VIDEO: What the hell is being at Basel *actually* like, can somebody please show me?
Andrew McUtchenStop us if you’ve heard, or seen, this one before (and the odds are increasingly high that you have, as this video was filmed a couple of years ago), but as unbelievable as it may be to the watch journos in the house, some people don’t have any clue what this ‘Basel’ thing is and what being there is actually like.
The Time+Tide team is in various states of migration, all heading from different points – Dubai, Canada, Brisbane, Amsterdam, Melbourne – to Basel, and while we’re travelling, I guarantee you one thing: when you say you’re going to Baselworld, you more often than not get met with blank looks. Airline staff, family members, non-watch-addicted friends.
Look, the concept is comprehensible enough. A watch fair. A lot of hype. An exhibition hall. But that just doesn’t cut it. I say over and over, “It’s BIGGER than a ‘fair’, it’s more like a world expo, or Vegas, or …” Then I invariably reach into my pocket, hit the YouTube app and play this one again, Sam. It captures everything I love about the big dance, this big watch fair. The energy, the affluence, the bloated distortion of scale and perspective.
It’s the watch industry’s world after all, we just live in it. At least it feels that way in the eye of the storm — and damn, it really does look like the eye of something that we are all literally flying into as we speak!
