SEYBOLD BUILDING: LORE

Jewelers have lots of friends because some are naturally gregarious, but all jewelers have lots of friend because they expect discounts. Discounts from their middlemen, discounts from their priests and rabbis, discounts from the children garden or synthetic oil club. Jewelers need you to cut from the top because they are always the one left holding the cup; they buff and sparkle the fuck out of that bauble before wrapping it in tissue and laying it in its silky, plastic zip-lock sheath.

Just like the Phoenicians invented written language for commercial reasons, every sale, alteration, or consultation that jewelers make are based on a story, a narrative, un hilo or thread that carries the transaction from need to want to satiation. Jewelers are hubs from which emanate legions of anecdotes, cuentos, jokes, practicums and symposia. In our rush for k-pod singularity and 3D print articulations, jewelers might be some of the only remaining samurai artisan businessmen. Forget the retail chains or diamond wholesalers, many of those proprietors are just as privileged as your common portfolio manager; I'm talking about a hunger you can't teach in the U.S.

I am talking specifically about the jeweler that puts food on the table with their craft and their neck. These women and men can associate a story with every point of purchase, and as we continue to accelerate the loss of our physical memory to make way for the android memory server, let no one say I was not at the helm shouting down from the oxygen tanks that jewelers are repositories of stages in the life of an artifact, and that objects and artifacts used to matter. Maybe, I am being a nostalgic dick, a petulant post-millennial, or a gigantic mamon. Truth be told, I am heavily all three, but that does not preclude me from seeing the importance of jewelers.

But, I will never forget the tale of Eduardo and his loose wedding ring. Eduardo had recently gotten married; purely by mistake, he makes his ring a little looser than his fiance's. Because he was pressed for time, he decided to wear it loose and alter it the second he had a minute. Two months later, Eduardo is coming out of the Seybold, and while walking to Government Center, two dudes approach seemingly out nowhere and snatch his men's leather satchel, which the dudes probably mistaked for a bank deposit bag. While giving chase, the two dudes jumped over a fence with abundant ease; Eduardo gives chase, and manages to scamper up the fence with little difficulty.


But, as Eduardo nears the crest of the fence, he manages to slip a tine of the fence between his finger and the ring. At the same time, Eduardo looses footing as he throws his weight over, and the actual wedding ring ends up severing his finger. It pulls through the flesh, bone, and tears. The subsequent screaming that Eduardo looses upon the cold edifices of downtown Miami makes the santeros leaving dead chickens on the steps of the court house think twice about how they exit. Even though gold is considered a soft metal, it can still cut through skin and bone without much hesitation.

We need to see the serrated edge to know it cuts, but given enough weight and pressure, a ring of gold can act as a plasma slice of coin and cut through bone and plastic to yell its historical theater. .