#46 Nosebleed for the 21st Century

Ed Templeton Untitled (Bloody Nose) 2006 Color photograph, framed. 10.5 x 15 in (26.7 x 38.1 cm)

The 50 Gs Weblog started in 2008 with a small item about a model of the 21st Century Boys (in case you didn’t notice, that’s where C.B. stand for) designed by Gio Estevez. A year ago I wrote about Tommy Guerrero. This article is about another model of this series, designed by professional skateboarder and contemporary artist Ed Templeton. In 1993 he founded his skateboard brand Toy Machine.

When I first searched for Ed Templeton, I found a lot of great photos of night time skateboarding. I pretty much like his style of photography. Also his Sect creature can be considered his autograph, which comes back in his graphic works for Toy machine.. Ed has also published several photography books. He has a blog, both with personal and art photography.

 His wife Deanna Templeton is also a very busy photographer. They both have expositions at museums and galleries around the world.

Also Ed Templeton is an animal rights activist and a dedicated vegan. I’m not much into vegan culture, but I learned from an interview with him that he doesn’t even use sugar, because “bone char” is used to bleach white crystal sugar, he only wear shoes where no leather is used and doesn’t visit circuses. Still he doesn’t want to force people to become vegan. Pretty much I do what I do and you do what you want to do.

Last year I went to the skate shop Bonk in Breda to look for cool T-Shirts and other stuff. The shop owner was a great guy and pulled open all registers as he saw I was happily looking for T-Shirts. As he went to the back of the shop for the somaniest time to get a pile of other great shirts, my eyes fell on a wall with skateboard decks. While spotting a Sect deck, I asked the owner, “That’s an Ed Templeton deck, isn’t it?”. The shop owner put away the pile of tees that he got from the back and told me very excited, that I had to follow him to the entrance of his shop. “Look what we’ve got”. In the shop window there were 3 hand painted decks, specially made for this shop. Needless to tell that my tongue fell out of my mouth and dropped with a bang on the ground.

If you visit the website of Toy Machine, you might take a look at the links. If you scroll down to the “Rider sites”, don’t forget to check “Weirdness”. You may find a familiar website… and a familiar watch.

To me this G-Shock model is the standing out the most of the four models that were released in November 1998. It has a double Velcro watchband with graphics on the patches. The drawing of a green creature with a bleeding nose is drawing attention when wearing the watch. When the buckle is opened, this creature is seen from the side with a cascade of blood flooding out of his nose.

The nosebleed might be derived from Toy Machine’s tagline that you can find in their logo “Bloodsucking Skateboard Company”. The only reason I don’t skate is that at my first attempt, in the mid 70’s, the skateboard swapped from under my feet and fell very hard with my head on the street. It was very painful and I had never tried it a second time anymore. I guess nosebleeds and other injuries are common when you are skateboarding.

When the EL backlight is activated another creature by Ed Templeton is revealed. It’s a bird. No idea what’s the thought behind it. Maybe we are looking through a hole at a bird in a cage.

The three of the four models of the first 21st C.B. series all have a message from the designer. This watch has the message “Total Destruction”. Somehow Dan Drehobl didn’t leave a message on his G-Shock.

All models of these series are DW-003 models. This series were released only outside Japan, probably only in Europe and the USA. The series might have to do with the G-Shock pro skateboard team of the 90’s. This skateboard team included Eric Koston, Willy Santos, Ed Templeton, Omar Hassan and Steve Caballero. These are not quite the smallest names in the Skateboard world. Probably this series were made especially for the US. Skateboarding was at that time, and still is, also very popular in Europe. That might explain why this series was also available in Europe.

The complete model number for this model is DW-003CB-3AVT. As the 3 in the suffix already suggests, the main color used on this watch is green. It is an unusual taint of green, compared with the current G-Shock colors that are often bright light green or olive drab. This watch is close to forest green.

 This G-Shock comes with a 1597 module. This module features one big display and a very small circular sub display in the upper left corner. In this small eye you might notice a star icon. In that case the “FLASH” function is enabled. When a new battery is put in this module, the FLASH function is default turned on. With this function activated, the display lights up every time an alarm is heard. I think it is still a great feature on G-Shock watches, although it uses extra energy from the battery.

The module is very basic, but all you need on a basic watch. An alarm function, a 24 hour Stopwatch and a 24 Hour Countdown Timer. The alarm function is default set for daily alarm, but you can program it for a specific date, or at a day of the month or at a specific month. For those who always want to see what time it is, the time is also shown in the first 60 minutes in Stopwatch mode (you got to show the hours somewhere after the first 60 minutes…) and in Countdown Timer mode. Since I have been using the Countdown Timer regularly the past weeks, I think showing time in this mode is a very handy.

This watch is already 12 years old. When I started collecting seriously, around 2002, this model was not hard to find. In the US there were even big sellers offering a lot of G-Shocks of this series. This probably means that quite a lot of them were made. Still, after all these years it has become harder to find these 21st C.B. models.

 If you find one of these, the prices should not be excessive high. About 5 years ago you could get one for around $50.- in the US, I have seen some lately going for around $70.-. I think these models are very good looking (well, the Dan Drehobl is blue and wasn’t looking too attractive for me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have it in my collection). I must admit I still wear the green and black models of this series regularly. The double Velcro strap is very comfortable. The under layer is thin, so it wears also comfortable when it’s very hot outside. I would love to see Casio making more models with straps like these.