Credits: Article and images by Joshua Munchow @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2023/10/07/tudor-pelagos-fxd-better-than-the-black-bay-reprise/
Love thine enemy and bite thy tongue
Should winds turn foul against thy goal,
Enmity leaves thy soul unsprung
As fortune favors those so bold.
Discontent a heart grows sour
Days crawl slowly by the hour,
Thy spirit shrivels, thine options fade
A world forgets, thy bed is made.
Yet hope persists betwixt the days
When grace extends beyond thy self
From autumn chill to rains of May
Honor retrieved from on the shelf.
Revived, relieved, to grow anew
Opinions old now torn askew
Dawning bright and full of hope
No longer forced to sulk and cope,
If thou had learned when thou were young
To love thine enemy and bite thy tongue.
William Shakespeare definitely had a way with words, and he would most likely shake his head in pity at what I just penned, but sometimes I just have to let it flow. But the underlying meaning still remains so sometimes it is best to bite your tongue lest your opinions come back to haunt you. And even as I said that (so poetically) above, it’s possible to come back from earlier opinions or strong statements that were made in frustration with honesty and honor.
Over the last nine years of writing about watches I have shared a lot of opinions about various brands, design trends, and mechanical accomplishments but I have also been a bit critical of overly hyped products or brands that fail to excite me as much as others. Normally I say these things in the spirit of preference, never slamming a brand or specific watch as bad. Even more often, I simply refrain from speaking about something that I cannot emphatically support, opting to say nothing.
But opinions make their way out eventually as playful asides or in response to critiques, and that makes it clear that I have some fairly defined positions. When it comes to the watch industry’s Thor and Loki – aka Rolex and Tudor – it is probably known that the two brands aren’t high on my favorites list for pure horological excitement. But I have also made it clear that they are some of the best values when it comes to engineering excellence and as examples of how great manufacturing should be something to aspire to.
I’ll openly admit to being frustrated when a watch like the Tudor Black Bay constantly wins the same award year after year at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève or dumbfounded that a non-limited, mass-produced watch such as the Rolex Submariner or the GMT are in such high demand that people are paying well over MSRP for them when the market has plenty of great alternatives.
But none of that has to do with the watches themselves; it’s simply part of the current watch culture that I’m not particularly a fan of (and no doubt will be agreed with and possibly yelled at for having such an opinion).
Tudor Pelagos FXD on the wrist
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Credits: Article and images by Joshua Munchow @ Quill & Pad. See the original article here - https://quillandpad.com/2023/10/07/tudor-pelagos-fxd-better-than-the-black-bay-reprise/
