Wind Up Watch Fair - 2021

Having just moved to the east coast I was excited to me closer to the action, closer to the big city - NYC itself. Houston certainly helped to spark the intrigue but if you follow watches closely you’ll know the action is in NYC or LA. The great Hodinkee is in New York after all.

As luck would have Worn and Wound had brought back their Wind Up Watch Fair and I was itching to go! Like I’m sure many of you reading this, I’ve made more friends in the online watch world than I can shake a stick at and I was giddy to meet them in real life. So I made the short 3 hour trek into NYC for a great adventure.

While there I got to catch up with Kyle of Cantonment , they specialize in kerchiefs that function as wipe rags, camera gear and watch padding, face masks and even a carry bag. I’ve known Kyle for at least a year now, exchanging a quick comment here and there online and he’s even better in person. Then there’s the founder Jonathan of Brew Watches, he started Brew by himself and watching his company grow over the years is just fantastic. Seeing each piece evolve and get better and better every time. Go ahead and take a look at the Metric - it’s about as fun as you can get for $400. A solid meca-quartz movement and a 2 register dial. I kick myself I didn’t take a picture but I think I was having too great a time talking with Jonathan. Of note, to me at least the dial is a much more inky black than comes across in pictures, just fantastic.

I ran into a few more people but continuing to drop names gets silly after awhile, to get to the brass tax of it half the reason I love this particular community is the people. The watches are great, the deep dive and fawnNing over X piece of the week is oodles of fun, but man the community is just epic. The pseudo team / clan aspect and aruging over minutia on forums for 30 pages, its too much fun! But I digress.

A few interesting pieces that I saw - a company called Formex had a model called the Reef which you can easily remove the bezel and swap out with another of a different color. One might question how easily they could be removed on accident but I didn’t see evidence of that in person. I will say that they’re rubber strap and micro adjust clasp is suuuuper comfy, and something other brands needs to consider. Bracelets are great but there is more out there. Also the king of micro brands - Monta. This the first time I’ve seen one in the flesh and it punches significantly above it’s weight. While I took a picture of their Oceanking model it’s the Atlas that has my attention. A wonderful silver dialed GMT, with an in-house( to what degree yet to be researched) movement with a 150m WR and 42 hour power reserve. Not bad for a hair under $2k. Definitely a solid choice in the GMT field.

Overall it was a great event to attend and I’m super stoked to have made trek. Exited for another reason to skip down to NYC or gather with watch friends.

*The picture of me below was taken by @mrthomascarlo.