For me, ‘cool’ is ‘functional’.
It is functional. I’ve never had to craft a survival shelter from trees, so for what I need it, it is functional.
That’s why i carry a very small, very sharp knife. I want something that can neatly remove a hangnail. It’s nice if i can also cut a bad spot out of a fruit, open boxes, and maybe even sharpen a pencil. That’s a cool knife to me. 
I might even use it for some recreational whittling. But neatly removing hangnails is job number 1.
Eons ago when I was 4-ish I used to hang around the park near my house. There were lots of teenagers hanging out around the park, as well, and we younger kids referred to them as ‘the hippies’ even though we probably weren’t using that term correctly. A lot of those hippies, male and female, carried buck knives (which, for them, may have been a genericized term). I saw some of the girls pulling their buck knives out of their handbags and comparing their knives to the stuff the guys were pulling out of their back pockets or hip-holsters. The guys liked practicing and showing off how they could quickly draw their knives and unfold them in a quick one-handed action.
Two decades later, when I started working in a warehouse, I saw that it was popular for my colleagues to carry box-cutters and utility knives. The guys carrying box-cutters (including me) had a habit of losing them and the guys who had been around quite a while used utility knives. The problem with the utility knife is that the funny angle on the point (when the blade is retracted) tends to wear through a back pocket from the inside out, and eventually the hole gets big enough for the knife to drop through and get lost somewhere – and generally make that back pocket unsightly and less-than-fully-useful.
So I remembered those ‘hippies’ and their buck knives and started looking up spring-loaded Buck knives and automatic knives and drop/gravity knives. I quickly learned that, in California, spring-loaded knives (switch-blades) are illegal while gravity/drop/flip-able knives are only mostly illegal. People allowed to carry them to-and-from home or the place of usage include those who work in cooking or warehouse jobs, and martial artists. People allowed to wear them regularly are cooks and warehouse workers. [Martial artists can’t wear them around – especially not in public. They can only carry them to the dojo and back home. If they are to be ‘worn’ as part of a performance, they have to be removed with the rest of the costume (uniform) when transitioning back to civilian attire.]
So I got this neat idea to dig out the bali-sung (popularly called a butterfly knife) that I had learned to use for martial arts and found a holster for it. I would carry it in my backpack and then strap it on my hip with my regular belt after punching-in at the warehouse. Whenever I had boxes to open or split up for the trash bin, I’d flip that thing out (a different way each time; it was a good way to practice those old techniques again) and deliver a few quick slices, then flip it back to the closed position and tuck it into the holster again. Before leaving the warehouse, I made a point of putting that thing back in my backpack.
It’s been decades since I worked at that warehouse. The thing sits in its holster and they gather dust in the garage somewhere.
–G!
Years ago, in another life, I worked for a well known knife company and I always volunteered to work their ‘employee sales’, where we, the workers, got first crack at all the knives on sale.
This company would buy multiples of their competitors knives to ‘study’
Anyway, I had large quantities of pocket knives and, to a lesser extent, sheath knives. I still have a box full of knives in my garage. But I found to my chagrin that I tended to lose pocket knives regularly. So now I carry a cheap chinese knockoff of a Kershaw Leak. I’ve lost it a dozen times, but it keeps showing back up, as if by magic. 
Incidentally, I have a Buck knife similar to the one you were talking about that has been sharpened (not by me) to the point that the blade is more than half gone. I think I got it from my grandfather, but don’t really remember.
I grew up always carrying a knife in my pocket. Usually a Schrade, not for personal protection, but because it was great to have handy as a tool on you. My father carried a pocket knife on him till he died.
As an adult, I travel quite a bit for my work, and as such quit carring a knife as an every day carry item, but I have a few Benchmade knives that I keep handy on the weekends. My favorite is the Mini Bugout.
I own many knives, but this is my favorite.
That’s my other 110 Folding Hunter.
Hijacking my own thread (again), but… my Case fish knife arrived Tuesday. Today I received a new belt that had some plastic wrapped around it that was fixed with tape. My new knife was on the coffee table, so I did actually use it.
Incidentally, my girlfriend in the '80s/'90s and I both had Imperial fish knives. Our phrase was ‘Fish knife? Fishwife!’
My every day carry is a Kershaw Blur. I spent a little extra for the S30V steel. Had it for years, used it a lot, mostly on paper, which is unintuitively very hard on knives, and it’s still scary sharp today. Worth every penny and more of the $70 I paid.
Likewise. I always carried a knife. When a kid in grade school it was usually a two blade folding knife.
It’s very strange to not carry a knife when traveling. And that is often the time you need one.
I know I’ve told this one before, but I carried my yellow Case Slimline Trapper in my pocket all the time. One morning I decided I didn’t really need to carry it. Just didn’t use it enough. So I get on my Seca II for the ride to work. Fast lane on the 405, and the engine suddenly quit. I coasted over to the right shoulder. I don’t remember how I figured it out, but I deduced that a wire had broken and the bike thought the kickstand was down. Engine shuts off if it’s in gear with the kickstand down. (Now that I think of it, I may have shifted into neutral on the side of the freeway and it started, then died when I put it in gear. That might have been the clue.) I needed to strip a wire to do a field repair… but I didn’t have my knife. I was able to do it with the P38 can opener that is still on my keychain 30 years later. But it would have been easier with a blade.
talk about a plot-twist by introducing completely unrelated information 
…
…Since his untimely death, Wallstreet is up 314%
There are pretty strict limitations on EDC knives where I live (basically has to be non-locking blade less than 3 inches long). I typically carry one of these: Otter Anchor Knife 171 RML Small Stainless, Smoked Oak, Stainless Anchor, pocket knife | Advantageously shopping at Knivesandtools.ie
I carry a Swiss army knife and every time I fly I have to remind myself to toss it into my checked bag before I head to the airport. There have been a number of times when I’d forget it was still in my pocket until after I’d checked my bag. I would stuff it into my carry on and hope it would get through security. Every time it would go unnoticed when the bag went through the x-ray.
The funny thing was one time they insisted on searching my bag the knife wasn’t there. After a physical search they ran it through x-ray again, and insisted that there was something showing up, but we couldn’t find it. Finally they waved me on through. When I got home I completely emptied the bag and still couldn’t find anything that might have shown up.