Excellent essay, I have worked with mechanics and I have worked with guys who have all the tools in their cabinets, but none upstairs, and they are without clue.
Most of my tools are Snap On and my big tool box is Snap On. But I also have a lot of Craftsman tools from the good old days. I think the tool preference of working guys really had to do with what tool trucks stopped by the shop. I had a small stereo shop and the Matco, Mac and even Corwell trucks drove right on by. The Snap On guy was in every week and like all the tool trucks offered easy payment plans. I was hooked from that point forward.
Most of my tools also came off a Snapon truck, the Snapon dealers were always the most regimented, they always showed up, and if you watch what you are doing, you can actually shoot a decent deal with them, offer to pay cash for a lower price and so on, your comment rings true!
First Joe will have to come and test you to make sure you are worthy. Wait, didn't he give you a fancy Snap On tool at the meeting? I guess you already passed the test. You Sir are no idiot.
The only Snap On tool I own is a metric brake like wrench that my father found in his car after getting it worked on about 40 years ago. It’s the crown jewel of my collection 😂 the rest are a mix of Craftsman tools that my father left when he moved out, the ones I bought myself in the 80s before Craftsman went to shit, and a distressingly large and expensive set of specialty tools I’ve picked up over the last two years to keep my neurotic BMW on the track.
As a person who is upstairs and has the tools, I choose to pay for labor because I can and am lazy. Yes I CAN do it, but why bother unless it'll be a completely satisfying project. It's a shame people forget where they started or the adversity they had to go through as an adult to get there.
One flaw in the Bob vs Bill argument is that Bill didn’t have the opportunity to be Bob; it’s presented as a somewhat pitched argument, which is fine for illustrative and thought-provoking purposes.
As for the watches:
The Rolex Chronograph - i.e., the Daytona - existed for a few years before it gained the Daytona moniker. It was, as I recall, a response of sorts to the Omega Speedmaster, which was intended as a racer’s tool before it found enduring fame as the Moon Watch.
Be mindful that the Rolex Daytona as a trophy for class victories at the Rolex 24 at Daytona and overall victories (but not class victories) at Le Mans is a relatively modern thing. The entitlement sponsorship for Daytona began in the early 90s, as I recall off the top of my head. There were various sponsors beforehand, including SunBank in Orlando, prior to its merger with the Trust Company in Atlanta, thereby creating SunTrust, which is now Truist after its “merger of equals” with BB&T. I do not know when the Le Mans relationship began, but I believe it was more recent.
I was in attendance at Le Mans in 2018 as a Porsche “VIP,” which means that they invited me to buy an expensive hospitality package, which was absolutely worth the outlay ($3,600 for about 33 hours of access / service). Among the many luminaries in attendance were Wolfgang Porsche, Oliver Blume, and Ted Gushue! Mark Webber - who had recently retired as a Porsche LMP1 driver - was also there. Webber was - and I believe remains - a Rolex “Testimonee,” which is their term for a spokesperson.
It was not lost on me that both Mark and I were standing on the terrace of the Porsche Experience Center overlooking the Ford Chicane watching the race while wearing our unearned Daytonas - he never won Le Mans or even raced at Daytona. Mark didn’t even PAY for his. I elected not to engage him in a discussion on that topic. Another unearned Daytona wearer is Jackie Stewart!
Finally, as someone who has owned (and later sold) both, there is absolutely no comparison between a Royal Oak, particularly the 15202 Jumbo, and a Daytona. When I bought my Royal Oak, I stopped wearing the Daytona with any regularity.
I will argue forcefully that the Royal Oak - the original model, in steel; the modern version of which I owned - is probably the most significant watch of the past 50 years. Without it, Audemars Piguet would not exist, and you would never have heard of the company. Without it, Patek Philippe would not have deputized Gerald Genta to provide them with a “me too” copycat in the form of the Nautilus. Without it, the craze for five figure steel sports watches (i.e., every Rolex Sub or GMT or Explorer or Daytona that is so coveted) would not exist. Without it, the Swiss watch industry might not exist.
EDIT: After typing the above comment, I received an Instagram DM from a cigar, etc. friend of mine who is the biggest Trustafarian I know. He is in his mid 40s, has never even thought about having a job, and spends his time collecting things and traveling the world watching Real Madrid and Ferrari’s F1 team. He is a Ferrari “XX” client, which means he is one of their absolute top drawer customers. He is on a first name basis with Enrico Galliera.
How many choices that made sense 50 years on seemed insane and irresponsible when you made them at age 25?
How many times have you read about some historical figure, George Washington for example, doing something that seemed inevitable in hindsight, but at the time had him metaphorically grimacing like Marty McFly about to hit the wire?
One of the guys I had lunch with yesterday quit a good RE job in Chicago (I met him on a sunday night flight) to move back to Atlanta (and get married).
He had no job lined up, so he and his wife lived on her charter school salary while he started his own RE shop. He made no money in 2016. He made a little money in 2017 and also broke every piggy bank and borrowed from various sources to buy an asset for about $500K. He made a little money in 2018. He sold the $500K property in 2019 and took home nearly $10MM after taxes. Then he put that money to work during COVID.
Now he has an office in a trophy building with a dozen people working for him. He’ll be 40 soon.
He went to B school at Dartmouth - for free, which is another story entirely. I need to find a way to knock on the door of Liberty Media, either through John Malone himself (fat chance), Greg Maffei (perhaps), or an Atlanta Braves connection. It’s not an F1 opportunity, but obviously I’d try to turn it into one for myself.
Maffei is Dartmouth ‘81, so my buddy pulled up his contact info for me yesterday and offered to give me a warm handover to the Braves Chairman’s son, who is one of his golf buddies.
As I understand it, you make your first million through brute force - long hours, hustling, working your ass off, delaying gratification. After that, you're still working your ass off, but your efforts begin to have a geometrically greater effect on your earnings. You have an absolutely larger amount of money to invest, which gives you a greater return - not in rate, but in quantity. You also begin to leverage contacts and are thus able to take advantage of more lucrative opportunities.
Without getting too into things, I have a cigar buddy who grew up rich, was a co-founder of a prominent theater chain, and is now an angel investor.
He’s on the board of a promising sports startup that has a public-facing platform and also a background “AI” engine that can be used for NIL payments, etc.
They want to dip their toe into motorsport engagement; I can help with this, and I have a friend who is a gentleman driver in Europe that I’d like to get involved.
The aformentioned friend is the CEO of a very particular type of content business, and the AI platform COULD be used to prevent piracy in that realm.
The aforementioned friend is a payments expert, and the sports startup needs a processing partner…
The ideal long-term takeout partner would probably be Liberty or Carlos Slim - someone with scale.
Finally, the aformentioned friend is buddies with Carlos Slim!
I was smoking a cigar in autumn of 2016 in Chicago when an older guy sort of brusquely inserted himself into the conversation I was having, which pissed me off. I held my tongue, fortunately.
He told me this ridiculous tale of how Formula 1’s commercial rights were for sale and that Stephen Ross - a purported friend of his - was among the bidders. I thought that was such a crock of shit.
Turns out that Ross was the cover bidder behind Malone, which is why he has the consolation prize of a race in Miami. I was dead wrong.
Whether it be true or not, I have not verified, but I heard through the grapevine that both Ted and Matt Hranek "kept" watches that were "loaned" to them by Crown & Caliber.
I met him at Le Mans that year, and we have remained friendly. He was there as a guest of Tim Pappas; one of Tim’s co-drivers was Spencer Pumpelly. Ted, Tim’s brother, and Pumpelly’s wife were sitting outside at Porsche’s “barbecue” setup (they had multiple locations for us) at the entrance to the Porsche Curves. Another fellow in the group asked me for a lighter. We started talking, of course. Pumpelly’s in-laws retired to my hometown - small world.
The wine had been flowing for some of them, and Ted forgot one of his cameras. I picked it up and took it back to the Porsche mothership (the PEC building a mile or two away) with me - hence the friendship.
Ted seems like a very nice man. We are diametrically opposed in the sense that I would willingly shit my pants in public if said public appearance were on a race podium of any note. I don't care about driving tastefully.
I have to respectfully disagree, in this scenario Bill and Bob both chose their paths through life. Bill also demonstrated a solid work ethic through his success that suggests he’d be at least Bobs equal in the Air Force, assuming all things being equal genetically of course.
Having been in the military for a while, and having a couple “rich guy” acquaintances, I’d say that the “succeed in a given paradigm” types are pretty similar. Probably more “risk taker, do it myself” types in the private sector, those types are in the military are almost entirely in spec ops.
At least in my branch, the real hot-shots are closer to govt workers or c-suite types, they’ve checked all the boxes and massaged the CV and now have “earned” whatever “job of impact” they currently hold, the types that show up after the series B.
The only point I could identify with in this post was the SunBank 24 at Daytona reference, reminding me of my lanyard to the ’89 edition that I lost at the 1998 Canadian Grand Prix.
The other thing that jumped out at me was $334K... For a WRISTWATCH! That got me to thinking about relative prices so I did a few minutes research:
Yup, park a car in a U-Stor-It place for 50 years and you'll need $10k or more just to get it running again. Try driving it for 50 years instead and you spend multiples of the value just to keep it in decent shape, plus you'll be driving with the knowledge that a cocky 15 year old or an illegal with no license could randomly destroy your investment in a heartbeat.
I have bled on, have scars and burn marks from almost every vintage car registered in my name, I have earned them all beyond initial purchase price. As it should be.
I frequently inquire of my friends “do you wanna live rich or die rich?” when I am trying to enable them into an indulgent purchase.
I view “wealth management” as a pretty low value, position-player skill. Wealth creation is the goal for which anyone should be striving. Spending time picking stocks does not excite me.
Starting a business with generous margins, robust unit economics, low customer churn, inelastic demand, and high quality (i.e., subscription - see low churn comment) revenue characteristics that leads to a full exit multiple is what excites me!
Back when I was stupid and spent some time on reddit (still stupid, just no reddit), I'd peruse the HENRY subreddit and these people were obsessed about lifestyle creep. What is the point of making 450k per year if you're going to live like you make 60K? I mean, yes, pick a savings budget and a percentage of income and stick to it but if your income goes up, so does your savings. Live a little. I say this as someone who will never spend what I have.
It’s just money, unless you inherited it or won the lottery, you can do it again (and make more).
Also, “Kwanzaa Week,” as I refer to the week between Christmas and New Years, is the best week of the year for networking and meetings if the people you want to talk to are not traveling / unplugged.
I had a brunch yesterday with two prominent real estate developers; funneled a deal one of my RE broker cigar buddies is working into them this morning. Had a cigar with a buddy who is working on a cool marketing project earlier today. Have drinks tonight with a lobbyist from my hometown that I’d like to help me navigate a problem. And so on and so on…
A financial advisor will charge you 60 beeps to get out performed by an index fund just so you can call them when the market goes down and get the advice "This isn't the time to sell." I should get my series 7
Investing is like getting in shape. It's simple but not easy.
There are good advisors out there and piece mind isn't worthless but there are also a lot of bad/shady advisors who just happen to recommend the funds that give them the best commissions.
I mean, that's what I told the advisor who asked me why I don't use an advisor but some people need someone to call when the market goes down to talk them off a ledge. Also, older people can't just drop all their crap in VTSAX if they need to live off of it.
A few years ago I had convinced myself I needed to hire a FA because surely I was leaving money on the table. I interviewed 5 potential candidates after disqualifying 3 more before having a conversation, I might of been too harsh, but filing for personal bankruptcy is not something I feel someone managing my money should have experience in.
Out of the five prospects, 3 waxed on and on about tax loss harvesting, quarterly rebalances, and maximizing returns. When asked what I should expect as a rough bottom line after incurring in taxes, fees and earnings all 3 were very silent. They did not hesitate to review their fee structure and ask just how much I was looking to move over. The other two, one of which is my FILs guy, both told me unless I was putting myself out by managing what I was doing I wouldn't have much, if anything, to gain from hiring them. That honesty was almost worth the cost of admission, almost.
In the end I got the positive affirmation I was looking for, even though I was hoping someone would convince me they'd take my modest investments and turn me into a hookers and blow in my Ferrari guy in 6 months.
For the record I am a set it and forget it type of investor in primarily Vanguard ETFs and Index funds, no day trading and very little individual stock purchases. Getting rich the slow way is not sexy, but it is pretty easy if you can make regular contributions, don't pull money out, and have time to wait for it to grow.
Dec 27, 2023·edited Dec 27, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
Other men can afford a Les Baer 1911. I can put three magazines through an iron-sighted, factory-stock Glock 19 and into a three-inch circle at 25 yards in less than 90 seconds.
I rented a WC CQB Master at a range down in Dallas (Texas Gun Experience, right next to DFW airport). Now I understand why people pay five grand for a 1911.
I shoot ATA, where there is huge disparities in the costs of hardware on the line. $20,000 guns and $800 guns on the same line, and the scores don't necessarily follow.
In this month's American Rifleman there was a double play: a $4000+ 1911/2011 that had to be sent back to the factory because it was jamming so much and a scout rifle in all but name that cost as much or more than a halfway decent AR-10 but was neither lighter nor more accurate.
I've never been interested in "earning" a Daytona because they always seemed to be in that gold/stainless design rather than just stainless. That is my sole reason and not because I've made peace with the fact I'm too broke/inexperienced/untalented to earn one.
I got to crawl around the B-29 "FIFI" once a few years ago. Was tasked with setting up lights inside the plane for night pictures. Getting into the rear gunner position is incredibly hard, even when I was 120lbs. Zero chance I'd be able to do that today.
Family lore has it that grandpa was offered the opportunity to be a tailgunner in a Liberator. I think it was part of a deal to get him out of a particularly dangerous infantry unit when my uncle was born. Fortunately for me he declined and found a less deadly way to spend the rest of the war.
That attitude, or at least a similar attitude, seems to be quite prevalent in people who don't have a lot of money. Part jealousy, part pride in their labor; or so I guess. Maybe a whiff of sour grapes too. Back when I was young the rich kids all had "daddy-bought rides" while us poorer kids had to get some old clunker and fix it up. We'd always assume an air of superiority and proclaim our ride was better cause we "built it".
And of course every single one of us would have traded that old clunker for a new Mustang GT with the 5.0 if anyone had offered. Being lower middle class, though, that offer never came.
That doesn't cover the stolen valor aspect of buying something that someone else made famous though. I never quite understood that. I've bought some antique rifles simply because that's my interest and my collection, but never because a certain person owned that particular piece. More just because it represented a particular age or market. I could see getting a 60 year old Triumph twin just cause it's a cool bike and exemplifies a certain era. But I wouldn't pay a penny more just cause McQueen sat his ass on it.
That is true - your environment and experiences shape your worldview.
Would I have the same attitudes toward women, and even morality, if I'd been naturally charming and extroverted and successful with them? Absolutely yes.
My attitudes toward police, corporations, colleges, government and a hundred other things would be different if I were different.
Agree 100% with your first two paragraphs. I'm in a very different financial situation now than I was as a teenager but I still have those kinds of thoughts. Lower middle class myself - although if I was running for political office, the narrative would be that I grew up dirt poor!
Bill derives his sense of worth from how others perceive him. It's fragile and externally based. Bob has his own sense of worth, a much stronger, internal one.
The central point is caring what others think. The key word being "others". We all care what others think, we're human. I'm sure both Bill and Bob care as well. The difference is "others" for Bill is much bigger than Bob. Bob has a strong core and likely only cares what key influential friends, family, and colleagues think. Whereas Bill likely cares what randos on the internet think (the irony of my own internet rando post notwithstanding, though I will argue this Substack is a higher quality).
I remember an episode of "Batman: The Animated Series" where Edward Nygma's boss cheated him out of his share of the royalties for a video game he designed. After Nygma became The Riddler, he tried to kill his boss before Batman stopped him, but got away intending to make good on his threat.
The episode ended with the boss getting into bed while laying a shotgun on the floor, with a panicked look on his face, with Bruce Wayne musing in a voiceover, "How much is a good night's sleep worth?"
If you can sleep at night, it doesn't matter how much you have. And if you CAN'T, it STILL doesn't matter.
Dec 27, 2023·edited Dec 27, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
If you ever want to feel utterly inferior I suggest you walk into any Rolex AD and inquire about a Daytona. The truth is it might be easier to win one at LeMans than to buy one at retail.
I used to think this state of affairs couldn't continue but that was before I spent a weekend in Vegas watching the Asian fellows gamble. They will buy every Daytona Rolex can make for the next fifty years.
A friend of a friend from college is a Chinese student who's done 3 or 4 oil changes on his McLaren. That dude's on the way to earning the car he was given.
Dec 27, 2023·edited Dec 27, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
I'd rather race the old Mazda in my garage than own the one that won Le Mans..
The Bullitt edition Mustangs always seemed a little corny to me, but they're also the only way to get that really nice shade of green on an S550, which is a great car in my limited experience.
Maybe a lot of the people who get a thrill out of owning things with meaning see themselves as caretakers or stewards of that thing's story, which is understandable. But with cars and airplanes, a lot of that object's significance lies in the experience of operating it to its potential, so if you only ever leave it in the driveway and stare at it, I'd argue that a substantial amount of its meaning is lost. You already bought the ticket, might as well take the ride.
It’s not a chase but “C’etait un rendezvous-vous” has a certain appeal if you imagine yourself in receipt of an urgent early hours invitation for a discussion on Ugandan affairs* with Catherine Deneuve or Juliette Binoche...
* very old Private Eye euphemism when one of our politicos was caught in flagrante at the time when Idi Amin was charming the world with his tender care.
Although F&F are more CGI. 7 ups and the Connection required real driving skill and cinematography. Those scenes still hold up today and won't ever seem corny.
The thing is, if you're going to buy an SR-71 to actually fly it, you NEED to buy a tanker and pay a crew to be up in the air to refuel you. Two if you're planning on going anywhere.
And then there are the start carts they use for them. Those are incredibly special and take a bit of skill to use.
As I understand it -- and now we are no longer in the realm of reality but an associated one where people own this shit for personal use, like in the infamous "Strike Commander" PC game -- you don't NEED to fuel off ground if you have the right airport. It just made the takeoff significantly less risky for most fields, given the high speed of takeoff and landing.
Now's the right time to buy tankers, however; I believe there's a whole group of KC-135s leaving service.
You need it. These are not airplanes you can land, fuel, and take back off. There are numerous reasons for this. The biggest two are the amount of fuel you're going to use landing and taking back off (don't forget, they leak while on the ground until they're 'warmed up') and the simple truth that you need a special piece of machinery to start the aircraft up that takes skill to operate. Not to mention a special custom fuel that no airport sells.
Plus when you turn off airplanes like these they tend to break.
Sitting around they tend to break.
Some aircraft are worse than others (we used to walk by the F-111 hangers where we kept our test planes and you could HEAR them breaking as they sat there).
Also SR-71's use drag chutes when landing and that has to be repacked and replaced.
There's a lot of other reasons too, but honestly, it would probably be cheaper to buy and operate the KC-135 then go bopping from airport to airport.
The other thing too is that the SR-71 is a VFR aircraft. It is not made to be flown in the weather.
The SR-71 is oddly similar to my Radical SR8. It can't have fuel it in at any time other than race day. On race day, it has to be partially fueled then manually run up to temperature for 45 minutes at revs between 1800 rpm (where it stalls) and 3000 rpm (where cold oil will blow seals). Then it has to be elevated off the ground so the transmission can be warmed up, which is a separate procedure.
Only after all that is done can you fuel it, using a special device, and race it.
You can't take off full-fuel without a space shuttle-length runway and even then the cold-airframe leakage would render the whole enterprise pointless. Delta wing + mass + excess fuel mass + fuel leakage + increased V necessary for flight with full fuel = forever-length takeoff roll.
Part of the reason also is that such a takeoff would use up much of the additional on-ground fuel fill by the time of arrival at refueling altitude
I saw the start cart for the M-21 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle back in September. It made me smile thinking how such a complicated, high-tech, bespoke machine was started by basically daisy chaining two automotive V8 engines together. Must have made a hell of a noise.
The start carts for the SR71’s were built by Indy roadster builder, Frank Kurtis. The Kurtis family was considered part of the SR71 family and attended the reunions.
They’re not too hard to remove luckily. Or shouldn’t be at least.
The rest of the car is a real peach — gorgeous green, great looking wheels, great to drive, sounds amazing. If the right one ever comes along I wouldn’t mind swapping the Bronco out.
In truth, the hardcore “built, not bought” guys annoy me about as much as the billionaires.
Is my ownership or enjoyment of a car (or anything else) lessened because I bought it new and spent the hours teaching my kids to play baseball or chess instead of leaving them in front of the tv while I turn a wrench on an old beater?
I don’t think so, and I don’t particularly care about the opinions of someone else who thinks less of me over it.
I like driving my cars on my terms, I have respect for anyone else who shares this hobby/passion with me, and I think gate keeping of any sort is both counterproductive and stupid.
Dec 27, 2023·edited Dec 27, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
Agree here. I've already proven to myself I can build a car - I'm proud of it, but now there are other ways I need/want to spend my time. "The thing" feels just as earned to me now if I save up and buy it, letting the OEM build it.
I think of it like this: I have finite time, I can only learn so many things, so do I spend all my time building the stuff? Or can I have greater impact learning how to make money/create a scalable system, and then spend that money on way more things?
Dec 28, 2023·edited Dec 28, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
Yeah I used to love that Heinlein quote. It’s not bad if you live the rural life or if you’re reconstituting humanity, but otherwise I lean towards the Henry Ford version, with the buttons on the desk.
Dec 27, 2023·edited Dec 27, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
Comment of the year.
I'm a little tired of the envy if truth be told. That GT3 orthodontist had to beat out a whole lot of other folks during his career on the way to make that money so he could be an amateur racer. I am 100% sure he doesn't give a rats ass what the SCCA or NASA amateur racers who don't have $1M to spend on the same hobby say about him.
Dec 27, 2023·edited Dec 27, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
I agree. The difference between someone working a mid-level job to buy a used Camaro SS to race and a dentist buying a new GT3 car just seems like a question of scale.
why don't i watch gt races and things like that. please excuse me because i almost never use such an expression: FUCKING BALANCE OF FUCKING PERFORMANCE! people who support this do it ONLY because it gives close finishes. FINISHES! in this very limited area i consider advocates of b.o.p. as hypercommercial charlatans who are beneath contempt. i know nice people who just love a 24hr race with 3 cars finishing in the same 20 seconds. utterly abhorrent to me. i can expand on the few facets of this subject but this is enough for now. merry third day of Christmas!
Up to a point, Lord Sherman. It’s technically very restricted compared to the glory days (anytime up to 2000? 2010?) with virtually everything defined, so the variables are mostly aerodynamic. Very clever, I will admit, but all too often it’s the best car that wins and that’s that. There is at least an handful who would have won 15 races this year in Max’s car. Maybe not 18 races, but still pretty dull. And as this is an open thread, can I drop in a hate-bomb? Fast road cars are increasingly ridiculous; too powerful, too expensive and generally too literally useless. For discussion purposes, you understand!
It’s total competition in the sense that all 10 teams design and build a car. There are opportunities to climb the ladder (Aston Martin, McLaren) and opportunities to slide down the pole (Alpine, Alfa Romeo Sauber, Haas) from season to season.
If your car isn’t fast enough, your options are (1) quit (2) get better (3) accept being a loser.
" I am 100% sure he doesn't give a rats ass what the SCCA or NASA amateur racers who don't have $1M to spend on the same hobby say about him."
It goes one of two ways. Half of them don't care about anything outside their own walled garden and the other half OBSESS about what's happening elsewhere.
Agreed. While I have much respect for those that can build, wrench, restore, and fabricate to an extremely high level, I can't do that (or can to a much, much, much lesser degree) and thus have to consider my situation and engage this hobby/passion accordingly. It's fun to make a vehicle "my own" through modification, maintenance item choice (tires, shocks, etc), or needed repair, but it's also fun/enjoyable to not have to always be working on it.
Is my 2.0L 3rd gen Protege "earned" after having the interior, trunk, and cowl apart 1.5 times, seam sealing every conceivable place water could come in (because it's made of Swiss cheese), changing out a few pieces, and adding sound insulation? I guess, but I'm a bit over the work part of it and just want to drive the thing because it exudes the same joy and singular focus for spirited driving as Australian Shepherd does for herding cattle.
I think I'd rather have my vehicles align with who I am or what values I work to embody and benefit others with. The Protege is "me" or simply the car I am most comfortable with. Virtuous yet fun, with no prestige or expectations put upon it (for better and worse). The LS and my truck have been outside my comfort zone as one is very luxurious and the other exists along the dick measuring spectrum that is often gate-kept (by the diesel guys, naturally) and I'm just a kid from the burbs who's had a crush on 2nd gen Rams for nearly three decades.
Interesting article. Qualified "yes" to earning what I own - at least things that are meant to be used. I used to ski, own skis, but no longer refer to myself as a skier as I haven't hit the slopes in years. Still ride the bikes so in that sense I'm still a motorcyclist.
Will have to think on how this applies to artifacts, decorative objects. I have my great grandfather s pocket watch from his railroad days. Don't use it, don't show it off, it sits on a shelf in a stand and gets wound as needed. I inherited it, does that mean I earned it? It'll go to my grand nephew when I pass, so perhaps I'm just a caretaker.
Dec 27, 2023·edited Dec 27, 2023Liked by Jack Baruth
I've already mentioned my feelings about my Rolex. Funny story, the guy who I inherited it from was a bit of a Mr. Magoo type, and his wife originally bought him one with a bunch of funny dials on it that he couldn't figure out, so he took it back and got the plain Datejust. Not 100% sure but I believe the watch he returned was a Daytona. Just goes to show that even high speed shooters have trouble with new concepts if there isn't school for it taught by senior NCOs and warrant officers yelling at them.
the lowest point was the listing on MyLesPaul for a Murphy aged R9 where the dude solemnly assured everyone that NO unauthorized wear had taken place and that the guitar was in EXACTLY the relic condition applied by Murphy.
I'm okay with relic guitars as long as one acknowledges them for what they are.
My dad has a very lightly Murphy aged R9. The hardware is tarnished, and the lacquer is checked. He wanted something that didn't look brand new without looking beat up.
It'll be mine, eventually, and I'll keep it until I drop dead. So I really don't give a shit what it's worth or "preserving" it except in the sense that I'm protective of everything else that was my dad's.
Excellent essay, I have worked with mechanics and I have worked with guys who have all the tools in their cabinets, but none upstairs, and they are without clue.
I'm trying to be one of those guys, Joe! Some day I'll have the full Snap-on cabinet.
Mine is a Cornwell cabinet actually, and it has served me well for almost three decades 😊
Most of my tools are Snap On and my big tool box is Snap On. But I also have a lot of Craftsman tools from the good old days. I think the tool preference of working guys really had to do with what tool trucks stopped by the shop. I had a small stereo shop and the Matco, Mac and even Corwell trucks drove right on by. The Snap On guy was in every week and like all the tool trucks offered easy payment plans. I was hooked from that point forward.
Most of my tools also came off a Snapon truck, the Snapon dealers were always the most regimented, they always showed up, and if you watch what you are doing, you can actually shoot a decent deal with them, offer to pay cash for a lower price and so on, your comment rings true!
Cash goes in the pocket tool goes in cost of goods sold
One of which guys?
The idiots with all the good tools.
First Joe will have to come and test you to make sure you are worthy. Wait, didn't he give you a fancy Snap On tool at the meeting? I guess you already passed the test. You Sir are no idiot.
Let's hope!
The only Snap On tool I own is a metric brake like wrench that my father found in his car after getting it worked on about 40 years ago. It’s the crown jewel of my collection 😂 the rest are a mix of Craftsman tools that my father left when he moved out, the ones I bought myself in the 80s before Craftsman went to shit, and a distressingly large and expensive set of specialty tools I’ve picked up over the last two years to keep my neurotic BMW on the track.
I’ve got a really pretty Snap On 10mm wrench that I found in the engine compartment of a Celica after I’d owned it for a couple years.
As a person who is upstairs and has the tools, I choose to pay for labor because I can and am lazy. Yes I CAN do it, but why bother unless it'll be a completely satisfying project. It's a shame people forget where they started or the adversity they had to go through as an adult to get there.
I totally understand that.
One flaw in the Bob vs Bill argument is that Bill didn’t have the opportunity to be Bob; it’s presented as a somewhat pitched argument, which is fine for illustrative and thought-provoking purposes.
As for the watches:
The Rolex Chronograph - i.e., the Daytona - existed for a few years before it gained the Daytona moniker. It was, as I recall, a response of sorts to the Omega Speedmaster, which was intended as a racer’s tool before it found enduring fame as the Moon Watch.
Be mindful that the Rolex Daytona as a trophy for class victories at the Rolex 24 at Daytona and overall victories (but not class victories) at Le Mans is a relatively modern thing. The entitlement sponsorship for Daytona began in the early 90s, as I recall off the top of my head. There were various sponsors beforehand, including SunBank in Orlando, prior to its merger with the Trust Company in Atlanta, thereby creating SunTrust, which is now Truist after its “merger of equals” with BB&T. I do not know when the Le Mans relationship began, but I believe it was more recent.
I was in attendance at Le Mans in 2018 as a Porsche “VIP,” which means that they invited me to buy an expensive hospitality package, which was absolutely worth the outlay ($3,600 for about 33 hours of access / service). Among the many luminaries in attendance were Wolfgang Porsche, Oliver Blume, and Ted Gushue! Mark Webber - who had recently retired as a Porsche LMP1 driver - was also there. Webber was - and I believe remains - a Rolex “Testimonee,” which is their term for a spokesperson.
It was not lost on me that both Mark and I were standing on the terrace of the Porsche Experience Center overlooking the Ford Chicane watching the race while wearing our unearned Daytonas - he never won Le Mans or even raced at Daytona. Mark didn’t even PAY for his. I elected not to engage him in a discussion on that topic. Another unearned Daytona wearer is Jackie Stewart!
Finally, as someone who has owned (and later sold) both, there is absolutely no comparison between a Royal Oak, particularly the 15202 Jumbo, and a Daytona. When I bought my Royal Oak, I stopped wearing the Daytona with any regularity.
I will argue forcefully that the Royal Oak - the original model, in steel; the modern version of which I owned - is probably the most significant watch of the past 50 years. Without it, Audemars Piguet would not exist, and you would never have heard of the company. Without it, Patek Philippe would not have deputized Gerald Genta to provide them with a “me too” copycat in the form of the Nautilus. Without it, the craze for five figure steel sports watches (i.e., every Rolex Sub or GMT or Explorer or Daytona that is so coveted) would not exist. Without it, the Swiss watch industry might not exist.
EDIT: After typing the above comment, I received an Instagram DM from a cigar, etc. friend of mine who is the biggest Trustafarian I know. He is in his mid 40s, has never even thought about having a job, and spends his time collecting things and traveling the world watching Real Madrid and Ferrari’s F1 team. He is a Ferrari “XX” client, which means he is one of their absolute top drawer customers. He is on a first name basis with Enrico Galliera.
He just took delivery of his extremely rare “Le Mans” Edition Daytona - https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/a-special-rolex-daytona-for-the-100th-running-of-the-24-hours-of-le-mans
There’s one for sale on eBay right now for $334K.
How many choices that made sense 50 years on seemed insane and irresponsible when you made them at age 25?
How many times have you read about some historical figure, George Washington for example, doing something that seemed inevitable in hindsight, but at the time had him metaphorically grimacing like Marty McFly about to hit the wire?
Many of them.
One of the guys I had lunch with yesterday quit a good RE job in Chicago (I met him on a sunday night flight) to move back to Atlanta (and get married).
He had no job lined up, so he and his wife lived on her charter school salary while he started his own RE shop. He made no money in 2016. He made a little money in 2017 and also broke every piggy bank and borrowed from various sources to buy an asset for about $500K. He made a little money in 2018. He sold the $500K property in 2019 and took home nearly $10MM after taxes. Then he put that money to work during COVID.
Now he has an office in a trophy building with a dozen people working for him. He’ll be 40 soon.
Well played.
He must've been at it 90 hours a week to pull that off.
Now it’s about 90 hours a week of golf, it seems!
He went to B school at Dartmouth - for free, which is another story entirely. I need to find a way to knock on the door of Liberty Media, either through John Malone himself (fat chance), Greg Maffei (perhaps), or an Atlanta Braves connection. It’s not an F1 opportunity, but obviously I’d try to turn it into one for myself.
Maffei is Dartmouth ‘81, so my buddy pulled up his contact info for me yesterday and offered to give me a warm handover to the Braves Chairman’s son, who is one of his golf buddies.
As I understand it, you make your first million through brute force - long hours, hustling, working your ass off, delaying gratification. After that, you're still working your ass off, but your efforts begin to have a geometrically greater effect on your earnings. You have an absolutely larger amount of money to invest, which gives you a greater return - not in rate, but in quantity. You also begin to leverage contacts and are thus able to take advantage of more lucrative opportunities.
Does that sound right?
I think it’s definitely geometric.
The most important thing to have is the Rolodex.
I think it was Charlie Munger who said that the first hundred thousand is the hardest. Then the first million. After that it gets easier.
Of course it was forever since he saw his first $100,000.
I know an F-1 guy.
Without getting too into things, I have a cigar buddy who grew up rich, was a co-founder of a prominent theater chain, and is now an angel investor.
He’s on the board of a promising sports startup that has a public-facing platform and also a background “AI” engine that can be used for NIL payments, etc.
They want to dip their toe into motorsport engagement; I can help with this, and I have a friend who is a gentleman driver in Europe that I’d like to get involved.
The aformentioned friend is the CEO of a very particular type of content business, and the AI platform COULD be used to prevent piracy in that realm.
The aforementioned friend is a payments expert, and the sports startup needs a processing partner…
The ideal long-term takeout partner would probably be Liberty or Carlos Slim - someone with scale.
Finally, the aformentioned friend is buddies with Carlos Slim!
On the F1 thing.
I was smoking a cigar in autumn of 2016 in Chicago when an older guy sort of brusquely inserted himself into the conversation I was having, which pissed me off. I held my tongue, fortunately.
He told me this ridiculous tale of how Formula 1’s commercial rights were for sale and that Stephen Ross - a purported friend of his - was among the bidders. I thought that was such a crock of shit.
Turns out that Ross was the cover bidder behind Malone, which is why he has the consolation prize of a race in Miami. I was dead wrong.
The guy I nearly wrote off was Richard Walken - https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20090618/CRED03/200034465/story-teller-developer-harvey-walken-dies
And he'd STILL have to explain that he bought it.
Neither Mark nor Jackie nor Ted had to pay for their watches!
My trustafarian buddy did have to pay for his Le Mans edition Daytona, but he DID pay retail (about $50K).
Cort Wagner was whining recently about having raced at Le Mans half a dozen times and not having the opportunity to get the Le Mans Daytona.
How are you suggesting that Ted got a Daytona?
Well, I DO know how he got his Royal Oak 5402!
Whether it be true or not, I have not verified, but I heard through the grapevine that both Ted and Matt Hranek "kept" watches that were "loaned" to them by Crown & Caliber.
Ted's a reader here -- maybe he'll chime in!
Ted Gushue, a visionary?
I like Ted.
I met him at Le Mans that year, and we have remained friendly. He was there as a guest of Tim Pappas; one of Tim’s co-drivers was Spencer Pumpelly. Ted, Tim’s brother, and Pumpelly’s wife were sitting outside at Porsche’s “barbecue” setup (they had multiple locations for us) at the entrance to the Porsche Curves. Another fellow in the group asked me for a lighter. We started talking, of course. Pumpelly’s in-laws retired to my hometown - small world.
The wine had been flowing for some of them, and Ted forgot one of his cameras. I picked it up and took it back to the Porsche mothership (the PEC building a mile or two away) with me - hence the friendship.
Ted seems like a very nice man. We are diametrically opposed in the sense that I would willingly shit my pants in public if said public appearance were on a race podium of any note. I don't care about driving tastefully.
drive shitfully
I enjoy your stories.
I have to respectfully disagree, in this scenario Bill and Bob both chose their paths through life. Bill also demonstrated a solid work ethic through his success that suggests he’d be at least Bobs equal in the Air Force, assuming all things being equal genetically of course.
Not 100% sure I follow you…
Having been in the military for a while, and having a couple “rich guy” acquaintances, I’d say that the “succeed in a given paradigm” types are pretty similar. Probably more “risk taker, do it myself” types in the private sector, those types are in the military are almost entirely in spec ops.
At least in my branch, the real hot-shots are closer to govt workers or c-suite types, they’ve checked all the boxes and massaged the CV and now have “earned” whatever “job of impact” they currently hold, the types that show up after the series B.
Makes sense
The only point I could identify with in this post was the SunBank 24 at Daytona reference, reminding me of my lanyard to the ’89 edition that I lost at the 1998 Canadian Grand Prix.
The other thing that jumped out at me was $334K... For a WRISTWATCH! That got me to thinking about relative prices so I did a few minutes research:
• 1970 Corvette coupe, 350/350, 4-speed. NEW: $5,192. TODAY: $51,500
• 1970 Ferrari Daytona, no AC. NEW: $19,500. USED four years later: $14,000. TODAY: $925,000 #3 Good condition
I have no idea what all this means but it's gotta signify something!
1970 corvette coupe rate of return: 4.42%
1970 Ferrari Daytona rate of return: 7.55%
In both cases it'd be more prudent, but less fun, to stick it in vanguard. Even when cars appreciate, they're shit investments.
Indeed. Although a drawer full of Rolexes saves on storage and maintenance costs. 🤣
Storage, yes.
Maintenance? You'd be surprised.
Yup, park a car in a U-Stor-It place for 50 years and you'll need $10k or more just to get it running again. Try driving it for 50 years instead and you spend multiples of the value just to keep it in decent shape, plus you'll be driving with the knowledge that a cocky 15 year old or an illegal with no license could randomly destroy your investment in a heartbeat.
I have bled on, have scars and burn marks from almost every vintage car registered in my name, I have earned them all beyond initial purchase price. As it should be.
My cars also literally have my blood in them.
And knuckle skin?
Yup, if you haven't bled on a machine, you ain't really worked on it yet.
I bled on my grandpa’s F150 today when I tried to unmangle the second front bumper he dented within the last 8 months.
God bless him, out there still bumping into stuff.
He really loves parking bollards.
I need to put him into something smaller that my grandma is also comfortable driving.
my cars have blood on them because they dont fight back
I don't even feel like I've earned the shitty cars I own, so I usually drive a beater and let the "nice" cars wait for nice days to drive to work.
Hookers and coke in a new Ferrari does sound like a fun weekend though!
Could I be Bob with Sherman McCoy as my financial advisor?
I am far from a financial advisor!
I frequently inquire of my friends “do you wanna live rich or die rich?” when I am trying to enable them into an indulgent purchase.
I view “wealth management” as a pretty low value, position-player skill. Wealth creation is the goal for which anyone should be striving. Spending time picking stocks does not excite me.
Starting a business with generous margins, robust unit economics, low customer churn, inelastic demand, and high quality (i.e., subscription - see low churn comment) revenue characteristics that leads to a full exit multiple is what excites me!
Back when I was stupid and spent some time on reddit (still stupid, just no reddit), I'd peruse the HENRY subreddit and these people were obsessed about lifestyle creep. What is the point of making 450k per year if you're going to live like you make 60K? I mean, yes, pick a savings budget and a percentage of income and stick to it but if your income goes up, so does your savings. Live a little. I say this as someone who will never spend what I have.
It’s just money, unless you inherited it or won the lottery, you can do it again (and make more).
Also, “Kwanzaa Week,” as I refer to the week between Christmas and New Years, is the best week of the year for networking and meetings if the people you want to talk to are not traveling / unplugged.
I had a brunch yesterday with two prominent real estate developers; funneled a deal one of my RE broker cigar buddies is working into them this morning. Had a cigar with a buddy who is working on a cool marketing project earlier today. Have drinks tonight with a lobbyist from my hometown that I’d like to help me navigate a problem. And so on and so on…
You know, I find Reddit useful for odd, even insightful answers to the weird sociological questions I like to Google, just to see what comes back.
It’s a great place to read the highest rates comment and interpret it as “what not to do”
Well I got a company that I'm building that resembles this...low customer churn is vital. But some of these become zombies.
A financial advisor will charge you 60 beeps to get out performed by an index fund just so you can call them when the market goes down and get the advice "This isn't the time to sell." I should get my series 7
Investing is like getting in shape. It's simple but not easy.
I have 20% of my net value with a shitty advisor. He doesn't have to beat the SP500/Buffet. He just has to beat me.
He's doing fine in that regard.
There are good advisors out there and piece mind isn't worthless but there are also a lot of bad/shady advisors who just happen to recommend the funds that give them the best commissions.
The issue is VTSAX beats 99% of advisors over 10 years.
I mean, that's what I told the advisor who asked me why I don't use an advisor but some people need someone to call when the market goes down to talk them off a ledge. Also, older people can't just drop all their crap in VTSAX if they need to live off of it.
I can see that for that for the fearful. For the older folk the vanguard target date funds work
A few years ago I had convinced myself I needed to hire a FA because surely I was leaving money on the table. I interviewed 5 potential candidates after disqualifying 3 more before having a conversation, I might of been too harsh, but filing for personal bankruptcy is not something I feel someone managing my money should have experience in.
Out of the five prospects, 3 waxed on and on about tax loss harvesting, quarterly rebalances, and maximizing returns. When asked what I should expect as a rough bottom line after incurring in taxes, fees and earnings all 3 were very silent. They did not hesitate to review their fee structure and ask just how much I was looking to move over. The other two, one of which is my FILs guy, both told me unless I was putting myself out by managing what I was doing I wouldn't have much, if anything, to gain from hiring them. That honesty was almost worth the cost of admission, almost.
In the end I got the positive affirmation I was looking for, even though I was hoping someone would convince me they'd take my modest investments and turn me into a hookers and blow in my Ferrari guy in 6 months.
For the record I am a set it and forget it type of investor in primarily Vanguard ETFs and Index funds, no day trading and very little individual stock purchases. Getting rich the slow way is not sexy, but it is pretty easy if you can make regular contributions, don't pull money out, and have time to wait for it to grow.
THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE
In a twisted way your thesis could apply to women.
One must earn a good woman
By being worthy of her.
I'd have to earn her, I certainly can't afford to buy one in this market!
Other men can afford a Les Baer 1911. I can put three magazines through an iron-sighted, factory-stock Glock 19 and into a three-inch circle at 25 yards in less than 90 seconds.
In this instance, I win where it counts.
I rented a WC CQB Master at a range down in Dallas (Texas Gun Experience, right next to DFW airport). Now I understand why people pay five grand for a 1911.
I had a WC 1911 and I had to send it back to the factory for feed issues with 230gr ball ammo.
https://external-preview.redd.it/FUSt1xltp8ZxDlaohosybpU_u7QQVWfAP4_FuEJdCvU.jpg?auto=webp&s=1a54b2aba4e9dfd89884c6204863ba752f230682
Yes.
"Glock 40."
The favorite of A.X.L Pendergast.
I preferred the Anaconda he killed the Mbwun with.
Most kind of you to say.
I shoot ATA, where there is huge disparities in the costs of hardware on the line. $20,000 guns and $800 guns on the same line, and the scores don't necessarily follow.
In this month's American Rifleman there was a double play: a $4000+ 1911/2011 that had to be sent back to the factory because it was jamming so much and a scout rifle in all but name that cost as much or more than a halfway decent AR-10 but was neither lighter nor more accurate.
.9 seconds?
I've never been interested in "earning" a Daytona because they always seemed to be in that gold/stainless design rather than just stainless. That is my sole reason and not because I've made peace with the fact I'm too broke/inexperienced/untalented to earn one.
I got to crawl around the B-29 "FIFI" once a few years ago. Was tasked with setting up lights inside the plane for night pictures. Getting into the rear gunner position is incredibly hard, even when I was 120lbs. Zero chance I'd be able to do that today.
Very freaking cool!
Rolex gives out the two tone Daytona for winners at the 24 because it’s among the less desirable models; they want to create cachet around that one.
Le Mans winners get the black dial stainless.
well now i want to race and win
Saw the rear turret of a Wellington in a museum. Same story. I'd have struggled to get my 5 tear old in there!
I once sat in the cockpit of a Mig-15 at an air museum. I'm 6' and was about 220 lbs. at the time, and my shoulders rubbed the canopy rails.
Thankfully the F-22 fits grown men so I don't have to starve my child.
Family lore has it that grandpa was offered the opportunity to be a tailgunner in a Liberator. I think it was part of a deal to get him out of a particularly dangerous infantry unit when my uncle was born. Fortunately for me he declined and found a less deadly way to spend the rest of the war.
That attitude, or at least a similar attitude, seems to be quite prevalent in people who don't have a lot of money. Part jealousy, part pride in their labor; or so I guess. Maybe a whiff of sour grapes too. Back when I was young the rich kids all had "daddy-bought rides" while us poorer kids had to get some old clunker and fix it up. We'd always assume an air of superiority and proclaim our ride was better cause we "built it".
And of course every single one of us would have traded that old clunker for a new Mustang GT with the 5.0 if anyone had offered. Being lower middle class, though, that offer never came.
That doesn't cover the stolen valor aspect of buying something that someone else made famous though. I never quite understood that. I've bought some antique rifles simply because that's my interest and my collection, but never because a certain person owned that particular piece. More just because it represented a particular age or market. I could see getting a 60 year old Triumph twin just cause it's a cool bike and exemplifies a certain era. But I wouldn't pay a penny more just cause McQueen sat his ass on it.
I think you're right.
That is true - your environment and experiences shape your worldview.
Would I have the same attitudes toward women, and even morality, if I'd been naturally charming and extroverted and successful with them? Absolutely yes.
My attitudes toward police, corporations, colleges, government and a hundred other things would be different if I were different.
Different, not same.
Dammit, I've gotta slow down and proofread better!
For a second you had a halo😄
Now THAT would be false advertising!
Agree 100% with your first two paragraphs. I'm in a very different financial situation now than I was as a teenager but I still have those kinds of thoughts. Lower middle class myself - although if I was running for political office, the narrative would be that I grew up dirt poor!
Not just dirt poor, but as Steve Martin The Jerk proclaimed, I was born a poor black child!
So, you had bad credit from the word "Go?"
Bill derives his sense of worth from how others perceive him. It's fragile and externally based. Bob has his own sense of worth, a much stronger, internal one.
The central point is caring what others think. The key word being "others". We all care what others think, we're human. I'm sure both Bill and Bob care as well. The difference is "others" for Bill is much bigger than Bob. Bob has a strong core and likely only cares what key influential friends, family, and colleagues think. Whereas Bill likely cares what randos on the internet think (the irony of my own internet rando post notwithstanding, though I will argue this Substack is a higher quality).
I remember an episode of "Batman: The Animated Series" where Edward Nygma's boss cheated him out of his share of the royalties for a video game he designed. After Nygma became The Riddler, he tried to kill his boss before Batman stopped him, but got away intending to make good on his threat.
The episode ended with the boss getting into bed while laying a shotgun on the floor, with a panicked look on his face, with Bruce Wayne musing in a voiceover, "How much is a good night's sleep worth?"
If you can sleep at night, it doesn't matter how much you have. And if you CAN'T, it STILL doesn't matter.
I wish this lesson would be imparted on a few tech giants
They sleep just fine with a mil a year’s worth of former navy seals outside their house.
If you ever want to feel utterly inferior I suggest you walk into any Rolex AD and inquire about a Daytona. The truth is it might be easier to win one at LeMans than to buy one at retail.
There’s a Rolex “AD” in Schiphol airport amongst the other luxury brands. The case is full of watches, all of which are marked “not for sale”.
I used to think this state of affairs couldn't continue but that was before I spent a weekend in Vegas watching the Asian fellows gamble. They will buy every Daytona Rolex can make for the next fifty years.
A friend of a friend from college is a Chinese student who's done 3 or 4 oil changes on his McLaren. That dude's on the way to earning the car he was given.
I'd rather race the old Mazda in my garage than own the one that won Le Mans..
The Bullitt edition Mustangs always seemed a little corny to me, but they're also the only way to get that really nice shade of green on an S550, which is a great car in my limited experience.
Maybe a lot of the people who get a thrill out of owning things with meaning see themselves as caretakers or stewards of that thing's story, which is understandable. But with cars and airplanes, a lot of that object's significance lies in the experience of operating it to its potential, so if you only ever leave it in the driveway and stare at it, I'd argue that a substantial amount of its meaning is lost. You already bought the ticket, might as well take the ride.
The Bullitt edition wasn't any more corny than the 5000th different Shelby edition.
I actually really liked the green, just wasn't in my budget or lifestyle at the time.
I am frankly shocked at how much mileage the world's gotten from that "mediocre movie wrapped around a great car chase."
French Connection had a better chase IMO.
Ronin shines here.
That's the all time greatest car chase film. I'm not sure what second place it but it's not close.
Make a tuesday night list out of it.
It’s not a chase but “C’etait un rendezvous-vous” has a certain appeal if you imagine yourself in receipt of an urgent early hours invitation for a discussion on Ugandan affairs* with Catherine Deneuve or Juliette Binoche...
* very old Private Eye euphemism when one of our politicos was caught in flagrante at the time when Idi Amin was charming the world with his tender care.
Dude - Gone in 60 Seconds, the 1974 edition. Greatest chase scene in movie history.
Or the opening sequence to Cannonball Run with Adrienne Barbeau in the Lamborghini. For two obvious reasons.
To Live and Die in LA:
Best ‘realistic’ car chase.
"Short Time" with Dabney Coleman must make the list. Seriously.
I always liked the chase from the Seven-Ups
I think it was the same stunt driver for both. That's why they are so good.
Most car chase movies do. Hell, F&F movie chases are more entertaining.
Although F&F are more CGI. 7 ups and the Connection required real driving skill and cinematography. Those scenes still hold up today and won't ever seem corny.
Nothing wrong with CGI - IF IT'S DONE WELL AND THE STORY MAKES SENSE.
Some stunts would be too expensive or dangerous to film live.
There is a thing in the stewardship thing. I'd absolutely buy an SR71 and a 787B for the sake of posterity if I had the money.
I'd use the the other half of my fortune to run the 787 because braaap.
With an SR71 you'd have the only vehicle on earth that's tougher to run than a 787B!
I will never forget seeing an SR71 in a museum.
Countersunk bolts instead of rivets. Thousands of them.
The opposite of a gigacasting. One you have to maintain the other, you can't maintain.
And every last one is titatnium.
The thing is, if you're going to buy an SR-71 to actually fly it, you NEED to buy a tanker and pay a crew to be up in the air to refuel you. Two if you're planning on going anywhere.
And then there are the start carts they use for them. Those are incredibly special and take a bit of skill to use.
As I understand it -- and now we are no longer in the realm of reality but an associated one where people own this shit for personal use, like in the infamous "Strike Commander" PC game -- you don't NEED to fuel off ground if you have the right airport. It just made the takeoff significantly less risky for most fields, given the high speed of takeoff and landing.
Now's the right time to buy tankers, however; I believe there's a whole group of KC-135s leaving service.
You need it. These are not airplanes you can land, fuel, and take back off. There are numerous reasons for this. The biggest two are the amount of fuel you're going to use landing and taking back off (don't forget, they leak while on the ground until they're 'warmed up') and the simple truth that you need a special piece of machinery to start the aircraft up that takes skill to operate. Not to mention a special custom fuel that no airport sells.
Plus when you turn off airplanes like these they tend to break.
Sitting around they tend to break.
Some aircraft are worse than others (we used to walk by the F-111 hangers where we kept our test planes and you could HEAR them breaking as they sat there).
Also SR-71's use drag chutes when landing and that has to be repacked and replaced.
There's a lot of other reasons too, but honestly, it would probably be cheaper to buy and operate the KC-135 then go bopping from airport to airport.
The other thing too is that the SR-71 is a VFR aircraft. It is not made to be flown in the weather.
The SR-71 is oddly similar to my Radical SR8. It can't have fuel it in at any time other than race day. On race day, it has to be partially fueled then manually run up to temperature for 45 minutes at revs between 1800 rpm (where it stalls) and 3000 rpm (where cold oil will blow seals). Then it has to be elevated off the ground so the transmission can be warmed up, which is a separate procedure.
Only after all that is done can you fuel it, using a special device, and race it.
Echoing Johns comment on this one.
You can't take off full-fuel without a space shuttle-length runway and even then the cold-airframe leakage would render the whole enterprise pointless. Delta wing + mass + excess fuel mass + fuel leakage + increased V necessary for flight with full fuel = forever-length takeoff roll.
Part of the reason also is that such a takeoff would use up much of the additional on-ground fuel fill by the time of arrival at refueling altitude
I am surprised this book is not more well-known given the durable mystique of the blackbird: https://www.amazon.com/Sled-Driver-Flying-Worlds-Fastest/dp/0929823087
Fine. Someone buy the Blackbird, someone else buy the fuel tanker and we'll all take turns
I saw the start cart for the M-21 at the Museum of Flight in Seattle back in September. It made me smile thinking how such a complicated, high-tech, bespoke machine was started by basically daisy chaining two automotive V8 engines together. Must have made a hell of a noise.
Oh yeah, it's LOUD.
Two unmuffled Buick 425 Nailheads.
The start carts for the SR71’s were built by Indy roadster builder, Frank Kurtis. The Kurtis family was considered part of the SR71 family and attended the reunions.
The S550 Bullitt really grew on me. It’s pretty understated. Too bad it’s covered in tacky bullseye logos.
They’re not too hard to remove luckily. Or shouldn’t be at least.
The rest of the car is a real peach — gorgeous green, great looking wheels, great to drive, sounds amazing. If the right one ever comes along I wouldn’t mind swapping the Bronco out.
A de-badged trunk panel, standard airbag cover would make things acceptable. Looks like a straightforward swap.
There’s not enough green sports cars out there. The C7 looks great in Lime Rock Green. Unfortunately, the color was only available in 2014.
In truth, the hardcore “built, not bought” guys annoy me about as much as the billionaires.
Is my ownership or enjoyment of a car (or anything else) lessened because I bought it new and spent the hours teaching my kids to play baseball or chess instead of leaving them in front of the tv while I turn a wrench on an old beater?
I don’t think so, and I don’t particularly care about the opinions of someone else who thinks less of me over it.
I like driving my cars on my terms, I have respect for anyone else who shares this hobby/passion with me, and I think gate keeping of any sort is both counterproductive and stupid.
Agree here. I've already proven to myself I can build a car - I'm proud of it, but now there are other ways I need/want to spend my time. "The thing" feels just as earned to me now if I save up and buy it, letting the OEM build it.
I think of it like this: I have finite time, I can only learn so many things, so do I spend all my time building the stuff? Or can I have greater impact learning how to make money/create a scalable system, and then spend that money on way more things?
When someone asked Victor Wooten which other instruments he played, he replied with,
"I take the time I would put into learning those instruments... and I put it into learning MY instrument."
Heinlein wasn't entirely correct about specialization. I don't need my heart surgeon to be a great electrician.
Yeah I used to love that Heinlein quote. It’s not bad if you live the rural life or if you’re reconstituting humanity, but otherwise I lean towards the Henry Ford version, with the buttons on the desk.
Can you explain the Ford reference, for the obtuse and poorly-read among us?
It’s a quote from a libel suit, here’s the whole story: https://www.leancxscore.com/how-henry-ford-proves-you-dont-need-to-know-it-all-2/
Comment of the year.
I'm a little tired of the envy if truth be told. That GT3 orthodontist had to beat out a whole lot of other folks during his career on the way to make that money so he could be an amateur racer. I am 100% sure he doesn't give a rats ass what the SCCA or NASA amateur racers who don't have $1M to spend on the same hobby say about him.
I agree. The difference between someone working a mid-level job to buy a used Camaro SS to race and a dentist buying a new GT3 car just seems like a question of scale.
why don't i watch gt races and things like that. please excuse me because i almost never use such an expression: FUCKING BALANCE OF FUCKING PERFORMANCE! people who support this do it ONLY because it gives close finishes. FINISHES! in this very limited area i consider advocates of b.o.p. as hypercommercial charlatans who are beneath contempt. i know nice people who just love a 24hr race with 3 cars finishing in the same 20 seconds. utterly abhorrent to me. i can expand on the few facets of this subject but this is enough for now. merry third day of Christmas!
That’s why F1 sits above all other forms of four-wheeled motorsport.
True, total competition.
Until that blue shell comes out of no where and knocks Max out of first place
You forgot “cutthroat”.
Up to a point, Lord Sherman. It’s technically very restricted compared to the glory days (anytime up to 2000? 2010?) with virtually everything defined, so the variables are mostly aerodynamic. Very clever, I will admit, but all too often it’s the best car that wins and that’s that. There is at least an handful who would have won 15 races this year in Max’s car. Maybe not 18 races, but still pretty dull. And as this is an open thread, can I drop in a hate-bomb? Fast road cars are increasingly ridiculous; too powerful, too expensive and generally too literally useless. For discussion purposes, you understand!
It’s total competition in the sense that all 10 teams design and build a car. There are opportunities to climb the ladder (Aston Martin, McLaren) and opportunities to slide down the pole (Alpine, Alfa Romeo Sauber, Haas) from season to season.
If your car isn’t fast enough, your options are (1) quit (2) get better (3) accept being a loser.
" I am 100% sure he doesn't give a rats ass what the SCCA or NASA amateur racers who don't have $1M to spend on the same hobby say about him."
It goes one of two ways. Half of them don't care about anything outside their own walled garden and the other half OBSESS about what's happening elsewhere.
Great comment
Agreed. While I have much respect for those that can build, wrench, restore, and fabricate to an extremely high level, I can't do that (or can to a much, much, much lesser degree) and thus have to consider my situation and engage this hobby/passion accordingly. It's fun to make a vehicle "my own" through modification, maintenance item choice (tires, shocks, etc), or needed repair, but it's also fun/enjoyable to not have to always be working on it.
Is my 2.0L 3rd gen Protege "earned" after having the interior, trunk, and cowl apart 1.5 times, seam sealing every conceivable place water could come in (because it's made of Swiss cheese), changing out a few pieces, and adding sound insulation? I guess, but I'm a bit over the work part of it and just want to drive the thing because it exudes the same joy and singular focus for spirited driving as Australian Shepherd does for herding cattle.
I think I'd rather have my vehicles align with who I am or what values I work to embody and benefit others with. The Protege is "me" or simply the car I am most comfortable with. Virtuous yet fun, with no prestige or expectations put upon it (for better and worse). The LS and my truck have been outside my comfort zone as one is very luxurious and the other exists along the dick measuring spectrum that is often gate-kept (by the diesel guys, naturally) and I'm just a kid from the burbs who's had a crush on 2nd gen Rams for nearly three decades.
Same. I think it really comes from where people derive their self worth. Whether by building or buying, it'll never be enough.
Interesting article. Qualified "yes" to earning what I own - at least things that are meant to be used. I used to ski, own skis, but no longer refer to myself as a skier as I haven't hit the slopes in years. Still ride the bikes so in that sense I'm still a motorcyclist.
Will have to think on how this applies to artifacts, decorative objects. I have my great grandfather s pocket watch from his railroad days. Don't use it, don't show it off, it sits on a shelf in a stand and gets wound as needed. I inherited it, does that mean I earned it? It'll go to my grand nephew when I pass, so perhaps I'm just a caretaker.
If your grandfather wanted you to have it, you're permanently entitled to it via his effort.
I've already mentioned my feelings about my Rolex. Funny story, the guy who I inherited it from was a bit of a Mr. Magoo type, and his wife originally bought him one with a bunch of funny dials on it that he couldn't figure out, so he took it back and got the plain Datejust. Not 100% sure but I believe the watch he returned was a Daytona. Just goes to show that even high speed shooters have trouble with new concepts if there isn't school for it taught by senior NCOs and warrant officers yelling at them.
Back in the day, nobody wanted a Daytona. They were $250 in the 80s.
I consider relic guitars especially ones with pre worn fretboards to be unearned valor.
Relic guitars are the worst.
THE.
WORST.
the lowest point was the listing on MyLesPaul for a Murphy aged R9 where the dude solemnly assured everyone that NO unauthorized wear had taken place and that the guitar was in EXACTLY the relic condition applied by Murphy.
“Unauthorized” wear ha ha
I'm okay with relic guitars as long as one acknowledges them for what they are.
My dad has a very lightly Murphy aged R9. The hardware is tarnished, and the lacquer is checked. He wanted something that didn't look brand new without looking beat up.
It'll be mine, eventually, and I'll keep it until I drop dead. So I really don't give a shit what it's worth or "preserving" it except in the sense that I'm protective of everything else that was my dad's.