One of the most interesting watch events in New York so far this year was free…in a whiskey bar run by collectors.
That was Gotham Time, the first watch fair from the Gotham Watch Club. The club, founded by collector and watch YouTuber Chris Salih, runs regular meetups for enthusiasts across multiple NYC chapters. The fair ran Friday and Saturday at American Whiskey on West 30th Street.
I walked in on Friday afternoon and engaged with the several watch manufacturers and their representatives over two floors with a few dozen tales setup.
The watch calendar isn’t short on fairs with WatchTime New York Windup, Watches and Wonders in Geneva, each does what it does well. Gotham Time does something else.
The Whiskey Bar Wasn’t an Accident
American Whiskey is a midtown bar with hundreds of bottles lining the back wall. Low light, dark wood, acoustics that let three people talk without raising their voices. That wasn’t an aesthetic choice, it was structural.
A whiskey bar slows you down. You sit, you handle a watch, you ask what the movement is. They walk you through it and before you know it, twenty minutes have gone by.
Convention center lighting does the opposite. It tells you to move on. The watch industry has a lot of square footage that looks like a Vegas trade floor, and the conversations on those floors reflect that.
Neither Was the Roster
No Rolex. No Patek. No Lange. Instead, a curated mix of independents and microbrands:
- Mühle-Glashütte: fifth-generation Glashütte family business making instrument watches
- Minase: Japanese independent doing case-finishing you really need to handle to understand
- Pequignet: French maker behind the in-house Calibre Royal movement
- Christopher Ward: British direct-to-consumer brand without a US boutique
- Plus 1776 Atelier, Sternglas, MeisterSinger, Wren, and yes, G-Shock
Watches on the tables ranged from $500 to over $40,000. Several were from true craft watchmakers, the ones doing the work with their own hands.
The difference was on the other side of the table. Not regional brand reps on a clock, but the founders, designers, and watchmakers themselves. They were knowledgeable in a way only the people who built the watches can be.
They had time. They asked questions back. You could try every piece on a table without being moved along.
The bet Chris Salih and the Gotham Watch Club made is simple. A watch fair built around conversation works when the room, the brands, and the price tag all agree on what the event is for.
