From Disco Peacock to Tool Watch Puritan

Let’s stop pretending.
Society trains you to show off.

The instinct is ancient, social, and embarrassingly persistent. We preen, we posture, we curate. Most of us never really leave adolescence—we just upgrade the props.

I know this because I spent decades marinating in a culture of spectacular bad taste.

In junior high, I came of age during the full fever of the Disco Era. I wore Angel Flight bell bottoms, polyester paisley shirts, puka shells, gold chains, and mesh tank tops that left very little to the imagination and even less to dignity.

Wardrobe was only the beginning.

I studied dance the way a law student studies case law. I memorized the moves of Gladys Knight and the Pips’ backup singers. I practiced the Funky Robot. I absorbed choreography from Soul Train like a sponge soaking up hair spray.

The effort paid off. First place at the Earl Warren Junior High Friday Night Dance Contest.

Applause, it turns out, is a powerful drug.

Dancing wasn’t enough. I moved on to Olympic weightlifting and, by thirteen, ranked number one in the nation. But then my mother accidentally bought me Pumping Iron, confusing bodybuilding with weightlifting.

That book changed everything.

Why chase numbers when you could chase admiration?

I pivoted to bodybuilding. By 1981, I was runner-up in Mr. Teenage San Francisco. In high school, I kept dumbbells in my car trunk. Before going into restaurants, I’d do a quick parking-lot pump session, then walk inside with my chest inflated like a parade balloon.

Any visual gains were usually canceled out by flop sweat.

Still, the pattern was set: life as performance.

Fast forward to 2008. A forty-six-year-old man stands in Las Vegas, staring at a massive U-Boat watch.

Same kid. Same posture. Same need to be seen.

I might have stayed on Show-Off Road indefinitely, but in 2011—one year into fatherhood of twin girls—something shifted. My wife and I were sitting in a parenting class at a community center. While other parents discussed sleep schedules, I looked down at my 52mm Invicta Subaqua.

The lume was terrible.

This detail, which had never bothered me before, suddenly felt like a moral failure. A diver that couldn’t glow? Fraud. Deception. Civilization in decline.

That irritation metastasized into obsession.

Within months, I sold all fifty-five Invictas and replaced them with the kings of illumination: Seiko.

The transformation felt profound. I had moved from oversized spectacle to serious tool watches. No more costume jewelry. No more peacocking. Now I was a man of function. Utility. Purpose.

I told myself I had matured.

In reality, I had entered a new phase: Functional Virtue Signaling—using tool watches not just for capability, but as quiet evidence of seriousness, restraint, and anti-flash credibility.

The performance didn’t end.

The costume just changed.

Yes, I was grateful for the transition. Tool watches brought discipline. They rewarded substance over spectacle. But the deeper truth remained: I was still hunting. Still scanning. Still chasing the next piece of steel salvation.

Addiction had simply traded sequins for lume.

And yet, a real tool watch does teach one enduring lesson.

Ostentation is hollow.

Flash fades. Scale becomes absurd. Attention moves on.

Function endures.

For the watch obsessive, a true tool watch is less a status object than a reminder—a quiet lantern in the cave—warning that the urge to impress is the oldest and most expensive disease in the hobby.