Beyond The Dial

Allen returns from a week in Italy having toured Tuscani on a Ducati motorcycle while wearing his Bremont Supermarine, lapped on a race track in a Ferrari, sported Hublots, and having accidentally bumped into the representative for Nims who just climbed 14 of the world's largest mountains as part of the Bremont-sponsored Project Possible. The birthday watch saga continues.

Celebrating the 10th Episode, Allen goes through his top ten watches of all time. It's a personal list, not a top ten best, but a top ten favorite. You'll hear about some very tasty watches and what specific features appeal to Allen, including two watches which remind him of Jerry Garcia's guitar. Oysters, the plantimal not the watch, are discussed in some detail along the way as well, and the birthday watch decision begins to waver again.

Allen's account of his trip to the Longines factory in Switzerland starts with an explanation of how one ends up on such a trip in the first place. He then recounts hanging with Longines' CEO Walter von Känel (a.k.a. The Chef), a dream like factory with shipping robots and worker-determined schedules, and of course some beautiful Longines watches.

Why do mechanical watches seem so calming and down to earth? Why does the Apple Watch seem so intrusive? In this episode, we travel in time to consider old and new technologies up against each other, and how a mechanical watch once felt oppressive, and how the Apple Watch may one day seem disconnected and archaic. James Bond and Marlon Brando make a guest appearance via a listener essay at the end.

A colleague once told Allen that women's watches don't get as much coverage because, "Women's watches suck." Let's complicate the topic of gendered watches, and let's get past some of our ingrained attitudes about what makes a watch right for a man or a woman. Also, the birthday watch gets a break-thru!

When watches are truly designed as tools and do their job without kowtowing to fashion trends, our aesthetically fussy attitudes can give way to a far more grounded affection for the designs. Many watches, old and new, are considered from this functional perspective.

Allen goes after the notion of "microbrands" and calls for a change of thinking around the role of independent watch brands of all sizes. He discusses independent record labels as an analogous notion, gets into the importance of regionalism and diversity, talks us through a number of examples of regionally-oriented indie watch brands, and reviews two indie dive watches, one from Greece, and one from Croatia.

In Episode 4, Allen is visited by a fox while record his account of a one-watch experiment. Unexpected results include feeling great about the one watch even though his time in it was hellish, and realizing that his personal collecting habits need to follow a wholly different set of concerns than those that govern his work writing professionally about watches. A lovely listener essay closes out the episode.

Allen ponders how watch diameter and wrist circumference became the main measurements of watches when, in fact, those two dimensions hardly matter when it comes to how a watch works on your wrist. He recommends a few different strategies for estimating how a watch will fit. This episode's listener essay inspires a contemplation of journalistic integrity in the age of so-called advertorial content, and Allen reads from The Rake magazine's editor Wei Koh's thoughts on the matter.

In this episode, Allen talks with Watch Desk Editor at Gear Patrol Magazine, Oren Hartov. They discuss the ins and outs of working in a bustling news room, the history of Israeli military watches, escaping the Nazis, making music, and a number of fascinating stories about Oren's family's watches going back five generations.