The Case for Wearing a Hublot Big Bang Unico to Phish at the Sphere

Before it was a city, Las Vegas was a bet, a wager that people would cross a desert for a mélange of mischief, neon and steak. Developers decided this strip of desert would be better with a canal from Venice, an Eiffel Tower, and, most recently, a 366-foot globe that glows like a second moon. Everything in Sin City is bigger, shinier and a little more unhinged than it needs to be.

Big personality is Hublot's stock in trade, and the Big Bang Unico Petrol Blue Ceramic, ref. 441.ES.5121.RX, carries a 42mm case and bezel of polished petrol blue ceramic, held by six H-shaped titanium screws, in a color Hublot released this spring. Hublot claims no watch brand has gone further with colored ceramic, and petrol blue, deep and warm with the slightest suggestion of green, is its newest.

I was in town to check into Fontainebleau Las Vegas, the 67-story, 3,644-room hotel that, in September, kept its One MICHELIN Key in the 2026 guide, a second year running, and to check out a Phish show.

Phish booked the Sphere for nine shows this spring, spread over three weekends. I had a ticket for the last show of the run, which meant some of the most beloved songs had already been played, but there's a rule in the community about never missing a Sunday show, and on a nine-night run the last Saturday counts, so here I was. 

Think of Phish fans as the older, shaggier uncles of Swifties, every bit as devoted but less tidy about it. They too love their riddles, from Phish's New Year's Eve gags to wagering which song will appear on which night, and guessing when the jams will pop up from a group of men who've played this way together for more than 40 years. It's part club, part obsession.

Phish and Hublot are the same kind of loud. Both are allergic to restraint and followed by people who debate details for sport. A band that put a giant hot dog on the Sphere's screen for "Meatstick" has room on the guest list for a blue ceramic chronograph.

Leading up to the show, there was only one place to be: the resort's six-acre Oasis Pool Deck, which took cues from the landscapes of Roberto Burle Marx and the photographs of Slim Aarons. The Grand Pool's three bodies of water meet at Bleau Isle, a bar under an art-deco canopy, and FB Slims, beside the Grand Pool, makes its frozen cocktails fresh each day. When in Vegas and ordering from the pool, it's either a bucket of beers or frosé.

Watch on and the latter in hand, I splashed around, which was as refreshing as I'd hoped. Hublot rates the $24,100 Petrol Blue timepiece to 100 meters, enough for a pool of any depth, and puts it on a petrol blue rubber strap, the brand's founding gesture. In 1980 Hublot set a gold case on rubber, which it still describes as turning the luxury watch world upside down.

Under the skeleton dial sits the HUB1280 Unico, Hublot's in-house flyback chronograph, with its column wheel on the dial side rather than hidden on the back. The movement has 354 components, 43 jewels, a silicon escapement and about 72 hours of reserve, all inside the layered Big Bang case. It's also fun, which is what should be on the wrist for a show weekend in a city built on excess.

The floor of the Sphere is where the Big Bang shone brightest. Among the funky visuals and saturated colors, from "Farmhouse" to "Fluffhead," the polished petrol blue ceramic reflected whatever the screen threw at it, and the anti-reflective sapphire crystal kept the dial legible through the whole setlist. At 14.5mm the case sits tall, but ceramic runs lighter than steel, so it wears less than it measures.

Finishing out the night at the hotel's Cantina Contramar, Gabriela Cámara's first restaurant in the United States, I started with tacos de pescado al pastor, Mexico City's pork street taco remade with fish, and the tuna tostada with chipotle mayonnaise and fried leeks, and moved through her pescado a la talla, the whole grilled fish painted red on one side and green on the other. Hublot calls its ceramic almost entirely scratch-proof, so the case could meet a copper pan and a tequila flight, both of which were on the table, without worry. The bar runs on agave, with a program built with Casa Dragones, so tequila it was.

The walk back to the room winds through the south lobby, past Urs Fischer's "Lovers #3," 46 feet of aluminum, steel and gold leaf, two figures stacked one on the other and built to be seen from every side. I glanced at it for about a minute and then went back to looking at my wrist.