The Rolex Wristwatch

In most ways I am thoroughly repulsed by luxury.  Ferraris, I admit, are fine automobiles, and I’m sure that they are great fun to drive, provided, that is, that one has had the training required to be able to drive them properly.  But I’m not interested in Ferraris, not even if the Ferrari is yours and you offer it to me for an afternoon.  First class air travel?  I’m sure that it’s nice, but it comes at a 700% penalty over economy.  No thanks.  And Hermes bags, and pretty much anything bearing the label “Chanel,” are just ridiculous.  So why am I strangely attracted to Rolex watches?

Actually, I know why.  I grew up in Queens, New York, and over the course of the late 1950’s and the 1960’s I walked the length of Main Street, Flushing, one or two thousand times.  From Northern Boulevard to Roosevelt Avenue I closely examined all of the store windows time after time.  One of the nicest windows belonged to Greenwald’s Jewelers, and the things that attracted me most were the Rolex watches.

The Rolex “Oyster!”  What a cool name for a watch.  I didn’t even know that you could make a watch waterproof, beyond those special things that divers wore.  Mostly, I thought that they were beautiful.  Just very simple, strong, elegant and totally beautiful.  I must have seen advertisements for Rolex watches, because I read the New Yorker, and the Sunday New York Times, and Life and Newsweek magazines, National Geographic even.  There must have been ads.  I don’t recall specifically.  All I remember is admiring them in shop windows, notably Greenwald’s. 

They weren’t cheap, but doesn’t everything from those days seem strangely affordable now?  Up the block at Florsheim’s, you could get real alligator shoes for $29.95.  There must have been high-line Rolexes in the window, but the ones that I liked, the ones that I remember, were stainless steel and cost between $200 and $220.  That was only five or six weeks’ pay at the minimum wage at the time.   ($1.25 per hour; $40.45 take home for 40 hours.)  I worked summers in high school, and I had more than enough in the bank to cover a Rolex.  When I was thirty years old I kind of regretted not having bought one.  Other than a couple of cameras, I pissed away that bank money in my late teens anyway.  Now I realize that buying one would have been silly.  I mean, you could get a perfectly good Bulova watch for $29.95 or less, and I already had a Benrus watch myself, which was more expensive.  (A gift from my grandmother.)  It would have been strange for a fuck-up like me to show up wearing a Rolex.  Quite pretentious, you know.  I lived in a working class milieu.  Even my father, who had a great job, wore a $20 watch.  A Rolex would only have attracted thieves.

So now I’m watching the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament and most of the ads are for Rolex watches.  Roger Federer, whom I greatly admire, wearing a ridiculous fashion-forward suit in the modern, ridiculous style, wearing an enormous Rolex, strolling uncomfortably around some kind of art museum.  Usually I find these ads for luxury products objectionable, but in the case of Rolex I experience the nostalgic old longing for the watch.  A more modest model anyway.

Maybe I should buy a coffee-table book of Rolex watches.  I would enjoy looking at the pictures.  Maybe I should go on e-bay and look at the Rolexes for sale there.  Even today I could find the money in the bank to buy a Rolex, but buying one today would be just as silly and pretentious as it would have been years ago.  I have a perfectly good watch already, don’t I?  It’s a Wilson watch that I purchased seven years ago for $45.00 (1,500 Baht, in Bangkok).  It’s an attractive watch, it keeps perfect time, and it still works.  Case closed.

The longing for luxury is a terrible suffering for people who can’t afford it.  The advertisements, I believe, are acts of violence against ordinary people.  I hate being reminded every day that airlines do not value my frequent purchases of economy tickets, that they only really love their first class passengers.  The purchasing habits of the rich should not be rubbed in our faces like that.  Their fabulous ability to pay is an affront to our dignity. 

But the Rolexes!  Aren’t they beautiful?   

When Flushing Became Chinese

Flushing is part of the Borough and County of Queens in the city of New York.  It is an ancient settlement by the standards of the United States.  It was founded in 1645 by the Dutch, who named it Vlissingen after a city in the Netherlands, under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company.  There were already enough Englishmen around that the anglicized version of the name, Flushing, had some currency.

In 1657, a local bigwig names John Bowne presented a document called the Flushing Remonstrance to the authorities in New Amsterdam in what is now called Manhattan.  Its purpose was to persuade the Dutch to allow greater freedom of worship for Quakers and other religious dissenters, and it succeeded.  It is considered to have been the beginning of the search for greater personal freedoms in the new world. 

There was not a great deal of diversity in Flushing when I was growing up in neighboring College Point.  There were very small populations of black and Puerto Rican Americans, and an even smaller population of Chinese Americans.  That was the White New York in those days.  There was a great diversity of white people, many different languages, religions and countries of origin, but almost everybody was white.  In the 1970’s that began to radically change. 

You could say that lots of everybody started to arrive in Flushing, more immigrants, more Puerto Ricans, and more blacks, but the biggest influx was new immigrants from China, with the greatest number coming from Taiwan.  By 1990, the core area of Flushing was 41% Mandarin speaking Chinese. 

Most of my acquaintances who still live in the area are not pleased with this new population reality.  I have heard them refer to Flushing as “Foo-Shing” many times.  This seems to fall somewhere in between a joke and a criticism.  They are closer to the reality of it than they know.

There is actually a very similar word in Mandarin:  fuxing.  (Don’t ask me what the tones are, I’m sure that if I said the word out loud it would cause great laughter among the initiated.)  “Fuxing” means rejuvenation, and that is exactly what the new Chinese residents have brought to the area.  

When I was a boy, and up to at least 1975 when I left New York for greener pastures, the central shopping area and transportation hub of Flushing was very down-in-heel.  It had obviously seen better days.  Now all that has changed.  Where there were no hotels, there are now six or eight, some of which are upscale.  Where there were mostly family style restaurants, there are now a great many excellent restaurants.  On any recent list of the best Chinese restaurants in New York City, half will be in Flushing.  There are a great number of new, large buildings in all categories, and the central area has become rather vibrant and glossy. 

So Flushing, “Foo-Shing,”  has undergone a rejuvenation, a “fuxing.”  That puts it into its proper perspective.  What had been derogatory becomes apt. 

Isn’t language great?  Always full of surprises. 

(Thanks to the Wiki, and others, for some of the details.)