The 1858 (Underground) Railroad Watch

A shameless bit of self-promotion -

For those of you who might have missed it, this is the 1858 from the Oberlin Watch Company. And to clarify things, yes, I am the owner of the Oberlin Watch Company ; )

The 1858 is a hand-wound watch. The case is stainless steel with a solid case back. 

This was originally a pre-order model, but we are now selling the final 9 available pieces. The price is $458 US.

Should it be in your wheelhouse, here are the pertinents -

The Basics:

The 1858 is a hand-winding watch. It is stainless steel, with a solid case back to allow for personalized engraving. The movement is made by Seagull, a Chinese manufacturer. The movement is the ST-3600, which is a clone of the ETA 6497.

The watches are assembled and tested in the United States. The watch comes standard with a blue and a black leather strap. The straps utilize quick spring bar attachments so they can be changed without the use of a tool using your finger and thumb!

The Particulars:

Case - stainless steel, 40 mm in diameter, solid case back with Oberlin engraving

Movement - Seagull ST-3600

Strap - black leather with quick spring attachment, stainless steel folding clasp

Warranty - 1 year

The 1858 Pulls into the Depot!

This is a bit of shameless self-promotion ; )

I am very proud to finally announce the release of the Oberlin Watch Company's 1858!

The 1858 is a hand-winding watch designed to bridge a few different ideas and stories. 

So, it is completely true that there was a pocket chronograph produced by an assembler in Besançon, France way back in the day -

But the "Oberlin" on that watch dial denoted the Oberlin Pharmaceutical Company, also French. The watches were produced to give as promotional gifts to pharmacists (that's chemists on the other side of the pond), and doctors. Today their lucky if they get post-it-note pads and disposable pens ; )

So suffice it to say, there never actually was an Oberlin Watch Company...until now.

The 1858 is not only a "chapeau!" to the original Oberlin Pharmaceutical Company, it is also a "tip of the hat" to an event that happened in (and near) my hometown of Oberlin, Ohio. The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. 

The short part of this story is that Oberlin was one of the last depots on the Underground Railroad, and also fervently abolitionist. John Price had lived as a slave and managed to escape and made his way to Oberlin, where he had been living for (it is said) 2 years. The law in the US at that time allowed for slave owners to enlist marshals and other officers to help them recapture "fugitive" slaves. John Price was lured to the outskirts of town where he was captured. His captors realizing that they were not going to get a lot of support and understanding in Oberlin, took Mr. Price to Wellington (the next nearest town with a rail station), and hid out in a hotel there. 

And it is here where the story takes a turn that we in Oberlin have always been proud of. We proved that you very often have more friends than you realize. A not insignificant number of men made their way to Wellington where they were joined by like-minded folks in that community. They tried to reason with Price's captors to no avail, and ultimately found him hidden in the hotel's attic. They brought him back to Oberlin where he was hidden in the home of a future Oberlin College president before being taken to Canada, the final stop on the Underground Railroad.

So that's pat one - tune in tomorrow for part 2, and more details on the watch itself!

Less Than A Week To Preorder!

We're coming down to the wire, with seven days left to preorder the Oberlin Watch Company's (Underground) Railroad Watch - the 1858.

Here is a quick rundown -

The preorder deposit is $58 US dollars and is non-refundable. The total price for those who do preorder will be $285 US. The watches are projected to ship in April. Keep in mind, that is a projection, not a guaranteed delivery date.

Once the preorder period is over, the price will be $385. The preorder will run until December 15.

Artistic Interpretation courtesy of D.N. Mason

The specifics:

The 1858 is a hand-winding watch. It is stainless steel, with a solid case back to allow for personalized engraving. The movement is made by Seagull, a Chinese manufacturer. The movement is the ST-3600, which is a clone of the ETA 6497.

The watches will be assembled and tested in the United States. The strap that the watches will ship with will be black. The blue strap in the image is strictly for rendering purposes.

The initial production will be for a minimum of 25 pieces with the potential for a larger series, up to 100 pieces. This will be dependent upon the number of preorders received.

Specs:

Case - stainless steel, 40 mm in diameter, solid case back

Movement - Seagull ST-3600

Strap - black leather with stainless steel folding clasp

Warranty - 1 year

Artistic Interpretation courtesy of D.N. Mason

You can preorder here -

https://oberlinwatch.com/products/1858-preorder-deposit

Announcing the 1858 from the Oberlin Watch Company!

A bit of shameless self-promotion, but here goes -

We are very excited to announce that our newest watch from the Oberlin Watch Company, tentatively named the Montre 1858 will be available for pre-order shortly.

Pre-orders will be available for a non-refundable deposit of $58 (US dollars). We anticipate delivery next April / May, in time for graduation and class reunions.

And we are very pleased to announce that these will all be assembled in the US.

The pre-order price is tentatively set at $358.

Stay tuned!

Watch Brand Creation Myths - This One's A True Story!

By now you've no doubt noticed the Oberlin Watch Company advertisement at the right of the main article section -

In the summer of of 2020, as we were all getting "comfy" as lockdown was progressing, I had 2 seemingly unrelated conversations. One from a friend in my hometown saying something along the lines of - "Hey, you should make an Oberlin watch!". I put that one in my back pocket for the time being. The thought had crossed my mind on more than one occasion, but as my childhood friends may or may not have realized, it is not a simple thing to do. It takes time and money. Thanks (just kidding) to COVID, I certainly had some time. And this brought me back to an email exchange that I had recently had with another Northern Youth on the same topic. Courtesy of the OBIE Blog from 2022 -

About 2 years ago I got an email from an old friend:

"I bought an (insert the name of a very popular, very hyped on social media watch) 2 months ago and it died on me! What watch should I get?"

Okay, in fairness there was more to this story. My friend works in marketing. He is fairly senior. He has not owned a watch since the turn of the century (2002 to be exact). His rationale was:

"I don't need a watch. My computer has the time, my cell phone has the time, the time is LITERALLY EVERYWHERE!"

Well, fair enough. Until...

My friend was in the middle of a pitch - yes gentle reader, there was a time before COVID where people were expected to show up to work, in person, FIVE days a week! The pitch meeting was for a fairly large client with very deep pockets. (editors note, that company has since gone out of business). He was sitting towards the rear of the room. His job was to give hand signals to his boss (who was giving the pitch to the potential client) to let him know how much time was left. Not having a watch, my friend was occasionally looking at his phone to check the time. At one moment the potential client looked over and saw this, and came to the reasonable conclusion that my friend was goofing off with instagram, or some other time killing activity. My friend's boss clocked this activity and (once the client had left) exploded:

"What were you doing playing with your f'ing phone?!?"

My friend informed his boss that he was checking the time to signal to him when to wrap up. His boss was not soothed:

"Go get a damn watch! Not tomorrow, not after work, not even after lunch! Go get a damn watch right now!!!"

So needless to say, my friend exited the office and turned left into a boutique that sold (insert the name of an over-hyped, very popular quartz watch here) watches, and put just over $200 (with tax) on his credit card and wore the watch back to the office. His boss was appeased. And everything was fine... for the next 2 months. And then the watch stopped working. Not sure if it was a battery or simply defective, he went back to the boutique, and was given an address to send his watch in for warranty service (they insisted that they could not do this for him). So on Saturday he packed up the watch and shipped it back to the address he was provided. And...

He waited, and waited, and waited....

After several unanswered emails, phone calls and carrier pigeon notes it became clear to him that while he might get the watch repaired and returned, it was not likely to happen prior to his retirement or employment termination, whichever came first.

And this brings us back to my friend's email to me. What watch should he get? I suggested an inexpensive Seiko, a Timex, Casio, or even a Swatch.

"You work in the watch business. Can't you make me one?" 

This led to a 15 day back and forth explaining that, in fact, while I did sales, marketing and other things, making a watch was not something for us to discuss because unlike the salt and pepper, it was not on the table. But he kept pushing.

So I reached out to my friends at Swiss Made  Consulting LLC and asked, crazy as it sounded, if they could make a small run of 100 or so watches. They said yes, and that is what led to the OBIE1.

But it wasn't quite as simple as that. Truth be told? I didn't have a lot of ideas as to what it could/should look like. Fortunately I know a guy who is pretty good at design -

Courtesy of Sartory Billard

Armand Billard kindly stepped up and quickly came up with a design, logo, pretty much everything needed.

Courtesy of Oberlin Watch Company

Courtesy of Oberlin Watch Company

Courtesy of Oberlin Watch Company

So part one was taken care of, now all I needed was a watch ; )

So I reached out to my friends Rod Hess and Stephen Roemer. Rod is known by industry insiders as "The most important person in the watch business that you maybe never heard of". Stephen is his brother-in-law and the primary owner of Swiss Watch Company.

And based on Armand's design, utilizing some extra kits that he had on hand, he was able to produce the first OBIE -

Courtesy of Oberlin Watch Company

Now at about this time, I also realized that it was not an inexpensive option to make a watch for 2 high school friends who wanted a $100 -$150 quartz watch. So I started posting some renderings on social media groups for Oberlin Ohio and Oberlin High School. The feedback was pretty good and I felt that I could roll the dice on an initial order of up-to 100 pieces (as that was the minimum). Unbeknownst to me, a reporter from the regional newspaper - The Chronicle Telegram, had been following the Facebook group discussions. He reached out, and a day later my email in-box exploded with messages from people wanting to buy my new "OBIE" watch. That article can be read here -

https://chroniclet.com/news/256866/about-time-oberlin-high-school-alumnus-crafts-timepiece-as-tribute-to-his-hometown/

The only problem was that the watches were in production, and I didn't have any packaging. In the beginning of this project I didn't plan to have any, but there were several customers buying watches for their friends, several of them buying 5 or more!

Stephen of Swiss Watch Company said he had some "left-over" packaging that I could buy at a discounted price. So I invested in some read and blue Krylon spray paint and got to work in the backyard.

In May 2021 the watches arrived, and the first 100 OBIE watches were dispatched. Now another funny part of the story - I thought that the majority of watches would be sold to Oberlin residents past and present. Not so! 

Courtesy of Oberlin Watch Company

Of that first 100 OBIE watches, the new owners were located across the US, Canada, Belgium, France, Switzerland (5 customers!), South Africa, Finland, Croatia and beyond!

Courtesy of Oberlin Watch Company

Fast forward to 2023 and the Oberlin Watch Company is alive and well with zero debt, and four retail partners -

Willow Jewelers in Oberlin, Ohio

Maryland Watch Works in Hagerstown, MD

Swiss Watch Maker in Cambridge, MA

Windy City Watch Collector -https://windycitywatchcollector.com

So, no crash landed biplanes in the French countryside, no mysterious British traveller met while backpacking through Asia. As creation stories go, it's pretty tame. The Oberlin Watch Company OBIE is simply a watch that was initially conceived as something fun for my childhood friends. And like everything positive I've experienced in the watch business, it was realized with the help of my Watch Town friends.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it ; )

And if you are so inclined, you can buy an OBIE at one of our retail partners, or direct from yours' truly at the Oberlin Watch Company -

https://oberlinwatch.com/

Henki

Introducing the OBIE2, the OBIE3...

And reintroducing the OBIE1 -

It would seem that the Oberlin Watch Company is now, well, an actual watch company! And important piece of disclosure, I am the owner. 

I grew up in Oberlin, a town of under 10,000 (as of the 2010 census) located in Northern Ohio.  Almost a year ago, as we were all getting good and melancholy during lockdown, a friend reached out and asked if I could make a watch for Oberlin. At the time, I figured it would be one of those ideas that would get talked about, I would explain why it probably wasn't such a hot idea, and that would be the end of it.  

As regular readers, by now it is clear that you are the opposite of the Playboy subscriber - you actually do come here for the writing ; ) Put another way, as poor as my photography is, my design skills are even more shambolic. Luckily, I reached out to my friend Armand Billard and he was kind enough to help -

And based on this rendering, and this caseback -

We had a concept.  My assemblers gave me a great price with a very realistic minimum order (100 pieces), but I still wasn't 100% sure it was worth pursuing.  

And then a few Oberlin Facebook groups got wind of the possible project and suddenly I had 10 pre-orders. 

And then this article from the local regional newspaper triggered another 50 pre-orders:

https://chroniclet.com/news/256866/about-time-oberlin-high-school-alumnus-crafts-timepiece-as-tribute-to-his-hometown/

And like that, we had at least the possibility for a fun one-off limited watch -

40 mm, stainless steel with screw back case back.  The movement is quartz, and the price is $97.97 US plus shipping.

But then there were more requests -

Could you make one in a more basic white & black? A few retail stores wanted to carry it. Different groups, clubs and teams asked for special versions...

Long story short? We're going to move forward!

So if it is in your wheelhouse, please visit my little venture at -

www.oberlinwatch.com

The Oberlin Watch Company

Well, I guess the cat is now officially out of the bag.  

Over the past 6 months I have been trying to (quietly) work away on a personal project. What you see in the photo is the prototype / sample of the Oberlin Watch Company's first model - the OBIE1.

So in fairness, some background. As you know, I am a Northern Youth. Born in Zanesville, Ohio but raised in a small northern town - Oberlin.

Oberlin is noted for a college, a conservatory, some very open-minded and liberal thinking, being a station on the Underground Railroad, and in horological terms it is literally within walking distance of Kipton, where the Great Kipton Train Wreck took place -

https://postalmuseum.si.edu/node/2072

Oberlin is also a town founded with the same zeal and ideals as many towns in the midwest were, and if you've ever read Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, you could probably picture what it might have been like. It is also rumored that Mark Twain wrote The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg as a response to a less-than friendly reception he received when visiting Oberlin: Twain had given a lecture in a church at Oberlin College in 1885, and it was unpopular with the academic audience. The Hadleyburg story may allude to this event. Scholar Russel B. Nye wrote that the story "was Twain's way of taking revenge on the small town" after being jeered at and rejected by the academic audience.^[5] Writes Nye, "the story is coexistent with the publication of Twain's tale of exposed hypocrisy, the townspeople remembering his visit and noting the parallel situations. There are some interesting and provocative parallels between Twain's Oberlin experiences and the Hadleyburg of fiction". The town of Oberlin had been founded as a religious and educational settlement in 1833, and is and was known as an educational and religious center. Nye says that Twain read three stories that were received coolly by most of his Oberlin audience: "King Solomon" (an excerpt from Huckleberry Finn, ch. 14); "The Tragic Tale of a Fishwife," an excerpt from A Tramp Abroad; and "A Trying Situation." The fishwife tale is from Appendix D in A Tramp Abroad, subtitled "The Awful German Language."

per Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_That_Corrupted_Hadleyburg

And lastly, it was common to name a watch company for the town that it called home - Waltham (MA) and Elgin (IN) being just two examples.  Wendy and I have been nomads most of our married life, but if I do have a hometown, it would be Oberlin.

Now for all of you watch fans out there -

The watch is of stainless steel and measures 40 mm in diameter.  The thickness is 9.3, lug to lug is 48 mm, and the lug width is 20 mm.  The movement is the Citizen 2035.  The straps were sourced by the good folks at Lic Straps in Belgium, and feature quick springs -

And in case you need a reminder of what place your watch represents -

The dial design and case back are courtesy of my friend Armand Billard, the mad savant behind Sartory Billard.

Watches should be fun, and should evoke some emotional response. And judging from some of the emails I received today, I think it's a big success already.

I am not a watch maker, and I am not a designer.  

So I thank Armand, as well as the folks at Swiss Watch Consultants (the same dream team that make the Swiss Watch Company watches - Rod, Stephen et al.) for their support and assistance in making this happen.

The first series of the OBIE1 retails for $97.97 plus whatever shipping.

If it's in your wheelhouse, drop me a line -

Oberlin Watch Company

You Don't Choose Your Watch, Your Watch Chooses You

If there are two very solid constants I remember from my coming up as a Northern Youth, they are these -

1.  My father was a country club manager.  Meaning he oversaw the Elyria Country Club, in Elyria, Ohio back in the 70s and early 80s.  For those of you unfamiliar, a country club typically has a golf course, some tennis courts, a swimming pool and depending on the inclinations of the founding members (and in the case of the Elyria Country Club), a fairly massive amount of dining options for the members and their families and guests.  ECC had a main dining room, a "mixed grill" (essentially a slightly more casual dining space that could accommodate about 100 or so, and the "men's girl" which was a bar with about 15 tables in a private room that abutted the men's locker room (remember the golf thing).  And inside that men's locker room was where I got my introduction to the world of work.  I worked in the shoeshine room, where I polished the footwear of some of Northern Ohio's captains of industry, including one George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees immortalized in Seinfeld some 15 years later.

And in that job, as well as other interactions I got to know many of the members' kids.  Some were quite nice, some were little caricatures of their fathers and mothers (often exhibiting some of the less favorable characteristics).  They all had nice clothes, they all played golf, ate at the restaurant, swam at the pool, and partook of the tennis courts when their moms weren't either having tennis lessons or (in some instances) machinating over how to lure the tennis pro into a dark corner of the club where nobody could see.  As a side note - one year the tennis pro bore a downright striking resemblance to Tom Selleck circa 1983.

A fair number of those kids went to the nearby private school - Lake Ridge Academy in North Ridgeville, Ohio.  Curious to relate, there was more than a small rivalry between my alma matter - Oberlin High School, and Lake Ridge Academy in matters of Soccer (that's football to many of you).

2.  I was a soccer player.  I played A LOT.  I was not particularly intrigued by school, but managed to keep my grades in check so that I could play for the middle school and high school.  After practice, I would go to the (Oberlin) college fields and watch the team practice and sometimes one of the goal keepers would invite me to take practice penalty kicks with the team.  After they cleared out I would practice my corner kicks.  I had one ball, so it was a pretty tedious process of taking the kick, jogging to the other side of the field to gather it, then take another kick from that corner.  I would do this about 25 or 30 times before the autumn skies would get too dark to keep going.

In terms of how we matched up against Lake Ridge, at least in my time it was fairly level.  In middle school we won the tournament the first year, they won the second.  In high school we won my sophomore year (that game immortalized by the "Oberlin fake" corner kick play).  A brief bit about that -I always took the corner kicks, and the first kick that comes up in that game, my team mate David Sonner starts running towards the corner shouting - 
"I'll take it, I'll take it".  
Me, being me, was having none of it and a verbal altercation the likes of which polite, Town & Country Lake Ridge parents only heard when watching Cinemax After Dark flowed forth as we both now sprinted for the ball.  For the record, David Sonner was (and by all accounts still is) a phenomenal athlete and had he really been trying would have made it to the ball, knocked it into play, and returned to the center circle before I even got to the corner.  I would like to think it was anger that moved my less than swift frame, but it would become clear that his plan was for both of us to arrive at the ball at the same time.  We both, effectively shielded the ball from view, backs to goal as we continued to argue.  Just as the referee was about to put the whistle to his mouth, David took a quick step away and whispered -
"Here I'm going to pass you the ball."
And at that moment, the 20 watt bulb above my head went off, I understood how this would unfold.  All of our teammates were crowded around the penalty area, as were ALL of the Lake Ridge Royals (another reason to hate them - the Royals?  Why not just call the team the Lake Ridge Money?  But I digress).  Long story short, ball rolled to me, David ran into space as nobody was marking him, I slotted him the ball, he took three touches (his only weakness as a player, he liked to have at least 3 touches before passing or shooting), and parked it in the back of the net.  The Lake Ridge players protested, but there was no rule against exploiting a team's inattention.
Curious to relate?  Later in the second half we did EXACTLY the same thing, this time with me scoring.  That game taught me something, your parents can have a lot of money, you might have nice clothes and be a straight A student heading for Princeton, but if you are used to things in your life following a certain pro forma?  Sooner or later, you are going to get played.  

I guess they smartened up in our junior year as I seem to recall that we drew.  Our senior year I missed the game for romantic reasons probably best left vague in case surviving family members might be reading and be scandalized by what I was up to with a female a wee-bit older than me.  And we lost.

But let's get back to watches, and choice.  First things first, it was fair to say that by the time I hit 16 and 17 I had a fairly healthy aversion to people who were flashy with money, and more certain that money wouldn't necessarily reflect taste, or judgment.  Now, my own judgement was not exactly state of the art at that point, and my taste ran towards modern day Salvation Army.  Following high school I drifted a bit for a year, looked after my Mee-Maw (grandmother) who was in her final year fighting cancer, and finally landed a few thousand miles away at the University of Oregon.  And then my grandmother passed and part of my inheritance was her Omega.

Now let's reflect back on judgement, etc.  In fairness, the Omega was a woman's model.  A bit bigger than some, a fair bit smaller than others.  Even in the smaller sizes favored in the late 80s and early 90s this was more than a bit small for me.  I was also not much of a watch guy.  Oh, one other thing - I WAS POOR.  Following my graduation from the U, I absolutely struggled for the first 2 years or so.  To quote Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen in Wall Street) - 
"I'm tapped out Marv. American Express' got a hit man lookin' for me."  
Out of options, I replied to a newspaper ad (remember life before Indeed?) to teach English in Japan.  It was really more of a whim, a way of telling myself that I hadn't completely given up.  I went to the interview, got invited to a second one - asked to bring a copy of my university diploma with me (seemed odd) and was offered a job there on the spot!

Now while this would seem like all of my problems were solved, it opened up a slew of others!  Remember, gentle reader, I had no money!  So in fairly short order I had to:
1.  Sell off everything that would not fit into 2 suitcases.
2.  Buy another suit (A friend had loaned me an in store credit at a used clothing store where I lucked into a Polo suit that fit perfectly and had low mileage that I wore to my 2 interviews), a pair of black leather shoes, several dress shirts and ties.
3.  Come up with $1,200 for a one-way flight from Portland, Oregon to Tokyo, Japan.
4.  Sell my car (at a loss of $2,500).
5.  Save $2,500 for my first month of living expenses in Japan.

So after everything else was offloaded, it was down to a few items of resale value left, and truth be told that while my Mee-Maw's Omega didn't bring in a lot of cash, it put me over the top, and I was able to get on that plane.

And to be honest?  I would probably do it again.  My grandfather bought the Omega for his wife not because it was glamorous, expensive, etc.  Because it wasn't.  There were no celebrity endorsements, nobody was putting out press pieces about a model, model's family, model's troubled model children wearing an Omega.  The Omega he bought for his wife was what my grandfather called - "A very fine watch".  Very fine not being defined by how much it cost, but that it looked good and worked very well.  Remember, this was Omega pre Jean-Claude Biver revival.  Moreover, the Omega landed with me because my grandmother left a lot of jewelry, that all went to my sisters.  Fair enough, of course.  She was not particularly enamored of the watch as an heirloom, and it was viewed more as a means of "balancing the scales" for the purposes of inheritance.

Needless to say, a lot of years have passed since 1992.  And while I certainly appreciate a beautiful, expensive watch I find myself turned off by them more and more.  I think a part of it is wrapped up childhood memories of faux & nouveau riche and the crazy lengths they would go to pass themselves off as something more.  One last memory of that time - 
There was a minor scandal at ECC that involved the parents of a Lake Ridge student back in the early 80s.  I will state here quite clearly, how much truth there is to this remains unclear to this day, and I don't know how much of it was fact, and how much was locker room gossip.  The married couple were like so many of that era - husband worked "late".  Things apparently had come to a head when the couple split up after the husband announced he was running off with his secretary/ receptionist/ dental hygienist/ medical assistant (who knows or cares nearly 40 years later).  The wife, in a fit of pique, raided the husband's dresser while he was at "work" and grabbed his Rolex.  The Rolex had been a gift to him from a grateful patient/client (again, 40 years on it doesn't really matter).  Well, while the ultimate fate of the wayward husband and his romantic accomplice have been lost to history, the word around the back rooms of the club was that a few years later, the watch had found its way to a jeweler in Cleveland, and was revealed to be (a very good) fake.

Which brings us to now.  I have some watches made by friends who have their own brands, and I truly do appreciate them.  But about 5 years ago when I was raising money to put towards a charity, I sold several pieces.  One was, shall we say, a bit esoteric so you could not really leverage it for what it might sell for new.  But someone came in with some cash and traded this Omega into the bargain -

My original plan was to sell it as well.  But something twigged in my memory, and I have held onto it ever since.  I appreciate it because it is pretty simple in design - hours, minutes, seconds and date.  It is large enough to be quite readable to my 51 year old eyes, and like my Mee-Maw's Omega - it is a very fine watch.  

It does not dive down to the briny deep, it did not "go to the moon", and it is not crafted of Un-Obtainium.  Moreover, I do not lay awake nights hoping that George Clooney (who I do admire for his humanitarian work) will be spotted wearing the same model, therefore validating "My Choice".  Truth be told, nobody should really give two tosses what his "Choice" is.  

I am not an Omega fanboy, and truthfully find a lot of what they offer of little to no interest.  I think they have not recently treated several of their retail partners so well, their after service wait times have been, at times, pretty poor.  Sorry, but calling this one honestly.  I could not really care any less who else wears one, I think that they are currently grossly over-priced, and I feel that this is borne out over the abundance found in previously owned stock.  But deep down, there was a longing for something that tied together the past with the present, and my Omega in many ways reminds me of my Mee-Maw, albeit it in a convoluted, round about way.  

Life is, inevitably, seldom a straight line.  Just ask the Lake Ridge Varsity soccer team of 1983.  There are twists, turns and unexpected events.  It's a lovely idea to think that your watch will validate everything that you have achieved, and all of the choices that you made.  But ultimately, it is an object.  And we have a lot of objects in our lives, some stay with us, some some are passed on, and others are simply lost along the wayside.  For me, every time I have tried to choose that one watch, that super-duper-special piece?  It has really been anti-climatic and never really "taken".   Don't get me wrong, I love watches, I love wearing the pieces in my (very) modest collection.  But sometimes, if you are open to it, that one watch will choose you.  It happened to me, so anything's possible ; )

It's Gotta Be The Shoes! The Feel-Good, Triumphant Return of ilmia!

     Christian Gafner, Co-founder / CEO (is the handsome one on the left)

I am a sneaker-head.  There, I've said it.  It would be easy to assume that this the result of my time at the University of Oregon where Nike was in many ways born and raised.  But in fact it goes deeper.  Picture a small college town in northern Ohio back 1976.  Students coming to town from all over the country, and in fact the world.  And with the students came some worldly classmates at Prospect elementary school, who actually VISITED England, France... even Germany!  The rest of us wore Keds, or if we were really cool (which I was definitively, NOT) you might have Converse.  These kids came back wearing Adidas and Puma sneakers.  And not shoes made of canvas, but actual leather!  

As reported in an earlier Tempus Fugit missive, I begged Santa Clause (i.e. Mom and Dad) for a pair of leather Adidas.  There were a few small obstacles standing between me and Christmas happiness:
  
1.  While some kids in Oberlin had Adidas shoes on their feet, no retail stores within hailing distance sold them.

2.  The stores that sold them were so far away that you had heard of these cities on the local news, but they might as well have been in East Germany.  The roads that connected my small hometown and the metro Cleveland area were not, shall we say, advanced or well coordinated.

3.  I had what were considered at that time, seriously undersized feet for my age.  Meaning that while Adidas and Puma might make shoes in my size, those were not the sizes that specialty sports stores in Northern Ohio (or really anywhere else in the US) would likely be ordering for their stores.

Spoiler alert - somehow (hand to God, to this day I don't know exactly how), Mom came through and under the tree were a pair of size 1 Adidas Cadets. 

Shamelessly borrowed from the worldwide info web

I wore those shoes until they literally fell off of my then 9 year old feet.  And I have been devoted to sneakers ever since, but in all honesty, I had not had that same visceral, Christmas morning thrill until many, many years later when I first met Christian Gafner and bought a couple of pairs of ilmias back in 2013.  

Curious to relate, just like that 8 year old kid in Ohio, there was a whole country of kids (East Germany) young and old who loved and wanted sneakers.  And ilmia was the brand.  The Berlin Wall came down, Germany was re-unified, and ilmia tucked in for a long nap that would have been the envy of sleeping beauty, until they were awoken by a few princes, and a princess.

Which brings us nearly up-to date.  I started coming to BaselWorld as a journalist in 2011.
At the time, ilmias were a well-kept secret, and had I not seen them featured at the ochs und junior shop in Lucerne I would not have known about them.  And that is when I first met Christian and put my money on the table and put a pair of ilmias on my feet.

For those of you not aware, Christian is the designer behind the first MIH watch -

Courtesy of Embassy & MIH

He also has done design work for Eterna and Porsche Design among others.  But these days he is firmly behind the re-boot of ilmia.

So one week ago, I found myself fresh off the train from Zurich to meet him and see the new batch. And so to one of my "other offices", Caffè Spettacolo just opposite the Biel/Bienne train station, where I got to see what is up next for ilmia.  And a friendly travel tip from your old pal Henki - next time you're in-between connections at the Biel/Bienne station, or you need an easy to find rally point?  I highly recommend the Caffè Spettacolo.

And I got the hook-up, and put my marker down for a pair of "samples". 

And as any good sneaker-head would, I got my pair signed -

1 / INFINITY.  I like that ; )

And while I got a chance to look at the new, I also got a brief re-wind through the old -

Have no doubt, ilmia made some serious athletic shoes back in the day.

And if you were a kid on what we used to think of as the "wrong side" of the Berlin Wall, and you couldn't get your hands on the Adidas Rom or the Puma Roma?  ilmia had you covered -

Now I can't speak to how the "old school" ilmia kicks fit and feel, but my pair fits well, super soft and comfy.  And to quote the youngsters hanging out at Bodega in Boston, they are:

"So drip!"

Per the Urban Dictionary:
Drip

adjective to describe your outfit similar to swag, sauce, steez, swank

dripmane - "mane my outfit is dripping right now"

by splashtonkutcher October 08, 2018

Biel/Bienne was my first stop on an horological wander that took me Switzerland and France.  The story starts with -

A Love Letter to Besançon - part 1

Stay tuned!