Relax, I Get It

Some notes on conspicuous consumption.

One of the nice things about achieving what I have, self-possessed & obscure success, is that you don’t have to make a big deal out of yourself. The downside is when you have to explain how big a deal you actually are. If you didn’t know, my personal motto is Esse Quam Videri. It means ‘to be, rather than to seem’. It requires some genuine humility rather than they typical humblebrag. I’m used to it. Thanks Mark Greaney.

I am not so circumspect when it comes to what Doug DeMuro calls ‘quirks and features’. For one thing, I’m something of a jazz snob and an audiophile. I try not to be insufferable about it, which is why I don’t write as many music reviews as I probably should. But also, I am a watch collector, almost to the point at which I might call myself a ‘serious’ watch collector. Suffice it to say that I dig watches. I’m a watch dude.

This morning I broke a couple mental spells on myself. The first had to do with watches and the other had to do with cars. Yeah, I’m also a gearhead and I think that in every dimension Jeremy Clarkson is totally righteous. If you are one of my disappointed friends this political season and are actually wondering if the American male spirit is adolescent, shallow and hostile, perhaps you’ve been sniffing the wrong social media. OK sometimes we’re adolescent, but that’s just a tangent. It’s one of the things that make us adorable. KISS. That is keep it simple, stupid until we get into geekland. Definitely geekland has a Bureau of Watch Complications, a Ministry of Automotive Sophistication and a Department of Jazz Hermeneutics. We’ll get obsessively deep into those nuances. But you knew that, you were just self-censoring that knowledge. It’s OK. This morning I admitted to myself that fancy watches and fancy cars and fancy stereos are just jewelry.

Well, actually each of these objets d’art has a reasonable price point above which it becomes jewelry. The trick is keeping a good eye on that price point. I’m going to put it about here with some qualification about cars.

Horology
Watches are the cheapest of these material signifiers. Basically it’s all jewelry but it’s necessary jewelry. A man without a watch is like a man without hard shoes. Difficult to take such a man seriously. The serious price point is $1000. You can get reasonably sophisticated watches from a number of vendors for less than a grand, but if you spend more than that, you have to have a serious reason. You’re getting into geekland. But if you spend more than $4000, then you have passed into Extremistan. Extremistan is that area of human endeavor in which attributes about yourself exceed an order of magnitude, or more, above the median. Not all of geekland is Extermistan, just like not all of Alaska is north of the Arctic Circle. It’s still cold.

Audiophilia
Next up the price chain of generally male nuanced appreciation in the realm of hobbies and collection would be the world of stereo. I’ve been deep into this dark forest most of my life, starting when I was about 18 years old and I first heard Manneheim Steamroller’s Fresh Aire III Toccata on JBL L212s driven by a 200 watt per channel Soundcraftsmen amp through an SAE parametric equalizer.

SAE 180 Parametric EQ. (drool)

I still get chills thinking about SAE. OK let me calm down. What many people who have just crossed the barrier of recognizing that some headphones really do sound better than others are dipping their toes into the waters of the audiophile. It gets vertiginously deep. But to keep it simple I’m just going to talk about the price of speakers, because no matter what anybody says, the biggest difference in any sound system is how these final devices move the air into your ears. Whether they are headphones, earbuds or any shape or size of speakers, it all comes down to that. Most folks don’t spend more than a few hundred. So thinking about the level of serious, I would say $1500 is what it takes. This doesn’t mean that below this level, one is flippant, but most people are not going to shell out that kind of dough without having reasons, explanations, excuses and a healthy dose of 'IDGAF what you say’. You can call yourself serious. I would. After all, without the electronics what’s a pair of speakers. Chances are you’re not going to just plug those bad boys into your iPhone, even if that were possible. When you start spending north of $5000 for speakers alone, you’re out into the upper atmosphere of the audiophile domain, but you are nowhere past the escape of gravity.

Take the Klipsch LaScala for example. This classic goes for > $15k for a pair, whereas a typical JBL Partybox goes for $1500. Everybody who has been to a DJ’d wedding reception knows the JBL Partybox, right? That’s beneath audiophile consideration. Even hipster vinyl fans know better, but let’s not get into the weeds. When you’re spending better than 5k, you’re an audiophile and you’re subtle. In that realm, you’re going to have to go to a custom dealer to find the esoteric machinery and equally esoteric rhetoric & terminology in order to satisfy your cravings. Still, it’s jewelry.

Petrolheads
What makes cars exceptional is that one is much more likely to be able to wrench one’s own to a certain degree than in the other endeavors of collection. Every BMW owner, especially here in California, knows that you don’t just buy the car, you need the specialty mechanic. And with a reasonable amount of study, you can make suggestions on how to improve, customize and otherwise hot rod your purchase. This is almost never the case with watches and stereo. That’s why the price points on cars are different. It’s the aftermarket.

And yet on the other hand, there is a great deal of satisfaction that can come from simply enjoying the jewelry of other car collectors, race car drivers and gearhead reviewers that don’t work so well with watches or stereo. It’s not so often that you see another guy’s Rolex Presidential and not stare daggers into his turned back. You hate that he has that thing that you can never afford. Same with the guy who has a full rack of McIntosh separates driving DeVore O/Reference. You just kind of shrivel up and turn green like the Grinch on Christmas morning. But the dude at Cars & Coffee who shows up in a custom Porsche like this one.. you’re just happy to give props gaping mouth open, finger-pointing jumping up and down, like an adolescent.

Still, let’s be consistent and talk about aftermarket customization rather than retail prices. If you spend more than $7500 on wheels, paint and/or engine fixins, then you’re serious. If you get into more than $15,000 then you’re a serious hot rodder, modder, lowrider or maker. Or you just might be a rich wife whose transmission just fell out of the Range Rover, but you know what I’m talking about.

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Relax
Back to my own quirks and features. I have turned the corner on my watch collection. And this morning I purchased my 26th, or maybe it’s my 27th. But it’s one of these.

That’s right. If you’re an horologist, then you know the joke. This is a mock version of the Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, probably one of the most affordable of the Extremistan watches. You basically have to get on Rolex’ waiting list for 5 years and pray for the privilege of paying retail $15,000, or you go to the gray market and spend double and you takes your chances. I can spare $400 just for the joke. But yeah I’m still on the waiting list for a cheaper Rolex than this one.

Very little of this particular purchase is wise, humble, rational or humorous. OK a little humorous to horologists, but also a bit sacrilegious. Still, I have legitimate love for the rest of my collection and as a collector I can afford that sense of humor among my persnickety peers.

After all, in the end it’s all just jewelry.

But still, man, that O/Reference.