Raza

Day 1 with the Tudor Black Bay; I'd like to say that this was the first picture I'd taken of it, but I actually wore it out of the store and put it back in the box when I got home for this shot

It’s funny how things work sometimes. How you can be so dead set on a plan and figure that things will happen that way because, well, it’s your plan, and you can do everything in your control to ensure that it stays on track.

July was a bit of a whirlwind month for me. As some of you know, a couple years back I quit my job to go back to school and change careers, so I’m not quite living like an episode of MTV Cribs anymore (to be fair, I never really was, unless Cribs became about sparsely decorated one bedroom loft apartments). No more impulse buys, no more microbrands hitting the mailbox every month or so, no more frivolous spending. I found the best way to curb the watch wants was to simply pay less attention to the new watches that were coming out and spend a little more time reading soccer transfer rumors (I can’t believe Paul Pogba went for £85m!). I cut down the collection a bit, and then just recently, drastically reduced the number of watches I own. But, I did find time to pick one more up.


If you’re reading this, I probably don’t need to tell you about Tudor. I don’t need to tell you about their adventurous designs compared to their big brother Rolex. I don’t need to tell you about their storied military history, including the United States and French navies. I don’t need to tell you about their excellent case finishing and their accessible ETA movements. I don’t even need to tell you that they’re putting some in-house movements into their watches these days, which is massively confusing to me.

The first modern Tudor that really opened my eyes to the brand; one I still hope to own. (Borrowed image)

I always liked Tudor, from the moment I saw my first blue dial vintage snowflake Tudor Submariner. I fell a bit head over heels when Tudor unveiled their Heritage Chronograph, a reissue/modernization/whatever of the 1970s Monte Carlo chronograph, replacing the handwound Valjoux 234 movement with an ETA 289x with a Dubois-Depraz chronograph module and dumping that silly cyclops date magnifier. That watch has been on my list almost as long as there has been a list. At first it was unattainable because it wasn’t sold in the United States, then it became unattainable because I found myself distracted by the next shiny micro diver to come to the market as the next best thing ever only to be replaced minutes later by the next next best thing. Trying to keep up with micro divers was like trying to stay on the bleeding edge of Android phones, which become outdated and outmoded almost as fast as they come out (and I’m an Apple guy anyway, never really did the Android thing).

So, I gathered up all my watches, chose the five most precious to me (and a Timex and a Suunto; more tools than watches, really, at best, and at worst, a prop for the adventurous life I wish I led), and despite some worry about missing the others, I listed something like a baker’s dozen for sale to cover the purchase of a Tudor diver, perhaps proving the fact that had I not been distracted, the Heritage Chronograph wouldn’t still be on the list to this day, and rather it would be on my wrist. This came shortly after I tried a few on and decided that while I really liked the blue Black Bay (or the Bruise Bay as I, and no one else, call it), the Pelagos was the one for me. It had that extra millimeter, that extra “tough as nails, here to go to the bottom of the ocean, grab your time machine and Jacqueline Bisset and her white t-shirt and let’s go for a dive” factor that just says you and it together mean business. I was so sure that I was going to get a Pelagos--in a year, after I graduated law school and got a job in a market where I keep getting told there are already too many lawyers. So sure. So sure that it would be a Pelagos. That was July 2nd; a little over two months ago. Less than a month later, I bought a Black Bay and I’ve been wearing it ever since.


SOTC, now

I think it’ll be helpful now to look at the timeline of events:

• July 2nd: Decide I want the Pelagos over the Black Bay.
• July 11th: Decide I want the Black Bay over the Pelagos. I was going to sell my MM300 to fund it, but decided a massive sell-off of dust-catchers could cover the costs.
• July 26th: List the watches for sale.
• July 28th: Put a deposit down on a Black Bay at the wonderful Sidney Thomas jewelers in Delaware.
• July 29th: Pick up the Black Bay.

The actual first photo I took my Black Bay. I drove about halfway home before realizing that it wasn't set to the right time, and since my car doesn't really have a dedicated clock, I just didn't know what time it was.

I honestly couldn’t tell you what it was about the Black Bay that got me. I liked it a lot when I tried it on. I thought it was the first successful combination of black and blue on a watch in history, but even then I wasn’t sure I was going to buy it. When I tried on the Pelagos I knew I had to have it. But now, here I am, writing this with a Black Bay on my wrist and a watch plan that may not have the Pelagos in it. But in those 9 days from when I tried it on and when I made the decision to sell over a dozen watches to pay for it, the Black Bay grew in my mind. Something about it just trumped the no-nonsense feel of the Pelagos. Actually, I think there’s a fair bit of nonsense about the Black Bay, and I think that’s the reason I started to turn irrevocably towards it.

There’s something special about this watch. From the piano black presentation box to the navy blue bezel, this watch has something that makes it more than the sum of its parts. We create these little rules. I know even I’ve been subject to these. No day-dates ever, for example (I’ve owned several, generally 7750-powered). No watches under 43mm that have lugs wider than 20mm. No 24mm lugs (and I’ve had several, luckily they’re all gone now). No black and blue; it looks like a bruise. No cathedral hands (really, though, I can’t stand these). Crown guards are a must (I mean, they guard the crown, which probably needs guarding, I imagine; like little versions of Fort Knox, watch crowns are). Watches should be between 42mm and 44mm for my wrist. So I broke a few rules. Black and blue together. 22mm lugs on a 41mm watch. No crown guards. But thankfully, no cathedral hands. But it does have a snowflake hand; a lovely throwback to the Tudor Submariner that I first fell for so many years back.


Atop sake that takes 72 hours to make and celebrates that on the label. Care for a drink?

So, I broke a few rules. But boy, were those rules ever made to be broken when it comes to a watch like this. There’s something about this watch, something that only wearing it can capture. It’s no secret that I’m a Steve McQueen fan and I know that he was a Rolex guy, but there is an air of Steve McQueen about this watch. In my first babbling words about this watch after I picked it up, I mentioned that it was something I think he’d have worn. In my first babbling words, I said this is a watch that neither shouts nor whispers. And I still stand by that. It’s not the loud, loutish man at the bar, but it’s not the man sitting there with reading the paper either (James May said this once about Aston Martin being the quiet guy with the paper in the bar who invariably wins the fight, but I’ve never once seen a person in a bar with a newspaper); it’s the guy having an Old Fashioned or a martini (gin, stirred, up, and dirty, of course), who’s just having a good time with his friends. Free from worry, free from preconceived notions, free from whatever judgment passers-by may make. That’s the Black Bay. As capable of a relatively deep sea dive as it is a four course dinner, it never has to worry.

I think it's rather photogenic, even if it is in my car, which, as a convertible, gets a special kind of dirty

Other than half a day I spent doing dirty work wearing my MM300 and another day spent wearing my Speedmaster, the Black Bay has been the only watch I’ve worn over a month and a half; which is a remarkable stat for me. Even though my collection was never expansive and is now down to essentially six watches, I still rotated often. I found that I rotated them less after my watch winder gave up the ghost and I succumbed to the momentum of “Well, this one is running and it’s out, so I might as well wear it”. But this is more than that. The Black Bay is infinitely wearable. It goes anywhere. I’ve worn it out to dinner, to class, out for a day running errands, and to a party or two. It’s such a versatile watch that the occasion doesn’t matter. It’s just always appropriate. Now, I’ve not had the occasion to wear a suit or a tuxedo in the time since I bought it, and that would test the notion (though I really wouldn’t hesitate to wear it with a suit, a tux would give me pause), but I can’t remember wearing a tuxedo in the last 12 years. Maybe that’s a comment on my social standing more than anything else, but I just don’t get invited to black tie galas or high school proms these days, so a tuxedo-appropriate watch has never really crossed my mind nor entered my collection. I know there are those who say that wearing a watch to a black tie event is an insult to the hosts, but I would imagine it’s no more offensive than the weirdly pasty patch of my wrist that hasn’t seen consistent sunlight in 21 years, compared to my usually brown skin.

A bit harder to shift this way, but I think it makes for a good shot...a bit of an homage to that picture of my Monaco that I still say is the best picture I've ever taken

In almost two months, the watch has averaged a gain of about 5.2 seconds per day. I’m not measuring day to day, but if I recall correctly, this lowly ETA is performing basically within chronometer spec. And while I’ve never owned an actual mechanical chronometer (my Breitling B-1 is a chronometer, but it’s an anadigi, and, of course, quartz), I’ve had a few watches that perform within that spec, and it’s completely refreshing to see Rolex’s little brother brand compete in accuracy while burdened with only three little lines of text (beside the Tudor name and logo) on the dial. So while it doesn’t bear the word on its face, the Black Bay is without a doubt superlative.

I would also like to take a moment to give a shout out, as the kids say, to Sidney Thomas Jewelers, particularly the location in the Christiana Mall in Delaware. I've walked into stores in the past ready to buy and walked out disgusted with the way I was treated, but at Sidney Thomas, I was treated not only with the utmost respect (which is really a baseline for determining whether the person you're dealing with is a decent human being or not), I really got the feeling that they didn't care about my age or race or that I wasn't buying the most expensive thing in the store or that I walked in wearing my "lowly" Seiko. I had an excellent experience with them, got a great price, excellent service, and I will return to them the next time I'm looking for a watch from a brand they sell. I feel like so much of reviewing watch sellers is the negative, I thought it would be nice to say something positive about a store that really, truly treated me right. And it doesn't hurt that one of the employees there geeked out over my MM300, which he'd, at the time, only ever seen on Instagram, and was very excited to finally see one in person.


The MM300 alongside the Black Bay. Surprising how close they are in size visually, despite the Black Bay being 3mm smaller at its widest point and significantly thinner. The MM300 looks like a pure tool watch compared to the Black Bay.

If I were a regular blogger, I’d take a dig at the default answer of what luxury watch to get by saying something like “With the Black Bay and other Tudors being this good, what’s the point of Rolex?” Of course, it’s silly to say that, and it’s silly to pit the two against each other. While the Black Bay may be the closest in spirit to Rolex’s watches, Tudor has an identity all its own. Yes, comparisons are inevitable, but they’re as inevitable as they are unnecessary. The Black Bay, Pelagos, Heritage Chrono, Ranger, North Flag, and other Tudors stand tall on their own. Alas, that’s an unwinnable argument for another day; ask me about the social conditioning of people to categorize and compare based on tribalistic notions some time. I promise it’s not as boring a conversation as it sounds, especially after a few Old Fashioneds or (gin, up, stirred, and dirty) martinis.

Until then, I can’t stop smiling when I look at my Black Bay. It’s such rare thing in the world; something really, truly special. Don’t worry, other watches, I’ll wear you again soon (probably--no, I mean it, I will).


Just chilling with my Black Bay; thanks for reading!