Just back from a trip to New York, so I thought I'd indulge in another bit of watch Flaneurism, as Dan christened it last time out! Though it will be far less interesting from a Heuer perspective than the Munich trip was... And when I say New York, I really mean Manhattan and even then only 86th St. and lower! Unless the taxi ride through Queens to JFK and walking halfway over the Brooklyn Bridge counts!!

I wasn't really there to look at watches, but as ever, if the opportunity presents itself...

47th St. seemed like the best place to start, but it just confirmed my previous impressions of the place. Just about every watch is Rolex and, of those that aren't, they are either Pateks or Breitlings. The latest craze for the latter would appear to be grotesque, massively wide Bentley Breitlings with custom diamond bezels, dials, bracelets, whatever... at least I assume they are custom, I wouldn't actually put it past Breitling to be able to make hideous monstrosities all by themselves nowadays... Original or aftermarket, either way they are several million times too rich for my Northern European tastes and probably everyone else reading the forum too - unless you have an alternative career as a platinum-selling rap artist maybe... Full of alternately pushy and offish sellers too, so didn't bother hanging around too long, but I didn't spot a single Heuer on either side of the street.

Tourneau is a waste of time - both the one close to the hotel and the Time Machine "flagship" (replete with annoying tick outside) equate "vintage" with "pre-owned". You'd have to get lucky and turn up when someone had traded in a nice vintage watch for something new and by lucky, I mean really lucky. You can forget a lot of the watch "boutiques" too - they may have vintage watches but Heuer doesn't really cut it with them...

Some of the small shops were more interesting. A tiny one more or less directly opposite the Public Library had maybe 15 watches in total, but all quite nice and interesting - highlight was a Breitling chrono from back when they still produced watches with some restraint!

And walking back from a nice Mexican meal (accompanied by several fairly potent frozen Margaritas I felt I had to have after extensive discussion on the forum!), I chanced upon a jeweller that I'd been planning to have a look at anyway - Louis Martin on 50th. They had loads of vintage watches - Rolexes were refreshingly no more than about 20% of the total, and they had a very nice selection of Omegas spanning five decades or so (I must ask the Omega guys what the story is with "De Ville", seems like a model name now but back then it looks like it was a supplementary name on other models?). Some well worth looking at if you hanker after a basic three-hand watch. Anyway, I took another look when I was less Margarita-fuelled, and they did indeed have a Heuer too! A 40s/50s chrono in gold (that possibly is similar to the one Shaun was trying to ID). The only Heuer I saw on the whole trip and not one I was really after, so there was no repatriation of Heuers back to Europe this time around...

On the basis that Heuers have a strong connection to motor-sport though, it was a nice surprise to come face to face(s) with a racing legend while I was there!

For those not familiar with it, that's the (real!) Borg-Warner trophy, as presented to the winners of the Indy 500. It was in Macy's, apparently only for the day one of the shop staff was saying. Pretty impressive trophy - every winner gets a little relief of their face added to it:

For some reason, they made Dario Franchitti look a bit like an H.R.Giger alien from the movie though!!!

They had a lot of the racecars on display. Mainly the sort of homebrew US cars that competed in the early years (sorry guys, it only counts when a non-US driver wins ;)!! Kidding, just kidding... nearly 1 in 4, you know? ;) ) but also a car of note to the European racing crowd:

An ex-Jim Clark Lotus! A '63 car, mind, when he came second, rather than the '65 winning car, but still...