Ryan Fitzgerald never thought he’d wear a Rolex, let alone a Rolex on a NATO strap, while churning out ice cream at 1-900-ICE-CREAM, the Philadelphia company he founded that uses an e-commerce storefront and a flavor “drop” model to sling wild varieties of ice cream to Philadelphians, but here he is. “Rolex was just too conservative for me and I didn’t really think it was going to be my thing,” he says replicas de relojes. Then he discovered, as he says, the “Rolex with an orange lightning bolt.”
He’s talking about his Milgauss. It’s beat to hell and he wears it on a NATO that draws just as much attention as the watch itself – with its bright onomatopoeia or rainbow motif. Like most Rolex purchases, the Milgauss marks a personal milestone in Fitzgerald’s career in the food and beverage industry.
Fitzgerald’s come a long way from manually screen-printing T-shirts in his apartment during his early 20s. Screen-printing led him to a job managing printing contracts with global banks. “I’ve never been one to sell something that people didn’t want, and it’s difficult selling printing services in the digital world.”
But his next job would be nothing like his last.
In 2015, while holding down a career as a print broker, he started Boku Supper Club, an underground series of pop-up dinners that caught on bigtime in Philly’s rich food scene. “At first, I was just throwing dinner parties with my vacation days for my friends. I would have a day off and I would say to them, ‘Hey, you know, I’m thinking of doing four courses; come over. Throw in a little money and bring some beer.”
The business grew and Boku became a sensation in a short time. But diners were particularly keen on the macaroon ice cream sandwiches he was serving for dessert.
When Boku ran its course, Fitzgerald saw his future in ice cream and now he’s methodically building the 1-900-ICE-CREAM business in Philadelphia. Every day he wakes up, straps on his Milgauss, and heads into his industrial kitchen to mix up approachable-yet-experimental flavors. Fitzgerald’s goal? “How can I take a Snickers bar and represent it as ice cream? How can I rebuild that from the bottom up? Let’s rebuild a chocolate cake, things that people know – pecan pie, apple pie – into ice cream.”
Rolex Milgauss 116400
“You can sum up my taste by saying that I like things that were overlooked, and I think this was one of those watches. Total dog in its day. Didn’t sell particularly well and was discontinued. And that’s exactly why I like it,” Fitzgerald says of the Milgauss, the Rolex designed for nuclear engineers.
“When I was working in New York, it seemed like once you made a certain amount of money, you bought a Rolex to communicate something,” he says. “That’s not something I’m interested in.” So instead, he bought the most un-Rolex model, the white-dialed Milgauss.
He wears it on a variety of $7 dollar NATO straps that he bought online. Every day he’ll snag a new NATO from his collection of about a hundred, throw it on the Milgauss, and get to work. He dips his hand into caustic dish fluid and bangs the watch on metro racks. And that’s exactly what he had in mind when he bought it. When he closed down Boku Supper Club and pivoted to 1-900-ICE-CREAM, he finally bought the watch as a reminder of all the time he’d put into growing and building the business. Now it’s along for the ride as the ice cream business turns from a small operation into a phenomenon.
Fitzgerald’s mother was deputy director of overseas military schools, so she traveled often for work and stopped at the Duty Free store, where she’d often grab a plastic Swatch for her son. “This is the one that started it all, the taproot watch,” Fitzgerald says. He didn’t wear it when he was young because he couldn’t tell the time with such a busy dial. Instead, he wore a Swatch Scuba but he wore it so much that it literally disintegrated. The SCM 401 became more interesting as he got older, and he would put it on when throwing dinner parties at Boku. “As somebody who entertains every night, I’m in front of people and performing, and they’re seeing my hands move,” he says. “Especially at the chef’s counter, when I’m in front of them cooking replica uhren, to have a cool fun watch on me was part of my shtick.”
“My mom bought my dad this Omega years ago,” Fitzgerald says, but it wasn’t passed down to him in the usual fashion. “My dad was taking some VHS tapes back to the store when that was a thing and found a Cartier on the ground. He took out an ad in the local paper and he even got in touch with Cartier to try to track down the owner through the serial number, but nobody turned up as the owner, so he bought my mom the matching ladies’ version – and his old Omega came off his wrist and onto mine.”
You’ll rarely see this watch on Fitzgerald’s wrist, but it represents a phase of collecting that a lot of us go through. “I saw this watch on Instagram, hunted one down and bought one , and it didn’t fit right–it was way too big,” he says. But he ordered a domed and AR-coated aftermarket crystal for it anyway. He liked the idea of Seiko modding and now just can’t let it go. “Honestly, it sits in the drawer, but it was certainly a pursuit of mine.” Because of the memory associated with the quest and the thrill of adding his own modifications, he hasn’t yet let it go.
“I think I’m a Mercedes guy now. It’s so plush, it just eats the road, and it’s got a ton of style and character,” Fitzgerald says of his new-to-him Teutonic machine. “I got the Bring a Trailer daily newsletter and saw the thumbnail. It looked like it was in great condition, so I clicked on it, and no one had touched it, and I was like, this is the one they talk about! The one where everyone sleeps on it and you walk away with a deal.”
But that never really happens on Bring A Trailer. By design there’s too much visibility. Tens of thousands of people view the cars everyday.
“And then, with 40 minutes left, six different people show up to pitch in bids–and I’m sitting there thinking I can’t not have it. It hammered on a Tuesday, and on Wednesday morning I was on a plane to Tennessee to pick it up and drive it back. I showed up to work on Thursday with it,” Fitzgerald says.
“The car is a recent purchase, so I haven’t really figured out how to work it into my leisure life. Right now I run around town and do errands in it, but eventually it will be strictly for leisure,” he says. What pairs well with a top-down summertime cruise in a vintage Mercedes? A fun watch and a big old scoop of ice cream.
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