I have a rule about history.

Not a written rule — more of an instinct that’s hardened into policy over the years. If an object has a real story behind it, a story that predates the marketing department and the lifestyle photography and the carefully worded press release, it gets a serious look. If it doesn’t, it has to work twice as hard to earn a place in my collection.

The Glycine Airman has a real story.

Glycine was founded in 1914 in Biel, Switzerland — the same city that would later become the heartbeat of the Swiss watch industry. They weren’t building collector’s pieces. They were building tools. Precise, honest, built to a purpose. In 1953 they introduced the Airman, and that watch wasn’t designed for the window of a boutique on Fifth Avenue. It was designed for the cockpit.

Here’s the revised provenance section. Everything else in the piece stays the same — just this block changes:

The Airman has earned its provenance before it earned mine. Glycine introduced the Airman in 1953, and they didn’t do it alone — the watch was designed in full consultation with the U.S. Air Force and sold at exchange stores on military bases. The GMT function wasn’t a collector’s complication in 1953. It was infrastructure. Built so servicemen could know the time at home and the time on the ground simultaneously. The watch existed because people needed it to exist.

It went from the cockpit to the cosmos. Astronaut Pete Conrad wore his Airman on the 1965 Gemini 5 spaceflight, then wore it again for Gemini 11 in 1966. That second mission featured an open-cockpit design — which means Conrad’s wrist was exposed to outer space during his colleague’s two-hour-and-forty-one-minute spacewalk. The Airman became the first automatic watch ever flown in and exposed to outer space. Not because Glycine paid anyone to wear it. Because Pete Conrad already owned one.

The Glycine Airman Vintage The Chief — GL0308, PVD over stainless, blue dial, GMT — came out of the box on the green mat in my study the way watches with genuine history always do. Quietly. Without needing to perform. The loupe to the left, the bourbon glass in the corner of the frame, and a watch that already knew what it was before I put it on.

The blue dial against the dark case is a considered thing. It shifts depending on the light — purposeful indoors, something else entirely when the sun catches it. The GMT hand sits at its second time zone, ready, patient, doing exactly what it was built to do seventy-three years before I bought it.

I’ve been learning its moods. It’s a good student of mine so far.

Here’s something I don’t say often enough in this publication: I didn’t just buy one Glycine.

I bought four.

I’m not going to tell you who the others are for. Not yet. The timing isn’t right and the stories aren’t mine to tell until the moments that earn them actually arrive. But I’ll say this — the decision to build around a single brand for the people who matter most to you is its own kind of philosophy. It’s not about the logo. It’s about saying: I thought about you specifically, and this is what I came up with.

The Chief is mine. The rest of the story writes itself later.

There’s a version of watch collecting that’s purely about the object — the movement, the case diameter, the bracelet finishing, the resale trajectory. That version is legitimate. It’s just not mine.

Mine starts with the question: what did this come from? Who needed it first, and why? What problem was it built to solve before it became something someone like me would put on a green felt mat and photograph next to a bourbon glass?

If the answer is interesting, I’m already halfway there.

Glycine’s answer is interesting. A 1914 Swiss manufacture that put a GMT complication on the wrists of working pilots before GMT complications were a conversation piece. That’s not a story I manufactured to justify a purchase. That’s a story that was already there, waiting for someone to notice it.

I noticed it.

The Chief is on my wrist as I write this. The GMT hand is keeping its quiet counsel on a second time zone I haven’t visited yet but might. The dial is doing its thing with the light.

Somewhere in this house, three more Glycines are waiting.

They don’t know where they’re going yet. But I do.

Precision on the wrist. Perfection in the glass. Music to feel. Stories that last.

On December 21st, I placed an order for a pair of shoes and was told to expect them sometime in March. I said fine. I had no idea yet what I was agreeing to. These shoes did not exist. They would be made for me, specifically, once I asked for them.

That’s not the way most people buy shoes. Most people need shoes, find shoes, and shoes arrive. The whole transaction takes forty-eight hours if you’re patient. I committed to a three-month wait for something that didn’t exist yet — leather not yet chosen, pieces not yet cut, artisans in Colombia not yet aware that a man in Florida was waiting for what they were about to build.

A few days after I ordered, I received an email from a production manager named John. Not an automated confirmation. An introduction. He told me the leather was being chosen. That it came from a Gold-rated Italian tannery — a designation that signals environmental responsibility, ethical labor, and a commitment to materials that outlast the transaction. He told me his team had devoted decades to this craft and that they would send updates every two weeks while my shoes were being made.

I’d ordered shoes the way you commission something. I just hadn’t fully understood that yet.

—

The Supper Club Had a Calendar Before It Had a Purpose

On December 14th — one week before I ordered the shoes — I formed the Supper Club. A curated dining group of eight friends. The concept was clear: gather intentionally, eat well, be present. What we didn’t have yet was a first reservation. That came on January 28th. Rocca. A modern Italian restaurant that earns its entrance photo, which is saying something.

Rocca and the shoes found each other naturally, the way the right things tend to. I wasn’t planning to debut the Valencias there — I just looked at the reservation and thought, yes. That’s the occasion. It wasn’t engineered. It was instinct.

The shoes didn’t make it. The artisans were still working. I stood in front of Rocca in my Stacy Adams Finnegan Wingtip boots — a perfectly good shoe, a shoe that had never once let me down — and the Valencias were somewhere in Colombia being finished.

That’s when I understood something. The Stacy Adams are a good shoe. The Valencias are a different conversation. Not better in the way that’s about price. Better in the way that’s about intention. I’d been wearing fine. I’d decided fine wasn’t enough.

—

What Arrived in April

The Beckett Simonon Valencia Wholecuts arrived in black. Blake-stitched. Gold-rated Italian leather. Made by hand in Colombia by people who have spent their careers doing exactly this.

They are stunningly simple. That’s the first thing. No broguing. No cap toe. No medallion or contrast stitching or detail asking for your attention. Just a clean, unbroken line from heel to toe, an eggshell finish with almost no sheen — flat, quiet, completely sure of itself — and leather that feels like it already knows what it’s supposed to become.

The Blake stitch matters here. A Goodyear welt shoe is built with a welt — a strip of leather that runs around the perimeter and connects the upper to the sole, allowing resoling, adding structure, creating the characteristic silhouette of a traditional dress shoe. Durable, classic, repairable. The gold standard for a long time and still excellent.

A Blake-stitched shoe stitches the insole directly to the outsole in a single pass. The result is a shoe that sits closer to the ground, with a cleaner profile — no welt breaking the line of the silhouette. More flexible. More refined in appearance. The tradeoff is that resoling requires a specialized machine and a skilled cobbler. You’re not maintaining these at any corner shop.

I chose Blake stitch because I wanted the shoe to disappear. I wanted nothing competing with the line. And when they came out of the box, that’s exactly what I got. A shoe that announces nothing and means everything.

—

The Fear

I am almost afraid to wear them.

That’s the honest thing. They are the most expensive shoes I own. They are also the most understated. And somewhere in that combination lives a reluctance I didn’t expect — the instinct to protect something by not using it, to preserve quality by keeping it in the box, to honor the craftsmanship by never exposing it to the world that might scratch it.

That instinct is wrong. I know it’s wrong because I believe the opposite about everything else in this life I’m building. A watch you don’t wear isn’t keeping time for anyone. A record you don’t play is just plastic in a sleeve. A shoe you never put on a floor isn’t craftsmanship — it’s a display.

Quality isn’t preserved by protection. It’s honored by choosing carefully when and where you show up.

—

Driftlight Is the Answer

The Supper Club’s third dinner is at Driftlight Steakhouse. That’s where the Valencias will walk for the first time. Not because I planned it that way — I didn’t. But because when I looked at the calendar and looked at the shoes, the answer was obvious. Driftlight is the occasion that was always supposed to be waiting.

I’ve been moving deliberately toward a different kind of ownership. Not acquisition for its own sake, not luxury as a signal, but things built to last — objects that reward use rather than punish it, that develop character rather than just wear down. The watches. The pens. The vinyl. And now this.

A shoe made by hand in Colombia from Italian leather by artisans who’ve spent decades on this specific craft is not a shoe you protect. It’s a shoe you wear to the right dinner, with the right people, and let it begin the story it was built to tell.

Rocca didn’t get them. That’s fine. Rocca got the Stacy Adams and a table full of people who made it worth showing up in whatever was on my feet.

Driftlight gets the Valencias. And the Valencias have been waiting for exactly that.

—

December 21st. I ordered shoes that didn’t exist yet. John wrote to tell me the leather was being chosen. The Supper Club didn’t have a first reservation. Rocca wasn’t on the calendar. Driftlight wasn’t even a thought.

None of it was orchestrated. All of it arrived in the right order.

The anticipation was never about waiting for the shoes. It was about the life that was being built while they were.

Precision on the wrist. Perfection in the glass. Music to feel. Stories that last.

bezelsandbourbon.com

I heard about Bridget Phetasy’s work the way I hear about most things these days — through the windshield, somewhere between a jobsite and home, a podcast playing through the speakers while Florida moved past me at seventy miles an hour.

The podcast mentioned her piece on chasing youth. On the particular cultural obsession with being cool in the eyes of people younger than you. On what we sacrifice — what we actually trade away — in pursuit of relevance to a generation that isn’t ours and never will be.

I didn’t pull over. But I wanted to.

—

I was never the cool kid. I want to say that plainly, without apology or performance. I didn’t have a rebellion in my twenties. I didn’t have a movement or a manifesto. The Boomers had the counterculture. Millennials had the internet. Gen Z has the algorithm. Gen X — my generation — mostly just showed up, kept their heads down, and got on with it. We were the latchkey kids who learned early not to expect too much of any particular moment.

What I didn’t understand then, and what I’m only beginning to understand now, is that maybe the absence of a rebellion was its own kind of preparation. Maybe we were just waiting until we had something worth defending.

—

I’m going to be fifty in a few years. And something has shifted.

Not a crisis — I want to be clear about that. No sports car, no desperate reach backward toward something I never had. What’s shifted is quieter than that, and more permanent. I’ve started choosing things that require something from me. Not things that are easy or fast or optimized for frictionless consumption. Things that push back.

A record that doesn’t have a skip button. You put the needle down, and you hear the album the way the artist intended it — beginning, middle, end. The silence between tracks is part of the record. The B-side exists for a reason. You can’t algorithm your way to the good part because the good part is the whole thing.

A bourbon that took twelve years to make. Twelve years in an oak barrel while the world moved on without it, drawing flavor from wood and time and chemistry that no shortcut can replicate. When I pour a glass, I’m not just drinking. I’m accounting for those twelve years. That accounting is the point.

A cigar that takes ninety minutes to finish. You cannot rush it. The draw, the ash, the slow burn — it sets its own pace, and yours becomes secondary. Every conversation I’ve had over a cigar has been better than it would have been otherwise, because the cigar forced us to slow down long enough to have it.

A watch wound by hand each morning. A pen filled from a bottle of ink. Books — physical ones, with spines that crack and pages that yellow — read in a study I built deliberately from a room that used to hold nothing but boxes and unfinished business.

—

The Complication

I am aware of the irony. I share these thoughts on TikTok.

Here’s how I think about that: TikTok is the handshake. Sixty seconds to stop the scroll, offer something real, and point toward the door. The door opens here — on Substack, in long form, where every word is chosen, and the reader has to actually stay. The short-form platform exists in service of the long-form work, not the other way around. The moment that inverts, the whole thing collapses.

I’m not anti-technology. I’m anti-surrender. There’s a difference.

I don’t always get it right. There’s a seven-second video on my feed — a beach, a wrist roll, a watch I genuinely believe in — that I’m not proud of. No context. No door. Just the aesthetic of the thing, floating free of any meaning. Watch porn, if we’re being honest, and not even a good one. The platform was there, the path of least resistance was short, and I took it. The scroll won that round.

I’m telling you that because the rebellion isn’t total. The current is real, and sometimes you’re in it before you notice.

—

Maybe This Is Our Rebellion

I keep turning this over. The generational angle. Whether what I’m doing — what some of us are doing — constitutes something larger than personal preference.

The attention span data is real. Something happened during the lockdowns, in those long months of micro-media and infinite scroll, and it didn’t fully reverse when the world reopened. The average is down. The tolerance for anything that takes longer than ninety seconds to deliver its payload has narrowed. The culture optimized for engagement and got fragmentation. That’s not an accident. That’s a design outcome.

And I wonder if the response — the intentional, deliberate, almost ornery insistence on things that take time — is specifically a Gen X response. Not because we’re nostalgic. Not because we’re luddites. But because we grew up without the internet, learned to sit with ourselves, and never fully forgot how. The muscle is still there. It just needed a reason to flex.

I have a roadmap for watch acquisitions that runs to 2046. Pens I’ve mapped out through 2053. A bourbon collection built around age statements and patience. Twin sons — Jansen and Vaughan — for whom I’m assembling a parallel collection, piece by piece, year by year, for a version of them that doesn’t exist yet. These aren’t objects. They’re commitments. They’re the physical record of a life being lived on purpose.

That feels, to me, like something worth calling a rebellion. Not a loud one. Not a manifesto-and-march one. The quiet kind. The kind that doesn’t announce itself, just builds — watch by watch, record by record, glass by glass — until one day you look around the room and realize you built something that required your full attention, and it gave you the same in return.

—

I’m not chasing cool. I gave that up somewhere on a Florida highway listening to a podcast, and I haven’t missed it once.

I’m chasing depth. I’m chasing the specific satisfaction of things that couldn’t have been rushed. I’m chasing the version of myself that exists at the end of a ninety-minute cigar, when the conversation has gone somewhere it wouldn’t have gone in fifteen minutes.

The watches and the pens and the bourbon aren’t the subject. They never are. They’re the doors. And I’ve been walking through them, one at a time, for years now — slowly enough to actually see what’s on the other side.

The rebellion isn’t loud. It never was. It just refuses to skip ahead.

— Jaime

Precision on the wrist. Perfection in the glass. Music to feel. Stories that last.

Twenty-four years on construction sites have taught me one truth: a blueprint is just a polite suggestion until the dirt starts moving. You can plan for luxury, pay for the promise of a place like the Sheraton Brandon, and still find yourself standing in a dim hallway at midnight with a $439 room key, no working coffee shop, and a TV remote that doesn’t exist. When the foundation fails, you don’t sulk—you pivot.

That’s exactly what Chrissy and I did. We left the overgrown landscaping behind and went looking for the Saturday night we actually wanted. What started as a loose idea became something sharper: the Supper Club. Not just dinner. A deliberate ritual of intentional abundance.

We landed at Rocca Tampa. After the sterile disappointment of the hotel, walking into that room felt like arriving somewhere earned. Our server, Jayden, didn’t just recite specials—he told us the story of the building and the chef’s Michelin-starred path. You could feel the shift the moment we sat down.

We’d planned for eight. Two couldn’t make it. That left six of us around the table: Janet and Joe dressed to the nines, Chris and Julia sliding in just behind them, Chrissy and me anchoring one end. The energy was already humming before the first drink arrived.

The real door to the evening was the Mozzarella Cart. I’ve watched crews pour concrete and set steel with exacting precision for decades, but there’s something different about watching fresh mozzarella pulled and shaped tableside, right at your elbow. It was theater and craft at once. For a few minutes, the six of us simply watched and talked as that cheese became dinner. That shared moment of care is what I wanted the Supper Club to be.

On my left wrist sat my Longines Master Collection Year of the Horse—the deep red lacquer dial marking my birth year. A serious watch, yet no one mentioned it. Jayden didn’t notice. My friends didn’t comment. That quiet anonymity pleased me. It wasn’t there to impress the room. It was a private reminder of precision on a night that had begun with things falling apart.

The next day, that search for precision continued at Montblanc. I spent forty-five minutes talking with Andrew, who showed me a rugged $25,000 mountaineering watch before turning to the pens. I’ve used good pens before. These were something else entirely—weighty, smooth, almost hovering above the paper with no drag, no resistance. Just pure glide. They made me want to sit down and actually write something worth keeping.

By the time the bill came—$806.82 for the dry-aged Rohan duck, the Bistecca, and the pastas we shared—the Supper Club had already become more than a meal. It was proof that you can build a small, deliberate pocket of richness even when the larger day tries to disappoint.

Later that weekend, between bars of soap and dodging imposter colognes at a thrift store, I found three Connie Francis vinyl records for two dollars each. A $3,600 Longines at a Michelin-starred table. Two-dollar records on a dusty shelf. To some, that looks like a contradiction. To me, it’s the only honest way to live.

You build the room. You pull up the chair. You pay attention to the details that endure.

The needle is already down. Rocca was the occasion. The ritual is the life.

— Jaime

The first time I thought I was there was when I bought four Waterford Crystal bourbon glasses.

Not two. Four. The whole set. An act of commitment dressed up as a purchase — though I didn’t know it in those terms yet. I just knew that Waterford meant something. I’d known that since I was a kid.

You hear a name a certain way when you’re young and it lodges itself somewhere permanent. Waterford Crystal was that name for me. The way adults said it — careful, almost reverent — told you everything. That was for other people. People who had arrived somewhere. People with a different kind of life than the one currently in progress.

So I filed it. Under someday. Right next to a hundred other things I didn’t know I was waiting for.

Someday came quietly. No ceremony. No announcement. Just a shelf in a store and a decision that felt smaller in the moment than it apparently was. I brought them home, set them on the counter, and felt something I couldn’t quite name — a soft closing of a distance I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying.

I thought I was finishing something.

Because the glasses led somewhere. They always do. You buy the right vessel and it asks to be filled with the right thing. And the right thing — Woodford, Angel’s Envy, a good Rye on a slow night — asks to be understood. And understanding asks for more. A vocabulary. A history. A framework for tasting, for comparing, for the particular pleasure of knowing what you’re drinking and why it matters.

And then that opened another door. And then another.

Bourbon led to the ritual of the evening. The ritual led to vinyl on the turntable and a book in the chair and a cigar on the porch. The objects started talking to each other — the glass, the record, the watch on the wrist keeping honest time through all of it. I wasn’t just collecting things. I was building a life with texture. A life you could feel in your hands.

Which eventually led here. To a publication about all of it. To the idea that the objects themselves aren’t the point — that they’re doors, every one of them, and what matters is where they take you if you’re paying attention.

I’m drinking Woodford Reserve Double Oaked out of those glasses tonight. Double-barreled. Extra time in the wood. Deeper, richer, a little more of everything the first barrel started.

I think about that kid sometimes — the one who heard the name Waterford and quietly filed it away. He thought those glasses belonged to a different kind of life. He had no idea they’d be the most ordinary thing in his evening one day. No idea they’d be sitting on a table next to a turntable and a green felt watch mat and a shelf full of books he’s actually read.

He didn’t know the glasses weren’t the destination.

—Jaime

Not online. Not at a boutique. Not from an authorized dealer where someone in a pressed shirt walks you through the provenance and hands you a velvet-lined box. At TJ Maxx. Between the discounted luggage and a rack of irregular khakis. I picked it up off the shelf, turned it over in my hand, felt the weight of the gold-on-gold case, and thought — yes. That’s mine.

I also have a 40-year plan to buy a Patek Philippe.

Both things are true at the same time, and I’ve stopped pretending one cancels out the other.

—

The honest story of this collection doesn’t start at a white-glove AD or with a lifelong obsession carefully tended from childhood. It starts the way most real things start — sideways, without warning, and at slightly the wrong moment.

I was 27, newly married, and I bought a Bulova chronograph because I wanted to look like someone who had his life together. That’s the whole story. There was no deeper rationale. I wanted a watch that said something about me before I had fully figured out what that was. Twenty years later, it’s heading in for its first service — new seals, a polish, the kind of attention a watch earns after two decades of keeping quiet and keeping time. It still runs perfectly. That feels important somehow.

The Seiko came next, on my honeymoon. A cruise ship somewhere between Florida and the Bahamas, the kind of gift shop that exists in the space between one world and another. I bought it because I was happy and it was there and it caught the light in a way that felt like the right moment to own something. I have never once regretted that purchase. Some watches are complications and movements and case diameters. That Seiko is a Tuesday in the Bahamas when everything was exactly right.

Then came a Kenneth Cole Reaction digital — and I want to be honest about why. I was deep into everything Kenneth Cole at the time. The brand, the aesthetic, the particular shade of early-2000s cool it represented. The watch wasn’t a watch decision as much as it was a style decision, which is its own kind of collecting logic even if I didn’t know that yet.

The one that surprised me most, looking back, was a skeleton automatic I found on eBay in 2008. A Markus Ruby Calendarium. Sixty-one dollars. The first automatic I’d ever owned, and the first skeleton I’d ever seen. I remember looking at it and thinking — you can see the whole thing working. Every gear, every wheel, every beat of the movement visible through the dial. I had no idea a watch could do that. That $61 eBay watch opened a door I’ve never closed.

Then life moved the way life does. A decade passed. A Fossil Relic for $45. A Casio world timer. And then a vintage Casio for $13 that I feel compelled to tell you about specifically.

It is, without question, the most uncomfortable watch I own. The case sits wrong on the wrist. The bracelet is unforgiving in a way that suggests Casio was not especially concerned with comfort in that era. It is also, honestly, pretty ugly. I read somewhere years ago that the battery lasts fifteen years. That has turned out to be true. I have never replaced it. I have never adjusted it. I rarely let it out of the watch box.

It is the most accurate timepiece in my entire collection. Still. To this day. Unchanged.

I have a 40-year plan to buy a Patek Philippe. I own a $13 Casio that has been right about the time every single day for nearly a decade without anyone asking it to try. I think about that more than is probably warranted.

I don’t regret a single one.

—

Something shifted in 2025. I’m not sure I can point to a single moment — it was more like a pressure that had been building quietly for years finally finding a direction. I started paying attention differently. Not just to watches I was buying, but to the watches I wanted. The ones I kept coming back to. The ones that made me stop scrolling.

I bought a couple of Timex Expeditions from Amazon. Then two Casios in the same week. None of it was premeditated. I was just a man in his late forties who had finally admitted to himself that he loved watches and had given himself permission to act on it.

The Timex Tide came next. A tide-temp-compass watch — practical, a little technical, interesting in a way I found quietly satisfying. I ordered it from Timex.com. It’s still on pre-order. Still making its way to me. It hasn’t arrived yet.

The irony of that is not lost on me. The watch that quietly started everything is the last one to the party.

—

In the space of about four weeks, I bought sixteen watches.

A Longines Master Collection — Year of the Horse, limited edition, the year of my birth pressed into the dial — from Tourneau. An Oceaneva 6000m deep diver in Grade 5 titanium that descends to depths no sensible living thing should visit. A Citizen TSUYOSA limited edition. A numbered NSB Apollo NFT piece. A Stewart Dawson military green that arrived through Watch Gang like a pleasant ambush. A Swatch Mission to Earthphase in Moonshine Gold that I will wear with a suit and precisely zero apologies. Two more Timex Expeditions from Walmart on a Saturday afternoon, because four is better than two and two had clearly not been enough. And yesterday — the Movado.

—

Then there were the two watches from Timex ReWound.

Timex ReWound is a take-back program. Customers send their used watches back to Timex at no cost — free shipping label, drop it in the mail, done. Timex receives them, cleans and restores the ones that still have life in them, and puts them back up for sale. The ones that don’t qualify get ground down and recycled into materials for new products. Nothing wasted. Everything given another chance, or allowed to become part of something else entirely.

I bought two automatics that looked interesting — possibly vintage, definitely worth having. What I didn’t fully reckon with until after I’d ordered them is that these watches belonged to someone else first. Someone wore them, lived in them, and then sent them back. I don’t know whose wrists they came from. I don’t know what they saw or why they were returned. They’re still in transit. I won’t know exactly what I’ve got until I open the box.

I find I don’t mind that at all. A watch with a previous life is a watch with a story I’m only getting the second chapter of.

The price range across those four weeks runs from $48 to $3,638. The locations run from Walmart to an authorized Longines dealer to a discount retailer to Timex’s own website. Every single one of them was purchased because something in me said — yes. That one. Now.

—

I have twin sons — Jansen and Vaughan, both 18, about to graduate high school and start their own journey. I’m building something for them that was never built for me. I don’t know if they appreciate watches right now — probably not the way I do. But I’d imagine one day they will. At some point in life, everyone needs a good watch. And when that moment comes for them, I want them to already have an overflowing collection to choose from. They don’t know it yet. That’s fine. I’m building it anyway.

—

There is a roadmap. There is a strategy. There is a plan that runs longer than I’m going to tell you about here, because that’s a different article — the other side of this coin.

But the roadmap didn’t come first. The joy came first. The Bulova at 27 and the Seiko on a cruise ship and the $13 Casio and the four Timex Expeditions and the Movado Bold Verso on a Saturday afternoon between the luggage and the khakis — all of that came first, and all of it is real, and none of it is something I have any interest in apologizing for.

The collection I’m building isn’t the collection I was supposed to build. It’s messier than that, and more human, and considerably more fun.

The Timex Tide is still in transit. Everything else got here first.

-Jaime

It was still in the box when I scanned it. Not because the instructions said to — there were no instructions, really. Just a small panel on the caseback, and etched into the steel itself, permanent and unremarkable as a serial number, a QR code.

I was doing research. Microbrands, specifically — the small independent watchmakers working outside the cathedral walls of Swiss horology, building interesting things for people who pay attention. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. That’s usually how the best finds work.

The NSB Apollo stopped me. 39mm. White dial with a guilloché center — that intricate diamond-pattern texture that catches light differently depending on where you’re standing. Blued hands. Roman numerals with Swiss lume. An NH35A automatic movement — a workhorse caliber with genuine horological pedigree — inside a 316L stainless steel case with a sapphire crystal. All of this for $270.

Then I read the rest. Limited edition. Fifty pieces. And on the second hand — a flying seagull.

NSB stands for New Smyrna Beach. Apollo Beach is right there — a stretch of Atlantic coastline about an hour from where I’m sitting right now. I’ve driven past it. The watch named for a beach I know, made fifty times, never to be made again.

I checked availability. One left.

At $270 and something genuinely singular, how do you say no?

—

I’ve spent 24 years in Florida construction. I’ve built the places people shop, eat, see their doctors. More recently, historical restoration work — buildings where the story of what something is and where it came from matters enormously. Where provenance isn’t an abstraction. It’s the difference between a detail that belongs and a detail that was invented.

Provenance in the watch world has always been a paper problem. A warranty card. A box. A receipt. Documents that sit in a drawer, fade, get lost in a move, burn in a house fire. When a watch changes hands, the paper trail is whatever the seller happens to have held onto. Authentication becomes archaeology — you’re reconstructing a history from fragments.

The Apollo’s approach is different in a way that I think most people in the watch world haven’t fully reckoned with yet.

Each watch comes with a unique NFT — a non-fungible token minted on the Polygon blockchain. The NFT holds the warranty papers, the authentication records, the certificate of ownership. And the QR code to access all of it isn’t on a card in the box. It’s laser-engraved into the caseback itself.

Think about what that means. The document cannot be separated from the object. The watch carries its own proof of existence. Permanently. In steel.

I’ve spent years on buildings where we had to argue about what was original and what was added later. I understand viscerally what it costs when the record is incomplete. A $270 microbrand from New Smyrna Beach just solved in stainless steel what auction houses and insurance companies spend fortunes trying to do with paper.

—

I’ve written before about the difference between a watch that arrived cold and a watch that was found. The grail purchased without a story behind it is a different object than the same watch stumbled onto while doing real research, at the end of a chain of curiosity that started somewhere else entirely.

This one was found. I wasn’t looking for it. I was paying attention, and it was there, and there was one left, and I recognized what I was looking at.

It’s on the wrist now. #11 of 50. Somewhere out there, forty-nine other people exist in the world who own the same object. I don’t know who they are. But unlike every limited edition watch that came before this one, the blockchain does. And whenever this watch moves — whether it stays in my collection for the next thirty years or finds its way to someone else’s wrist after I’m gone — the record moves with it.

Engraved in the steel. Permanent. Inseparable from the object itself.

The seagull on the second hand sweeps the dial. The bourbon is poured. The record is on.

Some evenings you pay attention, and the right thing finds you.

— Jaime

I was born in 1978. Year of the Horse.

I bought it because it was mine before I owned it. The Longines Master Collection Year of the Horse Edition — the L2.919.4.09.2, limited production, the most expensive piece in my collection. The right complication, the right dial, the right everything. A collector’s decision and a personal one, the same decision at the same moment. Pressed into lacquer, cased in steel, strapped to your wrist for whatever time you have left to wear it.

I just hadn’t given it anywhere to go yet. So I made a reservation, told Chrissy we were doing the Hard Rock, and put the watch on for the first time outside my own four walls.

It was a Saturday night. It was time.

The Entrance

The Seminole Hard Rock Tampa is a lot of things simultaneously — casino floor, concert venue, hotel, spectacle. It contains multitudes and several restaurants that have no business being as well-appointed as they are. Cipresso is the Italian one. It earns the entrance photo, which is saying something, because most places don’t.

We stood at the door because the door asked for it. The tile work, the marquee sign, the red carpet underfoot — it frames you before you’ve ordered anything. Chrissy in black and white stripes. Me in the houndstooth blazer. The Year of the Horse on my wrist.

Forty-eight years old. Twenty-four years in construction. A taekwondo black belt and a bourbon collection and a publication three weeks old. First time the watch left the house.

It needed a night. I went and built one.

The Room, The Drink, The Miss

Inside, Cipresso holds up. Green leather booths, black steel frames, lighting that makes everyone look like they made good decisions getting dressed. Our server was a genuinely nice guy — working a little too hard at being your friend, but not unpleasant. A minor note, easily forgiven.

The drinks were not minor.

I asked what bourbon they had and ordered an Old Fashioned. That’s how I met Yellowstone for the first time — not from my own bottle, which sits unopened in my collection, but from someone else’s bar, someone else’s pour. It was excellent. Warm, slightly sweet, the kind of bourbon that makes you wonder why you waited. I set my wrist on the table beside the glass and took the shot. Watch face catching the amber light, the drink beside it, the cherry-skewered garnish doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.

Nobody in the room said a word about the Longines.

Not the server. Not anyone at the surrounding tables. Not a single person across the entire evening acknowledged that I was wearing my birth year on my wrist for the first time in public.

I decided that was exactly right.

The food missed — my lobster ravioli arrived undercooked, the sauce thin and running to the rim, and Chrissy’s caprese was a generous and largely uneventful plate of tomatoes. The kitchen had an off night. It happens. A great room and a great bourbon is still a meal worth having. You don’t need everything to work. You need enough.

When in Rome

You cannot walk a casino floor with $50 in your pocket and not stop. It would be wrong. It would be a failure of imagination.

Neither of us gamble. That’s important context. We had no system, no loyalty to a particular machine, no plan beyond the vague understanding that this was the thing you do when you’re here. We wandered. Tried a few machines. Committed to nothing and everything simultaneously.

Chrissy doubled fast — fully and immediately, the way she approaches most things — and then four rounds later it was gone. The house always had it. We both knew that going in. I also doubled, then took the scenic route back down, slower and more methodical in my losing. I walked away ahead on the night.

Sixty-two dollars is somewhere. Possibly my jacket pocket. I haven’t looked. At this point it’s more interesting not knowing — the money that exists in theory, unverified, Schrödinger’s profit sitting in a cashout slip I may never find.

It was fun for exactly as long as it was fun. That’s the only correct relationship to have with a casino floor.

The Lucky Cigar

We’d been talking about cigars for a while. The way you mention something between two people and then life moves and the right moment never quite materializes. You need the right night, the right company, somewhere slow enough to earn it.

We didn’t buy off the shelf. We came prepared — a hand-rolled cigar from JDV Cigars, my local shop, carried in knowing exactly when it would be lit. The Lucky Cigar lounge sits just off the casino floor — semi-private, semi-quiet, a low enough roar to talk over and still hear the music from the overhead speakers. Red walls. Palm shadows moving across the plaster. The kind of light that makes an ordinary Saturday feel like a decision you made on purpose.

One cigar. Two people. A fresh old fashioned, simpler this time, orange peel in the glass. A yellow ashtray on the table between us.

Chrissy settled into her chair with the ease of someone who had been doing this for years, which she absolutely had not. That’s her specific gift — she’s a dabbler. Always down for anything at least once, then on to the next thing. She picks up new experiences like she already knows how they’re supposed to feel. I’ve learned to indulge those impulses. It’s one of the better decisions I make regularly.

We stayed about an hour. No agenda, no next thing pulling at us, nowhere the night needed to go. Just the cigar burning down slowly between us and the conversation going wherever it wanted. The kind of hour that doesn’t announce itself as significant while it’s happening.

When it was done, it was done. We went home.

What The Watch Was Actually For

I spent twenty-four years building things for other people — projects, timelines, structures that outlast the crews that raised them. Somewhere in there you learn the difference between what gets noticed and what endures. The watch wasn’t for the room. It was for the record. For the first page of something that’s just getting started.

The ravioli missed. The slots took Chrissy’s fifty dollars. The server tried a little too hard. None of that is the story.

The story is a 48-year-old man who builds things for a living finally building Saturday nights worth writing about — and a woman across the table who shows up in a striped dress with a cigar from a good shop and makes the whole thing feel like it was always going to happen exactly this way.

Some things just need the right occasion. Others need you to stop waiting and make one. The best nights need both.

Rocca is next. Chrissy will be there. So will the watch.

There are about two weeks a year in Florida when you can open everything.

No AC. No humidity pressing against the glass. Just sixty-something degrees and a breeze moving through the house the way air is supposed to move — freely, from one end to the other. Every window. Every door. It lasts maybe two weeks if you’re lucky, and then the heat comes back and you close it all up again until the following winter.

I wanted those french doors open.

There was a room standing between me and them. Not literally — there were sliding glass doors off the gym and the kitchenette that got to the pool just fine. I wasn’t blocked. I just couldn’t get that room open, and something about those two weeks of perfect air made that suddenly unacceptable.

So I looked at what was actually in there. A broken inversion table my parents gave me as a Christmas gift — still usable in a way, never fixed, never thrown out. Boxes of empty picture frames that had been waiting years for a purpose. Papers. Books that had drifted from other shelves. The kind of accumulation that happens not through carelessness but through motion — life moving fast enough that some things just land wherever they land and stay there.

I told myself I was clearing the room to open the doors.

That was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

The shelves were already there. So was the bookcase. They came with the house when I bought it in 2017 — left behind by a woman I never met. A widow. A grandmother. The neighbors spoke highly of her. The house was immaculate. She was moving into assisted living, and she left behind a life’s worth of built-ins, and a Steinway baby grand in what had been her formal dining room.

I turned that room into a music room. Hung two guitars on the wall, kept the piano. On the night of the housewarming party, we hired a singer to play it. My parents asked if we could turn the piano down. You can’t turn down a Steinway. That was a good night.

But her shelves were waiting in the other room. And I’d just cleared enough space to finally see them.

The picture frames I’d found in all those boxes — I filled them. They’re sitting there now, waiting to be hung. I’ll get to them. Everything in this room is either already in its place or on its way there. That’s how the room works. That’s how I work.

I have north of 300 books. Many I’ve read once. Many I’ve never read. Two small cabinets hold my childhood books — the ones that survived every move, every clearing, every version of my life that came before this one. Bedtime stories. Picture books with cracked spines. The ones my parents read to me and the ones I eventually read by myself with a flashlight when I was supposed to be asleep.

They’ve been in storage for years. Closed behind cabinet doors. Out of sight in the way that things go out of sight when you don’t have a place for them yet.

They have a place now.

On the shelf, in protective sleeves, is every Emmitt Smith card I’ve ever kept. Not a display — a record. The physical evidence of a collecting instinct that started in the early nineties with a rookie card and never fully stopped. If you’ve read All In, you know what those cards mean. If you haven’t — that’s where to start.

Next to them: photographs. Memorabilia. The specific objects that mean something to a specific person and nothing at all to anyone else. That’s the point. This room was never designed for anyone but me.

On one side, tucked against the wall: a green felt mat, my loupe, my strap tools, and a bourbon glass positioned at the corner of the frame. This is where I open watches. Where I hold something engineered to survive six thousand meters of pressure and try to understand what that means at sea level, on a quiet evening, with nowhere to be.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand about this room.

I didn’t build it. I uncovered it.

Everything in it was already mine — the books, the cards, the tools, the records, the chair that needed a new home. They were just scattered across forty-something years of a life that hadn’t yet found the right place to put them all in the same room at the same time.

I moved some boxes to open some doors. And on the other side of the clearing, all of it was waiting.

The room didn’t start anything. The Emmitt Smith card was 1993. The books in those childhood cabinets go back further than I can clearly remember. The construction career that taught me what craft actually costs — twenty-four years of that.

It all started long before this room existed.

The room is just where it finally had somewhere to sit down.

Bezels & Bourbon has always been about putting the reader in a chair. Not describing the chair from across the room — actually putting them in it. Giving them the light from that window, the weight of the glass, the specific moment a record side ends and the room goes quiet and you don’t get up to flip it right away because the silence earned its place too.

I built this room so I’d have a place to write from.

Then I realized I’d built it so you’d have a place to sit.

The needle is already down. Pull up a chair.

-Jaime

It started with an Emmitt Smith rookie card.

I was a kid in the early nineties, pocket money burning through my jeans, and the moment that card was in my hands I needed to know everything—print runs, condition grading, which sets were worth chasing, which dealers could be trusted. I pored through every Beckett price guide I could get my hands on, dog-earing pages, cross-referencing values, learning to read the market the way other kids read box scores. Within months I had binders, a mental index of the hobby that my friends found baffling and I found completely natural. I was not collecting football cards. I was building a system around football cards. The distinction, I would eventually understand, mattered.

Thirty-some years later, I own a watch collection tracked across a detailed spreadsheet, organized by complication and tier, with an acquisition roadmap that extends to 2053. My bourbon shelf has its own document. My records live on Discogs and in supplementary notes. My books have a Goodreads profile and, yes, additional context that most people would consider unnecessary. Cigars have recently entered the picture. Knives and EDC are never entirely dormant. I have been through phases of deep engagement with sport cards, gaming and tech, audio gear, cycling, fitness equipment, clothing and an ever-expanding shoe and boot collection. Each time, without exception, the pattern has been the same: find the interest, go all the way in, build the system, accumulate the knowledge. The objects have changed—a two-dollar card became a three-thousand-dollar watch, a pack of cards became a two-hundred-dollar bottle of bourbon—but the disposition driving the pursuit has not changed at all.

I used to wonder, occasionally, whether this was a character flaw. It is not. It is a methodology. And I have come to believe it produces something that more casual engagement simply cannot: genuine depth, and the particular satisfaction that comes only from knowing a subject on its own terms.

The Pattern Reveals Itself

When you have lived the same pattern enough times, you start to recognize it early. There is an initial encounter with something—a card, a piece of gear, an album, a watch in a shop window—that produces a specific quality of attention. Not just interest. Something closer to recognition. The mind leans in and does not lean back out.

What follows is research. Always research. Forums, books, communities of people who have been at it longer. The vocabulary of the domain—because every serious pursuit has one—gets absorbed quickly, because the vocabulary is the map of what matters. In cycling, you learn the difference between a training build and a race build, what a particular groupset signals about a bike’s intended use, why frame material is a more complex question than it first appears. In audio, you learn about impedance matching, the audible differences between cartridge types, why the pressing matters as much as the recording. In knives and EDC, you develop opinions about steel composition and heat treatment that would have seemed absurd to you six months earlier.

None of this knowledge is wasted, even when the phase passes. And some phases do pass—the cycling gear has been through several iterations, the gym equipment has had its quiet periods, the shoe and boot collection expanded and contracted over the years before settling into something more considered. But the knowledge compounds across domains in ways that are difficult to predict and consistently rewarding. Understanding why quality construction matters in a boot turns out to be excellent preparation for understanding why it matters in a watch. Learning to evaluate a record pressing teaches you something about evaluating any object where provenance and condition affect the experience of ownership.

The cycle itself has a reliable shape. It begins with a casual entry—something inexpensive that satisfies the initial burn of curiosity without overcommitting. From there, each piece or component gets evaluated and, where it falls short, upgraded. Systematically, deliberately, one informed step at a time, until either the collection reaches a natural end state or the intensity of interest cools. And when it cools, it rarely disappears entirely. It waits. Months later, sometimes years later, something reignites it—a conversation, an object encountered by chance, a gap in the collection that suddenly becomes impossible to ignore—and the whole machinery starts again, but now with the accumulated knowledge of the previous run behind it. Each cycle leaves the collection and the collector better than it found them.

The Case for Going Deep

There is a common argument for breadth—try many things, stay light, keep options open. It has merit. But it produces a particular kind of collector and a particular kind of experience: wide, entertaining, and ultimately shallow. The person who has dabbled in watches knows some brand names and a few reference numbers. The person who has spent years moving deliberately through tiers, reading the history, wearing the pieces, understanding the movement architecture, knows something categorically different. They have developed taste, and taste—real taste, earned rather than borrowed—changes the experience of ownership entirely.

This is the wisdom in going deep: the object and the knowledge of the object become inseparable. A bourbon is not just a bourbon when you understand its mash bill, its distillery’s history, where it sits in the continuum of what that producer has made. A record is not just an album when you know the pressing, the engineers involved, why this particular version sounds different from the reissue. The depth of knowledge does not complicate the enjoyment. It amplifies it.

There is also a practical argument. Depth protects you from the market. The collector who has done the work is not easily oversold. They know what something is actually worth, what alternatives exist at the same price point, where the genuine value lies versus where it is manufactured by hype. In watches, in bourbon, in records, in sport cards—every category has its mythology and its noise. Knowledge is the filter.

Why Incrementalism Is the Only Way In

Depth cannot be purchased in a single transaction. This is the part that resists the shortcut. You can buy an expensive watch without understanding watchmaking. You can buy a celebrated bourbon without having developed a palate. You can acquire a first pressing without knowing why it matters. The object arrives, but the knowledge does not come with it, and without the knowledge, you are holding something whose value you cannot fully access.

Incrementalism solves this. Moving through a domain in deliberate steps—spending real time at each level before ascending to the next—builds the knowledge alongside the collection. The entry-level piece teaches you what to look for in the mid-tier piece. The mid-tier piece gives you the context to evaluate the serious piece. By the time you are making a significant acquisition, you are not guessing. You have a considered position, earned through attention and patience.

My watch roadmap runs to 2053 not because I am a patient man by nature—I am not, particularly—but because I understand that the pieces at the end of that timeline will mean more when I reach them having done the work. The grail watch in a collection built from the ground up is a different object than the same watch purchased cold. The journey is not incidental to the destination. It is the reason the destination matters.

From Two Dollars to Two Thousand: The Evolution of Stakes

One thing changes as the methodology matures: the caliber of what it targets. The two-dollar football card was the right entry point for a kid with pocket money and an forming sensibility. It was not a compromise—it was the appropriate first step. But the knowledge that accumulates over years of serious collecting has a natural consequence: it raises the bar. Once you understand what genuine quality looks like, what separates a well-made object from a merely adequate one, it becomes increasingly difficult to settle for the adequate. The stakes evolve because the eye evolves.

The watches on my roadmap are not expensive because expense is the point. They are expensive because, at a certain level of craft, expense becomes the honest reflection of what went into the object—the movement finishing, the case work, the decades of horological tradition behind a caliber. The bottles on my bourbon shelf that carry real price tags carry them because the liquid inside is the product of time, grain, and genuine distilling knowledge that cannot be faked or rushed. The methodology gravitates toward quality not as status but as substance.

Alongside the evolution in stakes has come an increasingly specific set of preferences: a pull toward objects with genuine history behind them, toward things made by hand rather than at scale, toward editions that exist in limited numbers for considered reasons rather than manufactured scarcity. A limited production watch from an independent maker carries a different kind of meaning than a mass-market piece at the same price. A small-batch bourbon from a distillery with a real story behind it sits differently on the shelf than an allocated release chased purely for resale value. The provenance is not incidental. It is part of what is being collected.

Last December, I placed an order for my first pair of Beckett Simonon shoes—a wholecut in Italian leather, made to order, the kind of thing that requires patience before it even ships. They have not arrived yet. But the research that preceded that order was anything but casual. Before I even settled on a maker, I found myself deep in the long-running debate that serious shoe collectors know well: Goodyear welt versus Blake stitch. On the surface, it is a question of construction—how the upper, insole, and outsole are joined together. In practice, it determines everything from repairability and longevity to how the shoe feels underfoot as it breaks in, how water-resistant it is, how it will age over decades of wear. A Goodyear welted shoe can be resoled repeatedly and will last a lifetime with proper care. A Blake stitched shoe is more flexible from the first wear, slimmer in profile, with a different aesthetic logic entirely. These are not trivial distinctions. They are the difference between buying a shoe and understanding what a shoe can be. By the time I had made my decision, I had not just chosen a pair of shoes. I had developed a working knowledge of craft footwear construction that will inform every shoe purchase I make from here on. That is the methodology at work. And yes, they will be well worth the wait.

Where the Methodology Lives Now

The current expression of this pattern runs across several domains simultaneously, which is either impressive or alarming depending on your disposition. Watches, bourbon, records, and books carry the most weight right now—each tracked, each researched, each building toward something more considered than where it started. Cigars have recently joined the rotation, already with a 33-litre humidity-controlled cabinet fitted with Spanish cedar drawers and a digital hygrometer, because of course they have. The knife collection, never entirely at rest, is stirring again. The shoe and boot collection continues to grow with the same deliberate attention applied everywhere else.

The watch collection has its taxonomy and its roadmap. The bourbon shelf has its spreadsheet and its reading list of distillery histories. The records live on Discogs, where the platform’s insistence on specific pressings and matrix details enforces exactly the kind of precision this methodology demands. The books have Goodreads and supplementary notes on editions, context, and how each title connects to others in the library.

These are not separate hobbies running in parallel. They are simultaneous expressions of a single habit of mind—the same one that produced the binders of football cards in the nineties, the meticulous gear lists in other phases, the obsessive research that preceded every significant acquisition in between. The hobby changes. The methodology does not.

What a Lifetime of This Actually Produces

After three decades of this pattern across a dozen domains, what accumulates is not primarily a collection of objects. It is a cultivated sensibility—a finely developed ability to recognize quality, understand context, and engage with the things you love on their own terms. The objects are evidence of the sensibility. The spreadsheets are the working notes. The sensibility itself is the thing of value.

That sensibility transfers. Someone who has gone deep in one domain and developed genuine taste there carries something applicable everywhere: the habit of asking what makes something good rather than merely desirable, the patience to find out, the discipline to let the answer guide the decision. It is a way of paying attention, and it improves with practice.

There is also, I will admit, a quieter reward. The person who has done the work—who has read the history, worn the pieces, tasted the range, listened to the pressings—enjoys their collection differently. Not with the anxiety of the speculator or the restlessness of the dilettante, but with the settled pleasure of someone who knows exactly what they have and why they have it. That quality of enjoyment does not come from spending more. It comes from knowing more. And knowing more is always, in every domain, a matter of time and attention.

The Only Advice Worth Giving

If there is a practical takeaway in any of this, it is not a system to copy or a spreadsheet template to download. It is simpler and harder than that: when something earns your genuine interest, take it seriously. Do the reading. Build the vocabulary. Move through it deliberately rather than rushing to the destination. The depth you develop will outlast any individual acquisition, and it will make every acquisition more meaningful.

Right now, there is a glass of something considered on the desk beside me, a turntable working through an album I have been anticipating for weeks, a book open to a page I have been meaning to reach, and a watch on my wrist chosen with more confidence than I could have managed ten years ago. The roadmap runs to 2053. It started with a football card in the nineties.

None of it arrived at once. All of it was worth the wait.

— Jaime

The Allure of the “Fun Micro”

There is a specific joy in wearing a watch that doesn’t demand the “red carpet” treatment of a Daytona or the historical weight of a Submariner. In my collection, I categorize these as my “Fun Micros”—watches that prioritize character, storytelling, and a certain “get-up-and-go” energy. These are the daily wears. The watches that can take a beating and I won’t lose sleep over it.

Enter the Stewart Dawson Voyager (Ref. 1919.A.SS) in Military Green.

To be perfectly candid, this was my first watch from the Watch Gang Platinum Tier subscription.

Design & Dial

Stewart Dawson excels at blending British heritage with Italian flair, and the Voyager is the poster child for that marriage. The 1919 series draws inspiration from early 20th-century trench watches, but the “Military Green” dial brings it firmly into the modern day.

• The Color: It’s a deep, mossy olive that shifts depending on the light. The matte finish absorbs the glare of sunlight, making those bold, luminescent Arabic numerals pop.

• The Case: It feels substantial without being bulky—a necessary balance when you’re transitioning from a morning lifting session to a casual afternoon meeting. Its currently the heaviest watch I own coming in at 290.6 grams

Why It Works

It’s a “tool watch” in spirit, but it’s handsome enough to wear to a weekend brunch. It doesn’t try too hard, which is exactly why it has earned its spot alongside my more “serious” pieces. At a $239 price point, it’s a reminder that horological soul isn’t always tied to a five-figure MSRP. Direct this watch is listed at $650.00

Specifications

Case
Material: Stainless steel 316L
Diameter: 41 mm
Thickness: 14.6 mm
Lug to lug: 50 mm

Movement
Automatic Japanese movement: Miyota 8215
Hours, minutes and central seconds, with date at 3 o’clock
Power reserve: 42 hours

Dial & Hands
Dial colour: Military Green
Indexes: Applied with Super-LumiNova
Glass: Sapphire crystal with multi-layer anti-reflective and anti-fingerprint coatings
Water resistance: 10 bar / 100 meters

The Verdict

The Voyager is a conversation starter. It’s for the days when you want something unique on the wrist that can handle a bit of sweat and adventure. It’s rugged, it’s green, and it’s a vital part of my “Fun Micro” rotation.

It’s the same principle that draws me to certain watches and certain bourbons. Not as obsessions in themselves, but as quiet metaphors for how I approach life. A watch that dares to be bold—larger case, intricate dial, complications that reward study—mirrors the idea that time isn’t just marked; it’s honored with depth and character. The best ones carry handmade touches: hand-engraved details, guilloché patterns finished by artisans, or even dials woven from reclaimed charred oak barrel wood, blending the patience of aging spirit with the precision of steel. They sit heavy on the wrist, a reminder that anything worth strapping on deserves to declare presence responsibly, without apology.

Bourbon works the same way in my mind. It starts simple—grains, water, fire—then surrenders to years in charred oak, emerging layered: vanilla giving way to caramel, oak, spice, a slow-building finish. I don’t rush it. I explore, nose, sip thoughtfully. It’s responsible indulgence at its finest—charismatic in the sharing, never loud or wasteful. Pouring two glasses on a quiet night, handing one over and watching her take that first appreciative sip, adds a warmth that deepens everything. Her presence doesn’t compete; it completes the moment, turning reflection into something shared and fuller.

That same principle extends to how I dress. Maximalism here means investing in the handmade: suits where every element is deliberate. Full canvassing that molds to your frame over time, lapels hand-padded for natural roll, buttonholes stitched one by one, pick stitching along the edges that whispers quiet luxury rather than shouts it. When the tailor nails it, the suit becomes an extension of character—sharp, enduring, confident. Walking into an evening with her hand lightly on my arm, the fit impeccable and the details subtle, it feels right. Not flashy, just present. Her grace beside me elevates it all—steady, effortless, making the layers feel harmonious and alive.

These aren’t separate compartments—watches, bourbon, tailoring. They’re expressions of the same thread: committing fully to what matters, building richness with responsibility, carrying it with charisma. And having a good woman by my side weaves through every part—her quiet smile in shared moments, her hand on my arm as we move through a room, her presence turning good into something deeper, more memorable. It’s not about adding noise; it’s about amplifying what’s already there.

In the end, this is how I try to live: dive in completely when it counts, honor the craft behind it, and cherish the company that makes the whole picture richer. Anything worth doing deserves that level of attention—done right, done fully, done with heart.

Here’s to evenings like this—thoughtful, layered, and shared well.

Cheers,
-Jaime

There’s a specific kind of survival that isn’t about just getting through the day—it’s about honoring the history that allows us to enjoy it. For my 48th birthday, I was treated to an unforgettable experience at The Urban Stillhouse in St. Petersburg. Part restaurant, part tasting room, part living museum, it’s a place where bourbon isn’t just poured — it’s told.

And no one tells it better than Tom.

The Legendary Hook

There are bourbon stories — and then there are Horse Soldier stories. If you’ve ever sipped a whiskey that feels like it carries the weight of history, grit, and heroism in the glass, Horse Soldier Bourbon stands apart. The brand’s origin is born from the remarkable true story of the U.S. Army Green Berets who rode horseback into Afghanistan after 9/11, becoming known as the “Horse Soldiers.” Their mission was later depicted in the 2018 film 12 Strong, but their story continues today in an unexpected—and delicious—way: through bourbon.

The Mission Briefing

A great bourbon needs a great briefing. Our specialist, Tom, had a delivery so well-rehearsed it felt like a cinematic briefing. He walked us through the “Days of 5th Group” with the kind of tactical precision that makes the history feel alive. It’s that human element—the dedication to getting the details right—that turns a simple tasting into an experience worth remembering.

Urban Stillhouse is intentionally designed as both an education center and an experience-driven venue. Tasting sessions there guide guests through topics like “nosing 101,” flavor exploration, and the craftsmanship behind Horse Soldier’s Premium, Signature, and Reserve bourbons.

Tom’s enthusiasm transformed those details from facts into a narrative. It wasn’t just a tasting — it was an immersion.

Inside The Urban Stillhouse

Walking into the Urban Stillhouse feels like entering a bourbon lodge built by artisans who love old‑world craftsmanship as much as modern hospitality. The space features reclaimed barn beams, heavy wood, leather, fireplaces, and industrial metal accents — the result of design influences gathered across Kentucky, Montana, Ireland, and beyond.

The two-story venue includes:

• A main dining room with a fireplace centerpiece

• A tasting room just outside the production area

• Barrel‑aged cocktails on tap

• Two bars plus private dining rooms

• A second-floor library with leather couches, pool table, and curated brown‑spirit list

Pair all that with elevated Southern cuisine — from craft cocktails to dishes like Chatham Cod or Butternut Farroto — and it becomes clear why Urban Stillhouse is a destination for bourbon fans and food lovers alike.

The Flight: Silver, Gold, and Copper

The Bourbon Itself

Horse Soldier produces three straight bourbons — Premium, Signature, and Reserve — all non‑chill filtered for a richer mouthfeel and decadent finish. Their team, all former Green Berets, honed their craft by studying distilling traditions in Kentucky, Ireland, and Scotland before establishing their brand and building the Urban Stillhouse in St. Petersburg.

• The Straight Bourbon (Silver): Caramel and honey—smooth enough for a Gulf Coast sunset.

• The Small Batch (Gold): That butterscotch and oak hit that makes it a “Gold” standard for a reason.

• The Barrel Strength (Copper): This is the one for the milestones. At 48, you appreciate something with a bit more “kick” and a lot more character.

Each pour reflects not only bourbon-making mastery but the brand’s remarkable identity: resilience, leadership, and transformation.

A Brand Still Riding Forward

The Horse Soldier team continues to expand their footprint. Beyond the St. Pete flagship, they’ve begun work on a major distillery and family-friendly complex on Lake Cumberland in Kentucky — the next chapter in a journey that began halfway around the world.

Final Thoughts

My visit to the Urban Stillhouse wasn’t just another bourbon outing — it was a reminder that behind every bottle is a story, and in this case, a profound one. The tasting was exceptional, the space unforgettable, and Tom’s passion for the brand elevated the whole experience.

Whether you’re a seasoned bourbon collector or someone who appreciates a good story with your sip, Horse Soldier Bourbon is worth exploring — and Urban Stillhouse is where the story truly comes alive.

It’s about quality. It’s about history. And most importantly, it’s about the spirit to keep moving forward.

Perfection in the glass.

-Jaime

That’s the kind of energy you need when you’re talking about the Oceaneva Deep Marine Explorer 6000m—a timepiece engineered not for the casual splash, but for the unforgiving, crushing realities of the deep ocean. This is a world-first Grade 5 Titanium true GMT, built with a purpose and limited to only 300 pieces. 50 per dial.

It’s a serious piece of gear that commands your full attention. The kind of attention that pairs perfectly with a smooth, aged bourbon.

The Unboxing that Isn’t

Let’s be clear: this isn’t a delicate reveal of tissue paper and satin ribbons. No, this is different. When you lift the latches on the rugged, waterproof case, you’re accessing a piece of extreme engineering. It’s a moment of satisfying, mechanical finality.

First Impressions of a World-First

There it is. The world’s first Grade 5 Titanium 6000m true GMT.

The weight—or rather, the lack of it—is the first thing that hits you. It’s Grade 5 Titanium, meaning it’s incredibly lightweight for its size, yet exceptionally durable. It has a commanding presence on the wrist, but it wears comfortably, ready for the kind of “everything under the Florida sun” adventures that demand serious gear.

Built for the Abyss, Born for Exploration

At its core, the Deep Marine Explorer 6000m is defined by its specs. Let’s break it down:

• World-First Engineering: This is the first time Grade 5 Titanium has been paired with a True GMT movement in a watch with this kind of depth rating.

• True GMT Functionality: Powering this bad boy is the SW200 true GMT automatic movement. This isn’t just a gimmick; it’s essential gear for tracking multiple time zones, whether you’re crossing oceans or coordinating international expeditions.

• 6000M Depth Rating: Yes, you read that correctly. This watch isn’t just “water-resistant.” It’s rated to survive a crushing 6 kilometers, or 20,000 feet, beneath the surface. This is a tool designed to dominate the abyss.

• Damascus Dial: The unique, patterned Damascus dial adds a layer of sophisticated artistry to its rugged form. Each dial is unique, ensuring your piece of exploration history is truly one-of-a-kind.

Visibility That Cuts Through the Dark

When you’re built for the deep ocean, visibility is everything. The Deep Marine Explorer features enhanced Swiss Super-LumiNova, ensuring maximum legibility even in the inky blackness of the abyss. It’s a reassuring glow that underscores its status as a critical piece of exploration gear.

Final Thoughts on an Exceptional Breed

The Oceaneva Deep Marine Explorer 6000m is an exceptional timepiece. It’s a true world-first, combining extreme depth-defying engineering with practical, robust GMT functionality—all wrapped in a package that screams limited-edition style.

It’s not for everyone. But for those who demand gear that doesn’t just survive but dominates... it’s a must-have.

Everything under the Florida sun... is about to get a whole lot deeper.

https://oceaneva.com/collections/6000m-grade-5-titanium-gmt

Why the Moonswatch is the Most Polarizing Watch on Earth

In the refined world of horology, few things cause a genuine ruckus. We are used to subtle bezel changes and re-issues that feel like déjà vu.

Then there’s the Swatch x Omega MoonSwatch.

Specifically, the SO33W701L Mission to Earthphase Moonshine Gold. For $450, it’s a watch that sits at the center of a storm. To some, it’s a brilliant complication; to others, it’s the ultimate hype-trap. But to understand why this watch matters, I have to look back to where it all started for me: 1983.

From the 1983 Tennis Grid to the Earthphase

My journey with Swatch began at the very beginning. My first watch was the GW100 Tennis Grid 1983. With its white dial and green "court" lines, it was the epitome of the 80s aesthetic. That watch is long gone now—lost to time and moving boxes—but the memory of that lightweight, plastic-strapped freedom remains.

Back then, Swatch was a disruptor. Today, with the Mission to Earthphase, they are doing it again, but with a twist of high-end Omega DNA.

The Earthphase is particularly polarizing because it doesn't just track the moon; it tracks the Earth as seen from the moon. It features a Moonshine Gold coated seconds hand and a patented Earth phase complication. It’s a $450 piece of "Bioceramic" that attempts to do what $10,000 mechanical watches do: evoke wonder.

The Case Against: "It’s Plastic. They Just Coated the Hand."

The vocal majority of traditional collectors are, to put it mildly, underwhelmed.

* The Material Conflict: Critics argue that putting "Omega" and "Speedmaster" on a Bioceramic (read: plastic) case is sacrilege.

* The Price Gap: At $450, the Earthphase is a significant jump from the original $260 MoonSwatch. For many, that's a steep price for a quartz movement, regardless of the "Moonshine Gold" hand or the Earth phase complication.

* The Hype Fatigue: The requirement to hunt these down at physical stores on specific dates has turned off many who just want a timepiece, not a scavenger hunt.

The Case For: A Complication for the Masses

And yet, the lines still form. The Earthphase is a masterstroke because it brings a poetic complication—the "Earthrise" perspective—to a price point that doesn't require a second mortgage.

It’s a "Gateway Watch." It gives younger enthusiasts the geometry and feel of an icon. Judging it by the standards of a mechanical Speedmaster misses the point. It’s a fun, technical accessory that celebrates the history of space travel.

How the Plastic Watch Saved the Moon

To understand why Swatch has the audacity to charge $450 for a plastic watch, you have to understand that without Swatch, the brands we worship today—Omega, Longines, and Tissot—might not exist.

The Seismic Shift: The Quartz Crisis

In the 1970s, the Swiss watch industry was dying. The "Quartz Crisis" (led by Seiko) meant that cheap, accurate battery-powered watches were obliterating mechanical craftsmanship. Between 1970 and 1983, Swiss watch employment fell from 90,000 to under 30,000.

The Vision of Nicolas Hayek

Nicolas Hayek’s solution was the Swatch (a portmanteau of "Second Watch"). He realized the Swiss couldn't compete on price alone; they had to compete on style and emotion.

By reducing the movement parts from 91 to 51 and automating production, Swatch became a global phenomenon. I remember it vividly with my '83 Tennis Grid—it wasn't just a tool; it was an outfit choice.

Funding the Icons

The massive profits from Swatch provided the "war chest" needed to save the prestige brands.

* The Cash Flow: Swatch profits paid the bills while Omega and Longines restructured.

* The Industry Anchor: Swatch Group consolidated manufacturing under ETA, keeping mechanical watchmaking alive when it was economically unviable.

Conclusion: The Circle is Complete

When I look at my Mission to Earthphase, I see the ghost of my 1983 Tennis Grid.

The Moonshine Gold Earthphase isn't a betrayal of Omega’s legacy; it’s the modern manifestation of the very tool that saved that legacy. It’s a $450 reminder that watchmaking should be fun, slightly controversial, and accessible to the person who just wants to look at their wrist and see the Earth and Moon in alignment.

Whether you love the gimmick or loathe the hype, Swatch has us talking about Swiss watches again. And in the end, that was always the mission.

-Jaime

In the world of horology, the “Lunar New Year” watch has become a tradition of its own. While many brands lean into overt, dial-side illustrations, Longines has taken a more sophisticated, “inside-out” approach for the Year of the Horse 2026. This limited edition of 2,026 pieces is a masterclass in restraint, blending Longines’ deep equestrian heritage with high-art Chinese symbolism.

The “Sunrise” Dial: A Study in Red and Gold

At first glance, the watch commands attention with its sunray red gradient dial. In Chinese culture, red symbolizes prosperity and joy, but the execution here is poetic. The “fumé” effect—bright cherry red at the center fading to deep black at the edges—is designed to mimic the atmospheric glow of a sunrise, an emblem of new beginnings.

The contrast is heightened by:

• Gilt 2N applied indexes that catch the light like polished gold.

• Polished leaf-shaped hands that provide a soft, elegant counterpoint to the bold dial.

• A Moonphase complication at 6 o’clock, reflecting the lunisolar calendar that governs the Chinese New Year.

The Secret on the Rotor: Peon Xu’s “Galloping Horse”

The true soul of this timepiece is hidden behind the sapphire caseback. Longines collaborated with the Peon Art Museum to feature the work of Peon Xu, a revolutionary Chinese painter known for blending Western realism with traditional ink techniques.

Engraved on the yellow gilt rotor is Xu’s iconic “Galloping Horse.” As the wearer moves, the rotor spins, making the horse appear to gallop in perpetual motion. Accompanying the artwork is the calligraphy “奔马得势”, which translates roughly to “a horse gaining momentum.” It is a powerful metaphor for success and forward drive—a fitting theme for a collector who appreciates the “pure” mechanics of time.

Technical Purity

Beyond the aesthetics, the “Year of the Horse” is a robust mechanical performer:

• Caliber: L899.5 (Automatic).

• Power Reserve: A generous 72 hours.

• Precision: Equipped with a monocrystalline silicon balance-spring, providing excellent resistance to magnetism and temperature fluctuations.

• Case: 42mm stainless steel, maintaining the classic proportions of the Master Collection.

Final Verdict: A Collector’s “Purity” Piece

For a collector focused on “Horological Purity,” this Longines is more than a holiday novelty. It bridges the gap between a dress watch and a cultural artifact. It doesn’t shout its theme from the dial; instead, it saves its most beautiful secret for the person wearing it. It’s a watch built for those who understand that true momentum is felt, not just seen.

On a Personal Note

Crossing the threshold into the luxury pool is a definitive “before and after” moment for me. While I cherish the stories behind my rugged Casios and the vintage charm of my Bulova, this Longines Master Collection Year of the Horse feels like my true graduation into the world of high horology. It is my first piece that marries a world-class mechanical movement with a legacy that is deeply personal. Born in 1978, I am an Earth Horse, a sign defined by stability and a grounded perspective. As we enter 2026—the year of the Fire Horse—this acquisition feels like a cosmic alignment. It isn’t just a new addition to the box; it’s a 42mm tribute to my own journey, echoing the “momentum” of my zodiac sign and marking my arrival as a serious curator of time.

My name is Jaime, and if there are two things I’ve learned coming up on 50, it’s that timing is everything and discipline is non-negotiable. Based out of sunny Florida, I spend my days balancing the grind of the business world with the precision of a carefully curated life.

I’ve been in the construction industry for 24 years, all in Florida. I’ve built the places you shop and eat. The places you see your doctor and buy stamps. I’ve also built places that you hide your treasures. None of that compares to the last few years working in historical restoration work. I’ve always had an appreciation for the past and a love for history. Getting to combine those aspects into my career has been amazing.

I’m also the founder of Florida Survival (FLSVL.com). Our motto, “Everything under the Florida sun,” isn’t just a tagline; it’s a lifestyle. From our Everglade Veil to the Jellyfish Collection, we build activewear and swimwear designed for the elements we live in.

By day, I’m focused on growth. I’m currently deep in the Traction business series, applying that ‘Entrepreneurial Operating System’ mindset to my professional life and my passion project, Florida Survival (FLSVL.com). FLSVL is my creative outlet—an LLC that serves as a tribute to the state I love. From our Everglade Veil to the Jellyfish Collection, we create activewear that embodies our motto: ‘Everything under the Florida sun.’

For the last 12 year I have been involved in ATA Taekwondo, currently holding the rank of 3rd black belt. In 2019 I was the state champ for my rank and age in several events. I’m also a Les Mills certified instructor for Body Combat and really gym user.

But the ‘grace’ comes when the gear is put away. My evenings are a slow-down ritual. I might be sipping an Angel’s Envy Private Selection or a Sazerac Rye, reading something with weight like Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. There’s a raw, ‘Horological Purity’ to O’Brien’s writing that matches the way I view my watch collection—from my Bulova Chronograph to my Longines ‘Year of the Horse’ Edition. Born in 1978, I am an Earth Horse, and as we enter 2026—the year of the Fire Horse—finding a timepiece that honors my birth year feels like the ultimate alignment.

Whether I’m digging for a $0.99 Allen Keller record to spin on my Victrola or tracking the movement on my Timex Expedition, I’m looking for the truth in the craft.

Cheers from the vault.

-Jaime