The Best Summer Diver Might Just Be This $450 Citizen; Nomos Gives Us An Even Smaller Tetra; G-Shock Goes Full On Space Age; RGM Does A Snoopy Dial; Romain Gauthier Shrinks The C

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. Running around town today, so not funny quips from me.

In this issue

• The Best Summer Diver Might Just Be This $450 Citizen You Never Have to Wind

• NOMOS Gives Us Another Small Take On The Already Compact Tetra

• G-Shock Goes Full On Space Age Again With The C2H4 GA-2100

• Legendary American Watchmaker RGM Renders A Snoopy On Their Otherwise Serious 151

• Romain Gauthier Shrinks The C To A More Comfortable 39.5mm

👂What’s new

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The Best Summer Diver Might Just Be This $450 Citizen You Never Have to Wind

Summer is the season for getting near, in, or under the water, and it has me thinking about what actually belongs on a wrist for a quick dive. I love a proper diver as much as anyone, but the best dive watches, at least they’ve been the best for me, are usually the no-fuss, affordable ones that require the least amount of carry effort. And Citizen is kind of always the best answer in this category. Four new Eco-Drive divers just launched in Japan; three of them are coming to the US.

The case is a very reasonable 40.6mm wide and 11.5mm thick in stainless steel, with brushed surfaces and polished chamfers to break up the light. On top is a unidirectional bezel in either black or blue (or orange, but more on that later), with a fully graduates 60 minute scale.Water resistance is 200 meters, which is all you need for the vast majority of water sports.

I’ve been trying to figure out the details of geographic releases for these watches, but it’s kind of difficult to do with Citizen. What I know for sure is that there is a Japanese exclusive variant that comes with a black dial and a very bright orange bezel. In terms of the rest of the world, I’m 100% sure that the other three are coming to the U.S. and just slightly less sure that these will make their way to Europe. Those three are a blue gradient dial with a dark blue bezel, a black dial with a black bezel and my favorite — a white dial with black bezel and a sharp orange seconds hand.

Inside is the Eco-Drive Caliber E118, rated to plus or minus 15 seconds per month with roughly 12 months of power on a full charge. All three come on BENEBiOL straps, a plant-derived biomass urethane.

The Citizen Promaster Dive is either on sale now or will be very soon, priced at $450. See more on the Citizen website.

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NOMOS Gives Us Another Small Take On The Already Compact Tetra

Despite sometimes having issues with longer lugs, Nomos was making small watches long before the rest of the industry decided compact was cool again. The Tangente has been 35mm since 1992, and plenty of the catalog sits under 38mm. The Tetra is a bit of a different beast, though, because a square case at a given width covers noticeably more real estate than a round one at the same number. That's why most Tetra models hover around 30mm. Today the brand adds two versions of its smallest square watch, the Tetra 27 white and the two-handed Tetra 27 duo.

The case measures 27.5mm by 27.5mm and just 6.1mm thick, framed by a narrow polished steel bezel with the double-stepped lugs that give the Tetra its Art Deco feel. A sapphire crystal sits up front, and you can choose a solid steel back or a sapphire display back. Take the sapphire. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The Tetra 27 white gets the most classic dial NOMOS makes: silver-plated galvanised, small seconds, Arabic numerals and markers borrowed from the Tangente, with blued steel hands. One change worth noting is the small seconds, now a flat round sub-dial rather than the recessed square one on the older 29.5mm hand-wound Tetra. The duo drops to hours and minutes only, with a two-tone galvanised dial: a light grey square at the centre and a matching grey field around the minute track.

Both models share the hand-wound calibre DUW 4001, an evolution of the old Alpha, which was itself NOMOS's in-house reworking of the Peseux 7001. It has moved well past its origins now, with a ¾ plate, Glashütte ribbing, perlage, a double-sunburst ratchet wheel, blued screws, an in-house escapement with a blue balance spring, and 53 hours of power reserve. Both come on a black Horween shell cordovan strap.

Both the Nomos Tetra 27 white and Tetra 27 duo are part of the permanent collection. Pricing starts from €1,660 for the Tetra 27 duo with the steel caseback, up to €2,120 for the Tetra 27 white with the sapphire back. See more on the Nomos website.

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G-Shock Goes Full On Space Age Again With The C2H4 GA-2100

I’m a big fan of G-Shock's 2100 line, but I have a bit of a problem with them. There are so many variants out there, I can’t decide which one to get. Well, this new release, a collaboration with C2H4, the LA fashion label with a taste for science-fiction and experimental design, might have fixed that problem. This collab takes inspiration from the Theme Building at LAX, that 1960s googie landmark that looks like a concrete spider from a Jetsons episode. And since I’m a sucker for Space Age stuff, this is something I just might get.

The case is the familiar 2100 platform, done in translucent gray resin, bezel and all, so you get the cloudy see-through look front to back. Shock resistant, as every G-Shock is, and water resistant to 200 meters.

The dial has brushed metallic silver plating done with vapor deposition, and the metallic treatment carries on to the hands. The reverse LCD digital display sits on what looks like a blue backdrop rather than the usual black. The Theme Building itself is etched into the caseback.

This is a standard analog-digital G-Shock module, and it comes on a matching translucent gray resin strap. I hardly ever mention packaging here, but this one is extremely cool: a bean-shaped retro-futuristic case that lifts its silhouette straight from the Panasonic TR-005 "Orbitel" television, one of the great space-age industrial objects of the 1960s.

The G-Shock x C2H4 GA-2100C2H426-8A is available now, priced at $245. See more on C2H4's website.

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Legendary American Watchmaker RGM Renders A Snoopy On Their Otherwise Serious 151

Snoopy shows up on a lot of watches, and while each appearance has it’s own story and the main reason why we have so many Snoopy watches is the fact that the Peanuts estate is masterful at merchandising, at least some of the Snoopy watch story can be attributed to Omega and their connection to NASA which embraced snoopy as their icon. The success of the Omega Snoopy release turned the beagle into shorthand for a certain kind of playful, collectible watch. Which just means that it’s great to see them on an RGM, a Pennsylvania brand that has spent more than 30 years on engine turning, in-house calibres, and enamel work with no interest in pop culture whatsoever. Founded by Roland G. Murphy in 1992 and building around 400 watches a year, RGM is the last name you'd expect to do a licensed cartoon dial. The new Model 151 Snoopy Flying Ace comes in two versions: a grand feu enamel edition and a more affordable painted one.

The watch uses RGM's Model 151 platform, a pilot-style design with a thin bezel and a lot of open dial. The case is 38.5mm wide in either stainless steel or CP2 titanium, and thickness depends on the dial: 9.9mm for the painted version, 10.6mm for the enamel. It's made in the US near RGM's Mount Joy workshop and hand-finished in-house. Water resistance is 50 meters.

The enamel dial is obviously the main attraction. It's a two-level white grand feu enamel, built up in layers and fired at high temperature, and RGM believes it's the first time Snoopy's Flying Ace has been done on a true grand feu dial. The scene shows Snoopy in his flying goggles on top of the red doghouse with a few clouds behind him. The painted version swaps in a matte light-blue metal dial with the same artwork. It gives up the depth and complexity of enamel but keeps the character.

Both versions use the Sellita SW300-1, the automatic ETA 2892-A2 alternative, beating at 4Hz, with roughly 52 hours of power reserve. RGM dresses it up with rhodium plating, Côtes de Genève, and perlage. It's fitted to a Hirsch Performance strap that combines leather with a rubber lining.

Prices start from $3,950 for the steel painted-dial model to $9,950 for the titanium grand feu enamel version. See more on the RGM website.

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Romain Gauthier Shrinks The C To A More Comfortable 39.5mm

Romain Gauthier is best known for movements finished to a level almost nobody can match by hand, but these often come at an extreme cost. That’s why the brand has the C, a slightly more accessible entry point to Romain Gauthier, rendered so far in titanium, platinum and Carbonium. Despite the variety of materials, all of them came in a 41mm wide case. Now, RG is shrinking down the C to a more manageable size.

The new case measures 39.5mm wide with a lug-to-lug of 46mm, and the thickness drops slightly from 9.55mm to 9.45mm. It’s still made out of natural grade 5 titanium, with that distinctive bezel machined from a round base and then given six straight cuts for the facets, the top surface and case flanks separated by contrasting brushed finishes. The crown sits at 2 o'clock, which is pure Romain Gauthier. Water resistance is 30 meters, down from the already modest 50 meters on the bigger editions, which is a shame on a watch that’s supposed to be casual and versatile.

The dial gets a metallised sapphire base with fine horizontal lines, keeping the asymmetrical layout of the bigger models: off-centre hour and minute hands, tapered markers of varying length, and a small seconds at 7 o'clock with its own tapering lines. Three colors are available on the highlights: pink, light blue and orange. The titanium hands have a lot of dimensions and are covered in Super-LumiNova glowing the same colour as the seconds subdial lines, matching the numerals and indexes.

The hand-wound in-house calibre carries over from the larger C, and it's a banger. Five finger bridges in a horizontal layout, all in grade 5 titanium, each with a double bevel, straight-grained surfaces and a hand-engraved dimpled texture are just some of the incredible things you’ll see here. The mainplate is hand-frosted, the gears and ratchet wheel circular-grained with bevelled spokes, the signature S-slot screws polished. It beats at 4Hz, with a 60-hour power reserve and uses a snail cam for the stop-seconds. The watches come on rubber straps.

The new Romain Gauthier C in 39.5mm is part of the permanent collection, priced at CHF 34,000, without tax. See more on the Romain Gauthier website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• Dinosaur skeletons are “coveted by the ultrarich,” Devon Pendleton writes, “not unlike sports franchises or Fabergé eggs.” And none are more coveted than those of the Tyrannosaurus rex; “It’s the best trophy kind of thing you could own,” boasts one proud owner. In recent years, a few T. rex specimens—named Shen, Titus, Peter, and, in two cases, Barbara—have come under scrutiny for their resemblance to others, or have otherwise had their integrity questioned. Pendleton examines a complicated market, a few contested specimens, and the man whose name keeps surfacing in relation to them.

• After the death of Adam Yauch—aka MCA and one-third of the Beastie Boys—the remaining members, Mike D and Ad-Rock, walked away from creating music. Fourteen years later, Mike D, or Michael Diamond, is back with a solo album, “Thank You,” to be released next month. Ben Sisario talks with the 60-year-old musician, who refers to the forthcoming project as “musically immature, but lyrically more mature.” Introspective and therapeutic, the album reflects Diamond’s life stage as a Gen X rapper and as a parent; his grown sons, Davis and Skyler, are credited for helping Diamond make his return to music.

• Kiana Mickles traces how the word “rave” has drifted from its underground and countercultural roots into something now attached to sanitized sponsored parties and coffee-shop pop-ups. Here, Mickles focuses specifically on Daybreaker, an organization that has thrown sober, wellness-centered sunrise dance parties for more than a decade.

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One video you have to watch today

Ronnie, Ron, UltraRomance... whatever you call him, he is hard to miss. Vintage bicycles, a bushy beard, short shorts, and thick wool sweaters. His romantic and self-governed way of life feels reminiscent of another era.

Thanks for reading,
Vuk