PATEK PHILIPPE REF. 5970 — THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CLASSIC WATCH EVER MADE
Maybe it’s because as a former Boy Scout I’d had our motto “Be Prepared” jack-hammered repeatedly into the substrata of my subconscious. Or it could be the innumerable 3:00 a.m. awakenings for spontaneous force marches through the dirt tracks of Singapore’s desolate Tekong Island during basic military training that has me at a constant state of operational readiness. Which, let’s be clear, is not me boasting of my military prowess. I sucked at soldiering.
But rather to reveal that underneath the Negroni-induced state of nonchalant equanimity lies a seething current of constant anxiety and existential apprehension that is only fully understood by pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, particularly nervous sausage dogs, and me. Because we know the unremitting irrefutable truth of it all. It is not if sh*t will happen. It is WHEN. And if you want to survive said aforementioned sh*t, you need to A: Always, B: Be, R: Ready. Zombie apocalypse? Better have brain-stabbing tools at constant reach, sleep with your Danner combat boots on and lay down a Herculean level of base cardiovascular fitness. Cause ain’t no fatties going to outrun the ravenous hordes of the undead.
So I found it amusing that last December at both the panel discussions for my magazine The Rake’s collaboration with Phillips in their New York auction, and for Hodinkee’s 10th Anniversary Weekend, I was asked the same question: “If there were a fire in your house, what is the one watch you would rescue?” OK, let’s put aside that first, I would be morally obligated to rescue my indomitable sausage dog. But if I were able to retrieve just only one watch from my home, before it went up in flames like a Viking funeral pyre stoked with napalm, it would be my Patek Philippe 5970.
PARTAKING OF WATCHMAKING BEAUTY
Why the Patek Philippe 5970 perpetual calendar chronograph? For two reasons: first, that mine is a very special end-of-series execution with a bronze dial and I was profoundly touched to be allocated the last piece. That I was found worthy of this timepiece is to me the ultimate validation of my
