RedBar Recap – 1/25/17 & 2/1/17 — Collectors' Perspective

Feb 6

Feb 6 RedBar Recap – 1/25/17 & 2/1/17

Weekly event recaps – RedBar Recaps in our lingo – will be a thing going forward, but to catch us up a bit, this time around I'll be combining the past two weeks' gatherings in one report...1/25/17

This week we decided to do a couple of things differently. For starters, it was a theme night, with vintage watches being the name of the game. If it was old and smelly, we wanted to see it, and boy, did the crew come through in spades. Tudor, Seiko, Grand Seiko, Omega, Heuer, Hamilton... You name it and we had it. Hell, we even went so far as to add a couple of turn-of-the-century pocket watches to the mix. (All kidding aside, American pocket watches are a fantastic way to get some real horological provenance for pennies on the silver dollar).

We even had some vintage Oris on the table, though this was by design, as the epically-named VJ Geronimo, Oris' CEO for North America stopped by with his entire team and Rolf Studer, Oris' co-CEO, to toss a few back with the group and drop off $500 worth of warm hats and gloves for Bailey House's Veteran's program. In their words:

At Bailey House, we believe that supportive housing is an essential component of improving health outcomes among our clients. As a result of our track record of success and our expertise gained from over 30 years of improving health outcomes for individuals with HIV/AIDS, Bailey House was asked by the Office of the Mayor of New York City to establish a program specifically for homeless veterans. We were honored to be asked to partner on such an important initiative, and excited about what this would mean for the work we do at Bailey House. While we’ve always had veterans enrolled in our housing programs, we’re excited to have launched a program explicitly for veterans.

We are currently housing nearly 80 veterans in our Veterans Project, which provides housing, case management, care navigation, independent living skills support and access to medical and behavioral healthcare for formerly homeless veterans. Enrolling veterans in other Bailey House programs to connect them to care, including our Behavioral Health Clinic, is an important component of the project. Thus far, 73% of our veterans are African American and 60% are over the age of 40, with the majority having served during the Persian Gulf era or before. In addition to those veterans who came into our housing program with existing employment, we have seen, on average, 2 veterans obtain jobs each week.

It goes without saying that this is a cause that we can all get behind, and to see Oris step up to the plate like they did only makes us love them more than we already do. Indeed, given how much we already love their Divers 65, their updated Pilot's collection and their new in-house 10-day movement, this was a pretty neat trick. (Let's face it, they're doing a lot of things right these days.) Expect to see more of RedBar x Oris this year.

On the table:

(Don't ask. Or rather, ask Rolf. This is the second time he's gotten me to do this and I regret it just as much as I do the first time.)

And, of course, it wouldn't be RedBar without a proper Closing Ceremonies:

(A little background: This tradition began many moons ago, and is our way of rewarding the members who make it all the way to last call. After all, at this point one more shot probably does more good than harm.)

Cheers!

2/1/17

I'm fond of saying that RedBar is like the proverbial box of chocolates, in that you never know what each week's meeting is going to be like. Will it be a smaller gathering, or off the wall? Will the collection of watches gathered be focused, or all across the map? Will your host, Adam (moi) get up on the bar and start shaking what his momma gave him? (FYI, that has never happened, and it never will. Except for at the "after party" with the Frederique Constant/Alpina team, but we won't speak of that again. Ever.)

So, did we get a box full of nuts, or was it wall-to-wall milk chocolate and caramel? (BTW, I hate nuts in my chocolate.) I'm pleased to say that it was the latter. Like, ridiculously so.

On the table: