This will be long.

I have worn a Yes of one form or another since 2002. They were first advertised in the back of American Cinematographer as a way of knowing how much light you have left - these things matter to cinematographers and photographers. But it's so much more than that.

Yes is a one-man operation. His name is Bjorn and he lives in La Jolla, CA. I saw a Yes for sale on eBay exactly once, and I bought it. That was in 2002 and I haven't seen one since. Adam Savage wears one, as does Complexity. They've been to the ISS twice.

And here's the thing:

Any device can tell time. The Yes is so much more than that. Hours and minutes and seconds have always seemed so arbitrary to me because we're completely divorced from them. You'll be interested to know that we have 24-hour days because the Babylonians noticed that 12 constellations rose during the course of a night and just multiplied by two; we have twelve months because that's how many cycles the moon has (about). Yet nobody has made the barest attempt to anchor our time schedules to anything that isn't arbitrary.

I like having a 24-hour day. It makes a lot more sense to me. I like knowing how much daylight we have left. I like watching the wedge of darkness ebb and flow over the course of a year. I like watching the moonrise and moonset precess around the outside (although when I first bought my Yeswatch that wasn't even an option). And I like relating my day to the natural processes of the outside world because it's good to feel connected to something utterly beyond the ability of daylight savings time to fuck with. Doesn't matter who's in office, doesn't matter what Arizona does, the moon rises when the moon rises and the sun sets when the sun sets.

Certain members of our community can't handle this. Let's be honest: 'pablo is apologizing for owning a hand-me-down Burberry. A Tati costs that much and it doesn't even have a mechanical movement. But I don't wear a lot of jewelry - I've got my bitchin' iron'n'gold Mokume Gane wedding ring, I've got a titanium and silver byzantine chain bracelet my wife made and I've got one or the other of the watches. One of 'em is stainless, the other is titanium and gold. And Cee-Lo Green struck up a conversation with me over my watch and he was wearing a $50k Arctica.

Things that I put on every day I value. And owning a hand-made unique timepiece counts.

If Bjorn didn't make watches I'd own a Seiko Astron:

Or I'd own an Omega speedmaster.

Why?

EDIT: The last time we talked about watches, b_b suggested shinola. I could totally go that way, too.