Land Diver Society

A question that is asked often of us at L.D.S. is, “Why divers?” Normally, we just give the short answer: “Because they’re what we like.” While that’s true, it feels like a bit of a cop-out and doesn’t really answer the question. We wanted to give a more detailed explanation so that, in the future, we can simply point people toward this article.

When I first got into this hobby, dive watches were simply where I naturally landed. If my memory serves me right, the first mechanical watch I remember buying was a Seiko SKX. I liked how it felt on the wrist, appreciated that I could take it into any water-related situation I was likely to encounter, and found the Pepsi elapsed-time bezel genuinely useful.

I got into watches while working as a Pit Master at a BBQ restaurant, spending endless hours in the kitchen learning to hone my craft. Proper timing is everything in barbecue. We had digital clocks around the kitchen, but they weren’t conducive to keeping track of multiple things at once. If you’ve ever worked in a kitchen, you know timing is critical and that you’re rarely focused on just one task. It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re bouncing between responsibilities.

I had a quartz chronograph when I first started, hoping it would solve that problem. It didn’t take long to realize that reading tiny subdials quickly was a pain. They worked fine for short timing sessions under an hour, but anyone who knows barbecue knows it’s a game measured in hours, not minutes. Keeping track of when you put a brisket on the smoker is much easier by simply aligning the dive bezel with the current minute and checking it every hour when you go out to tend the fire.

Another thing that naturally lends itself to this environment is legibility. Dive watches are designed to be read at a glance, and that same design philosophy works just as well in a busy kitchen as it does underwater. Contrary to what TV might lead you to believe, a commercial kitchen can be a physically abusive place for gear. You’re constantly in and out of water, banging your wrist into stainless-steel tables, dealing with heat from smokers and grills, and frequently moving between a 90-plus-degree kitchen and a walk-in cooler. Through all of that, dive watches handled the abuse better than any other style I tried.

The final reason I gravitated toward divers in the kitchen was the sheer variety. Kitchens tend to be sterile environments where everyone wears the same uniform. For us, it was blue jeans, a black shirt, and a black apron. Tattoos and watches were some of the few ways to show a little personality without stepping outside that uniform.

After leaving the kitchen and pursuing a different career path, the dive watch just stuck with me. It worked for my hobbies for many of the same reasons it had worked so well in the kitchen, and the same has been true in every job I’ve had since. I’ve tried field watches, chronographs, GADA watches, sports watches—you name it. None of them seem to do everything a dive watch does for one reason or another.

I’m not a diver. Hell, the closest I get to being underwater is fishing or swimming in a lake or pool. I don’t use a dive watch for its original intended purpose, and that’s exactly where the name Land Diver Society comes from. I spend my time hiking, fishing, and hunting. I’m far more land-bound than sea-bound, and honestly I’ve never had much desire to learn to dive. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the people who do—it’s just not my thing.

With that being the case, you’d think a field watch would be the obvious choice. But honestly, for me, the best field watch is a dive watch. Field watches often sacrifice water resistance, lack the added utility of a rotating timing bezel, tend to share a very similar design language, and, in many cases, are more fragile while still carrying a price tag that’s difficult for me to justify.

Divers may not be the perfect watch for everyone, but they are for me. They’re versatile enough to cover 99% of what I ask a watch to do. I don’t wear dive watches because I dive—I wear them because they’re dependable tools that fit the way I live. For the small percentage of situations where they aren’t the perfect answer, I keep a few other watches in the collection to fill the gap.