Dystopian Watch Shopping

I have spent the last few days in the suburbs of a large city in Florida helping a family member recover from surgery. I am not normally a “Florida person”. Although I love all things warm and tropical and I find Spanish inflected English endearing, I prefer some changes in elevation and the semblance of seasons. (I live in an all too flat area that has two seasons: hot and not hot, may actually be cold for a few days, never mind, it warmed up.)

I had some time to myself so I thought that I would window shop for watches. I mapped out my route and tried some of the local shops. The first wound up being more pawn shop than watch shop. I find pawn shops depressing because you are always benefiting from the hard luck or poor choices of another. I saw many nice Submariners, but nothing that made me reach for my wallet. This store had not gotten the memo that Rolex prices were not at all-time highs. It was a short visit.

My next watch encounter was a bit odd. Two different satellite navigation services took me to two different malls. One led me to what looked like a methadone clinic, the other to a Burger King. The website was still being updated, so I called the number. It was the owner’s cell phone. He let the storefront go but he was still in the watch business. He would come to me. I really didn’t need to see a Rolex in a parking lot. He offered to help me negotiate with the Israeli watch dealers two towns over. I declined. He was pleasant.

My third stop was a little mom and pop watch repair that looked to have some inventory. It had two display cases of watches. Roughly half of the watches were Invicta. There were some Pro Divers, they won’t get my scorn. The others were garish and large. There was no design flair or intelligence to them. There were so many enormous quartz chronographs with ill sized sub-dials with no sense of purpose. I ignore Invicta, but to be confronted with so many poorly designed watches all at once made me think that this was purposeful, and evil.

One shelf held about ten “imitation” (their words) Richard Mille. I have never held or worn a Richard Mille, but these looked more like imitation Tsar Bomba. They were unbranded and had none of the depth or charm of the original. They wouldn’t have fooled anyone, even in a dark club. At the end of this shelf was a little pile of watches that were branded as Rolex. These cheap fakes were not even displayed in a way that would make you buy them, just piled in a corner. There is a lot of talk about how good fakes have become. These had not. These were two-dollar Rolex.

The last shelf contained all quartz watches, many with “diamonds”. I have scanned Amazon enough to know the word salad names that can be the modern “fashion” watch. These were a step below that. A single Tommy Hilfiger watch would have been the most valuable watch in this entire shop. As I left, I wished that I could have called in an air strike on this little shop. Every watch was meant to deceive. Nothing was merely “cheap and cheerful”. It was all a con.

Have I depressed you enough?

I went to get a cup of coffee. All of the little independents in the neighborhood had closed for the day and my only real option was Starbucks. I had gone to another location earlier in the week. It was filled with young people on computers and moms in yoga pants negotiating cake pop purchases with small children. I knew immediately that this experience would be different. A man who could not have been forty slumped over in a chair outside. He was asleep or unconscious. His weathered face told a story of addiction and hard living. He carried a knapsack. Backpacks used to mean you were a student. Increasingly, it means that all that you own can fit into a small portable space. Welcome to our store. The furniture inside had been removed so that no one could linger. People with too many bags took turns using the bathroom. I got my coffee and retreated.

My afternoon of watch shopping did not go as planned. I was not in some sort of Skid Row. This is a fairly affluent zip code. Even making allowances for the “Florida-ness” of everything, I was disappointed. I thought about all the watches that Invicta had sold to the gullible and how they came to be with the fakes and the non-fashionable fashion watches. That collection was a collection of despair. The watch hustler and his cell phone and the pawn shop all added to this feeling.

If you are old enough you know that this world goes in cycles, the bad chases out the good, and the good can replace the bad. In a real sense, decline is a choice, not necessarily an individual one, but a societal one. We can and should demand better. An independent store would know that a sleeping addict at the front door is bad for business. A corporation does not empower its employees to make decisions that would discourage such a situation. It is not sympathy that enables us to overlook the sleeping addict, it is apathy.

It is also apathy that makes it harder to find a store selling watches. The internet is easy, just put it in the cart. If it doesn’t fit well, buy another. I miss the watch counter at the department store. Why did we choose this? In what world is this better?

I have been told by my Australian friends that Australia is like the United States was ten to fifteen years ago. I suspect that is true also outside of the capitals of Europe. Leonard Cohen tried to warn us:

“Give me back the Berlin wall,
Give me Stalin and St. Paul,
I’ve seen the future, brother
It is murder.”

          –The Future

Let’s choose better.