Time Waits For No Man’s Wallet, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #187 | @MDWorld

July 10, 2012 Arthur Tebbel 3 Comments

Dear Art,
Hey, what time is it?
-A concerned citizen

Citizen,
I honestly have no idea.  That’s not true, there’s a clock on the computer I’m writing this on and, if I was willing to reach into my pocket, there’s a clock on my phone but none of these are particularly convenient.  There’s a reason the pocket watch lost the war to the wristwatch.  This is even more important when in Las Vegas as I am this week.  They aren’t exactly anxious to provide customers with information on the time.  I’m going completely out of my mind here.

I wasn’t always a watch wearing person.  I remember frequently wearing a digital wristwatch in grade school but that was more out of a nascent love of all things gadget-y in a time when gadgets were decidedly less cool and less child-friendly.  I didn’t start wearing a watch as an adult until last year when I inherited a reasonably nice Ebel.  My grandfather was mostly a connoisseur of nice looking knock-offs but we figure grandma must have worn him down to the point of buying a couple authentic ones.  I started wearing it as a kind of tribute but I quickly discovered that knowing what time it is by looking at your wrist is pretty fucking cool.  Now we’ve gotten the entire prelude out of the way we can get to the real story here.

I have been trying to buy a watch in Las Vegas for three days.  Most of the stores in Vegas are places I would never shop.  That probably isn’t true, if I lived here I would probably discover that they have supermarkets, Targets, pharmacies all the places I usually shop.  Pathetic aside, it took my five minutes to come up with three kinds of stores I shop at, all I would really need to live on The Strip is an assurance Amazon would deliver.  Vegas is the kind of place where one shopping complex has three Coach stores.  This is a really weird place to try to shop for a reasonably priced temporary watch.

I don’t want you to think this has stopped me from trying.  This is a family trip and I’m here with my mom and with celebrated Michael Davis World commenter Pennie.  They’ve really grabbed on to this watch hunt with both hands and we’ve come up with a fun game, guessing the prices of watches.  The first was a watch with a leather strap and an Asian dragon on its face.  A handsome watch to be sure but we were completely floored when we were told it’s a limited edition piece and cost $30,000.  I had guessed under $5,000.  None of this compared me for the coup de grace of this whole ordeal.  Look at the watch in the picture for this article.  I don’t know how clear it is but there are no precious metals or gemstones on this watch.  Aside from the vague green glow (a color that I believe was introduced to the timepiece world by Timex) it’s pretty unremarkable.  What would you guess that watch costs?  I’m going to give you a couple line breaks to get your guess together.

Almost ready?  Come on you aren’t too cool to play this game.

For the record I guessed under $10,000.

That is a $400,000 watch.

Seriously.  There’s a lot about Las Vegas that’s terrible.