fucking swatches really look like the year they were made in. if i hold my gk102 nautilus up to my ear i hear bizarre love triangle or paranoimia, no lie.

the nautilus had a blue silicone bottom half and a green silicone top half so i actually bought one set of each to get the required halves, just to show how stoopid i am. i re-used the og red clasp, though, so that authenticity still permeates the whole set-up.

Slugbuggy - dig your posts!

I always think watches are cool - I admire the craft and the style, especially when the designs and colors are eye-catching. Somewhere in this house are two pocket watches I was given a lifetime ago, and haven’t worn in 10-15 years.

Ultimately I don’t buy or wear watches because I know I’d lose or break or lose interest in them quickly.

Whenever it’s time to leave the house I need my glasses, wallet, keys, and phone (which has a clock) and a watch would expand the quartet of essentials to a quintet.

yeah you can just look at pictures or youtubes online and you don't have to buy anything. i'm reminded of that coke commercial from the 80s where there were surfers in maine or something who were riding like two-foot waves and one of them said the best part was just talking about it with their fellow surfers. you don't have to have bona fides or ride the big waves you just have to like the thing for whatever it is.

It's not often you see "twenty-two years pass". It's also fascinating to see one of the posters from 2001 dream of a phone with a built-in digital camera. Technically such a thing existed back then, but only in Japan (the Sharp J-SH04). Japan was so hip!

I had a look at watches a while back - I think there comes a time in a person's life when they think about owning a posh watch, and also I'm scared I'll drop my mobile phone. It's a lot easier to glance at a watch during a long meeting than at my phone. I ended up buying a Seiko SKX007, which is the archetypal affordable diver's watch. The thing that really stood out is that it's self-winding! You just wear it, and it winds itself up.

And so every time I introduce myself to someone as part of my work I have to point out that (a) my watch does not go any faster if I masturbate (b) in any case I wear it on my left hand and I masturbate with my right (c) or sometimes my left (d) why are you looking at me (e) stop looking at me.

I'm surprised to learn that Seiko discontinued the SKX007 four years ago. It had been in production forever. My dad had a variation of it back in the 1970s. I think mine was £120 or something. It was the default "legitimately good cheap diver's watch" for many years. On the positive side it's smaller and lighter than I expected and the crystal glass is fantastic - it has no distortion and looks completely transparent even from an angle. On the downside if I take it off over the weekend it runs out of puff. And the date just counts up to 31 before wrapping around, so on certain months I have to reset the date. September, April, June, and November. And February. Fuck you, February. No, it's not your fault. Fuck you, Pope Gregory XIII.

I remember looking into the Omega Speedmaster. The NASA moon watch. There's a whole subculture of people who fetishise them - early models had a dot over the 90 in the bezel, later models had the dot to one side, so there's a market for reproduction "dot over 90" bezels etc. But it struck me that owning a £7000 watch in isolation would be pointless. The only people likely to recognise it would see through my fakery immediately. Would it make sense as an investment? Probably not. I already have a fridge stocked full of Sunny Delight(r) bottles. The originals, from 1998. That's my investment. One day Steven McCoombes is going to die, and his fridge will be switched off, and then if people want to know what Sunny Delight(r) tasted like they'll have to come to me. And I will be able to name my price.

i don't feel right not wearing a watch.
after bh died i treated myself to an expensive-to-me watch (£350).
hard crystal glass, solar powered, and picks up the exact time every night while i sleep.
it's probably the last watch i will ever buy.
(though i am always tempted .. )
my eldest has already put his claim on it for when i am no longer of this world.

I got my first watch when I was 7, a Casio F-100. Then in 1985 I was given a Casio DW-200 (the Argos catalogue £19.99 "diver's watch") for my birthday. I never wore this to school because it would have got nicked but I wore the F-100 until the glass got cracked in 1989. Then I bought a Lorus for £5. Wore it up until 2000 when I bought a Casio F-105. The rubber strap disintegrated in 2003. Then I had a Casio Futurist A220 from 2003 until 2022, when the metal tab that held to the 3 fold clasp closed fell off due to metal fatigue, and then a week later the light button broke. I replaced the strap on the F-105 and have been wearing it since. I'm fascinated by watches but could never imagine spending more that £30 on one.

totally with that snoball.
hence when i got this watch i was totally 'behave its £££!',
but my lads pushed hard saying 'dad, you want it .. just get it .. '.
no regrets.
it is course a casio edifice.
even before this watch i was always into the whole casio thing.
i was that nerd in the 6th form who had the calculator watch.

i haven't really paid attention to dive watches because huge but new old stock skx007s are going for $600 or more on amazon and so forth. that's crazy. used ones on ebay stat at $200 or so and go up from there. the indices on the 007 or the 009 (red and blue pepsi bezel) and the arrow and syringe hands are pretty iconic. a lot of dive watches look alike but (full metal jacket reference) that one is yours, it is your best friend, it is your life. it is discontinued, amen.

seiko did this thing where they split up their watches into the prospex line and the seiko five line. the prospex has actual iso certified dive watches, but the five sports line has watches that look like dive watches, but aren't. there are watches that look identical to the skx007 or skx009, but the specs are off. it doesn't have a screw-down crown, so the water resistance is only abt 100 meters, which means you can get it wet briefly but don't dive with it. i'm kinda ambivalent about this development. on one hand, you aren't really going to go diving anyway, it's mostly just the looks, but on the other hand, ppl who are gearheads want the thing the pros use because authenticity.

my brother has an skx781, the first generation seiko orange monster dive watch. his now ex-wife gifted him that for a birthday or christmas or something, so he's understandably ambivalent about it. it's ungainly, a garish spectacle of a thing, and i was not impressed. now i think its got personality for days. because you can't get it anymore, unless you pay a premium for a so-so watch;:that's the nature of history. once you delineate between now and before, before becomes elevated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k6zB7SICyc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6kvMoj-WZk

the short lugs lessen the overall visual presence, says the video. you don't have to live inside any rabbithole but glory to god there are rabbitholes to delve into. the rounded indices compliment the nature of the case. who cares? design ppl care. i don't know if this is good design but there's there's the starting point. for some reason i'm reminded of when i bought brian ferry's boys and girls on cassette at dingleberry's in in centerville, ohio, and i unwrapped it in the parking lot and popped it into my car tape player and unfurled the insert and read the whole thing while sensation played. it was 100 degrees outside and the smell of the ink on the insert mingled with the hot asphalt and the staccato guitar figures and dulcet horn tones and abrupt so 80s drum hits and that's the way i remember it. sensation indeed. my point is, the seiko skxoo7 looks like a personal memory. i don't know about it myself, but it has that feel. i'm kinda drawn to the skx007 because it was designed to look like it contains personal memories even though i have none.

i'm way off course but that skx007 is pretty ok; you should keep it.

if you don't collect anything that's also ok; it's just stuff. stuff is complicated.

The colleague who goes scuba diving wears a generic smartwatch at work. I've no idea what watch they wear when they're diving or their opinion on watches that have the aesthetic of diver's watches but don't function as diver's watches. I was thinking earlier this morning that maybe wearing a cheap Casio digital like my F-105 is some kind of anti-aesthetic, but I decided that it isn't. It does the job as straightforwardly as possible, and its aesthetic comes from that. Mine's showing a bit of wear now, but that's part of it as well - it's inexpensive enough that if it does get scuffed it doesn't matter.

yeah, there's also a casio cult, but having one doesn't mean you're part of it. unless you want to be. you get to decide; nobody needs a watch anymore.

Casio are absolutely the worst for this, because there are so many angles, some of which they seem to be actively marketing to. 'Vintage' for the 80s crowd, Baby-G for the 90s/00s ravers, the pointless ruggedisation of G-Shock (a designer at Casio said that the metal G-Shock could survive being run over by a truck - could your arm if you were wearing it at the time?)

mmmm yen so weak… grand seikos so nice…

hey if you can get a grand seiko cheap then get one. they don't look all bling-bling but you know better. put it in your will that you be buried with it and watch down from heaven (or up from wherever, i guess) who among your heirs steals it off your corpse in the casket during the wake. that's the smart one.

i saw a watch i wanted! it's a standard microbrand vintage-inspired thing which is most of what's out there but it seems cool and cheap and the specs are decent. it's got a sapphire bezel! never seen that before. kinda an omega seamaster dial and a rolex gmt master bezel. i don't even know anymore what's good or not. this seems like it was ai-generated to appeal to a specific consumer subset that i'm part of apparently because retro vibes and i'm ok with that. it's bland in the way all focus-grouped output inevitably is but it's all just right down the middle. it's vintage-hommage-but-got-its-own-thing-going-on. i've got a bunch of crap vintage watches i got at thrift stores over the years and i've been wearing them and now the rest of the world is copying me. you're all just jealous that i thought of it first.

anyway this watch may seem like nothing special but imo it's the apotheosis of *waves hands in the air* "that whole thing" (guffman reference.) it's like weird al's dare to be stupid: the amalgamation and perfection of what it targets.

https://www.detroitmint.net/product/detroitmintgmt/99?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=true&q=false

if you clicked on that link and were disappointed i told you already. the shock of the new, where is that in your psyche anymore? this is all the old things together in one package and it tells the time.

and I’m not just saying that because I am a fabin