I spent almost an hour figuring how to order a new brown-leather wristband for my six-year-old Swatch. Sooner or later leather rots and disintegrates. Yeah, my Swatch looks like the one in this video.

You can’t just order a leather wristband straight from the Swatch site, of course. And you can’t just tell the sales people what the serial # on the back of the Swatch is. You have snap a photo and send it along. And then they’ll eventually get back to me and I’ll give them a card number, etc. A three-week process.

I bought my current device inside the Grand Central Station Swatch store in ’13 or thereabouts. There are currently no Swatch stores in Los Angeles — the closest is in San Francisco. And don’t look down your nose either. Three or four years ago a smooth character who fancied himself a connoisseur of costly, extra-cool Swiss watches asked where I got this one. He was impressed by it, and so was I in that context. I didn’t want to confess so I lied and said I’d forgotten.