Bay Area Type-In: Photos and Type Samples

In roughly chronological order:





Sadie's information card which I typed up in advance. I don't know exactly what the etiquette is for identifying one's own machines. I thought I should be prepared, though, in case anyone asked what age my machine was (they didn't.) You can see Sadie in the foreground, the typecast page about to be used with my ramblings. Richard's Twolympia in the middle, and Carolee aka "Good Mail Day" pecking away on a Smith-Corona that she adopted from yours truly.

I brought a box of these little paper squares for samples and for sharing. I'm glad I did, since it let me compile something of a group of "trading cards" for all the machines I tried out. It also gave me a chance to forget to change the margin on more than one machine, as you'll see.

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I am not afraid of the paint can when used to trick out a typewriter. I figure they shouldn't have to go through their retirement with the same office-drab paint they came into. But I don't have the chops (yet?) to completely remove all the panels and have the whole thing done. This machine... audacious. And perfect, for the size of the typeface. I love it.

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This next one was clearly in the look-but-don't-touch category:



I wish the lighting and my own camera skills could have been more compatible. These simply do not do the machine or the rings justice.




Never used, these rings. Still in the original box.



How do you top a museum piece like that? MORE TYPING.

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Hubris = typos. Remember that. It's actually not a German keyboard. Richard and the shop folks were taking and making guesses. Attention Bob Messenger: you are needed on the West Coast!





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Lots of flitting around at this event: the Cole-Steel was on the same table as the Continental, near the camera here:



The Olympia was more toward the back. I know that I tend to comment on noise of these machines. There was a heady din through most of the day. A wonderful, metal-on-paper din.





Some of the Royal 10, which had been rebuilt at some point in its past. The glass panels had been removed and replaced with plastic (?) with the textured finish. I love the service label in the shift key. Here it is, getting a workout from Tony M.



And some attempts at unusual angles:





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I tended to move at random from machine to machine. My attempt at typing "The quick brown fox" (positionally) on a Cyrillic (?) Good Companion was not filled with promise.





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An Adler travel machine was set up in the back, and was one of my first brushes with the documentary crew. Props to them for managing two guys with cameras and a boom mic in a space made smaller by all the tables and typists.



The Hermes was by the front door, next to the sign-in Underwood standard. Adwoa would surely have passed it by without a second glance, but it stood out here, battered and dusty though it was.

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I got a chance to take Richard's Twolympia for a spin. A risky move (for him) given my proclivities for these machines. He had some handy excuse about the carriage not stopping all the time, but I think this was just a self-preservation move on his part. NEXT TIME, POLT. NEXT TIME.



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Olivetti vs. Olivetti vs. Facit! The winner? I may have to go with the script Olivetti, to be totally honest, though the Facit was something else.



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Around the middle of the event, we heard some kind words from the owners of the shop, who were pleasantly pleased that they had to dig out their old tools once again, and were amused at the variety of machines that are now walking in the door. I think there were at least two customers not part of the type-in that came in to the shop. Not bad for a Friday afternoon with a sketchy-looking crowd hanging around the place.


Our hosts and some shots around the shop...


Around the room for introductions.








No table space? Play it where they lie.


Right in the front window, like a beacon of awesome. So. Shiny.


Oh Ames, how we miss you.


Old and new, working together.

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And at Richard's comment ("Hey, did you see their workbench?") I naturally stuck my nose behind the magic screen...









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Finally -- and sadly! -- it was time to get a little last typing in and head home. A final comparison type sample, and a few parting thoughts.





Get turned on to typing at California Typewriter!

Bay Area Type-In: A Typecast and First Impressions

(click to embiggen)

Just a quick post of the typecast that I started at today's Type-In at California Typewriter in Berkeley, courtesy of the magical organizational powers of Richard Polt and the documentary crew, and of course our hosts. At the end of the event, Richard pointed out that three hours seemed like it would be too long -- in the end, they flew by. I got my hands on some prize machines, at least long enough to get type samples and some photos, which I hope to post tomorrow. Highlights certainly include the animal-key Remington, the 6-cpi Smith-Corona painted in pink glitter, and all the worthy machines lining the shop walls. A chrome Lettera! A gilt Royal Quiet de Luxe! Three-banks galore! Arrrrgh! The temptations were great indeed.

Best of all, though, were the people: putting actual faces to names I've only read online, or voices to those faces that I've only seen in profile photos. (If that makes any sense.) Oh, and a Fun Fact! I was not at all successful in appearing cool and collected around of the camera, and am sure that I babbled and rambled mercilessly. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Honest. I don't talk that fast in real life. Sometimes I even make sense.

In all, a grand event, and I'm very grateful to Herb, Ken, and Carmen for opening their doors, laying out the tables, and keeping the room humming on coffee and cupcakes. There was music in the air today, folks, and it was lovely.


Typed on Sadie, freshly waxed and cleaned with a brand new ribbon

Fatherly Advice, and Peanut Butter

Well, it's not exactly a vacation right now, preparing for Christmas with three kids. Most of my week was spent shuttling my eldest child to and from his end-of-semester exams, or final shopping, or wrapping. Any non-perishable goods not nailed down tend to get wrapped and stowed under the tree around here in these final few days, and attributed to the dog. "Peanut butter! Just what we needed!"

A word of fatherly advice for any parents of young children: you'll get endless entertainment by tossing out the "what shall we get mommy for Christmas" routine, and instead taking your child to the local junk store (99-cents-only, or the like) and turning them loose to pick out gifts. There is never a bad time to do this -- my own father is a firm believer in the Christmas Eve shopping trip. ("No lines, and the choices are easy!") My wife and I have been alternately gifted with some really magical things over the years as a result that reveal far more about the psyches of our offspring than any battery of tests might reveal. I suppose wrapping up dry goods and blaming the pets says a lot about me, too.

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I've held my nose and plunged back into my NaNo draft. It's... not as terrible as I'd thought. Rough in parts, and full of the usual amount of flailing, tangential asides, and shifting character names and motivations. I've got to do better by this draft, and try not to let it get added to the growing stack of "to edit" pages archived in boxes. Perhaps I'll leave a few chapters out for Santa with the milk and cookies and see if he'll give me the gift of a critical eye this year. Anyone else dipping toes into the creative waters before the year is up? I'll start banging the "I need beta readers" drum here before too long, I hope, and I'm always happy to do a novel exchange.

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The San Francisco Bay Area Type-In is prepped and ready: 2pm on the 27th at California Typewriter in Berkeley. I treated myself to a replacement camera about a month ago after the flash died on my old one, so I plan to show up with paper, typewriter, and an itchy shutter finger. I also plan on chaining myself to the nearest SG-1 and not leaving until they cut me loose and haul me away. I figure that's pretty exciting stuff, and only regret not causing a bigger scene the last time a documentary crew rolled through town. I'll be rectifying that, don't worry. Typosphere: please start collecting bail money now.

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The kids are counting down the days, and hours, and probably seconds until they get to unwrap all those new, mysterious gifts under the tree. ("Saltines?") I'm counting down the days until I get to meet Typospherians face-to-face and enjoy a little typewriter time, and to get away from what will surely be known as the Saltines-and-Peanut-Butter Riots of 2013. If you're looking at the calendar with dread and anxiety and an unfinished gift list, the dad in me recommends a quick trip to Heifer International to support families in need around the world. Maybe it's not as great as a trip to the dollar store or a festively wrapped jar of jalapeño peppers -- for New Year's nachos! -- but it can make an actual difference in someone's life. No matter what your beliefs or how you might celebrate the passing of the old year and the start of a new, why not take a look?

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Hope to see many of you on the 27th, and for those I don't, Merry Christmas!

Nor-Cal Mini Type-In 2: Non-Electric Boogaloo

Cameron had the presence of mind to bring a real camera, whereas I was stuck with my cell phone and some notably low-res photos. Truly a celebration of low-tech on this fine day. Expect crisper photos from Cameron when he's able to get back to a computer and upload them.



Despite Cameron's apologies about minor paint scuffs and the nylon ribbon, I found the Corona really very nice to type with.  Playing "find the controls" was another highlight. The backspace key floats over near the right spool, and the margin release is actually a pair of levers on the carriage. Double line-spacing is activated by rotating a small metal shape on the left of the carriage near the ratchet -- that's the best way I can describe it. Neither of us could locate the control to disengage the feed rollers, if there is even such a thing on this machine.

Since I already have to look at my hands to type, playing "find the punctuation" was an added bonus to the typecast. As you can see from the type sample, the apostrophe hangs out about the "J" key, which explains my intermittent typos. The other gaffes are purely just my inability to type properly, as usual. I got a little faster by the end of the page, and didn't have to adjust myself mentally as much to remember which shift button to press. I appear to use my left hand almost exclusively for shifting, and unhelpfully, both left-hand keys are labeled "FIG."

Corona owners: are there nuts that fit atop the spools? They seem to want to pop off when the machine is being folded. The Erika that I owned had them, but these spool posts didn't look threaded to me. We don't know if these are the original spools or not, though Cameron has the booklet for this machine, so perhaps there's a helpful illustration in there. We didn't check.



We got a number of passers-by this time as before. The table where we were situated is located in the middle of a professional building complex, and is a shortcut for pedestrians looking for a little shade. We got the usual comments like "haven't heard that in a while" or "I haven't seen a Corona in years!" Just as we were packing up, a woman in her 70s(?) came up to me and actually thanked me: "So many memories -- thank you so much for doing this."

Yeah, that was a pretty amazing feeling.



Cameron decided to bring the Corona, since all his "problem child" machines are currently in a working state thanks to a fortunate combination of luck and judicious cleaning/random prodding. This type-in was purely about the bling, and that Royal is probably the nicest-looking machine I own. It also is the first one I bought once I found that fateful "Typewriter Brigade" post of Duffy's, way back when, and it's the machine that made the inaugural typecast on this blog just a touch over four years ago, almost to the day. And here I brought it along just because it was shiny. Coincidences abound today.

I couldn't remember at the time, but the Royal is a 1932 model, so these two machines are roughly ten years apart. The Corona is a sprightly 90, and the Royal is a handsome 80 years young.  More than once today did I make the tired joke about "I hope I look this good at 90!" That's ten years of technology advances in that photo, then, or put in modern terms, an iPhone 4S next to the original iPod.

Hey, Bay Area Typospherians! Maybe we can get together for a bigger 945xx zip code type-in. Say "hi" in the comments if you're interested.

Nor-Cal Mini Type-In

Dedicated followers of the Typosphere know that for a while, I seemed to be the only California-based typecaster out there (or at least the only one willing to blog about it.) Cameron of Living in the Woods joined up this year, and when he said he'd be nearby, we arranged for the First Ever Type-In of the Northern California Branch of the Typosphere. We met today for lunch and typing, and some inspection of a couple of sick machines in Cameron's care: an Olympia SM3 with more than the usual amount of smooshed bushings, and a de-badged Olivetti with a loose top, letting me at last tell a fellow typecaster that he had a few screws loose.

My original meeting place of a coffee shop was passed up for the far larger table space in the adjoining courtyard: the same place where I filmed my one-man Typewriter Day celebration. Whether it was the sight of the mighty spread of machines (five between the two of us) or the the music of the typing as it echoed around the court, we talked with several passers-by about typewriters, the 'sphere, and this crazy thing of blogging on a typewriter and fielded many questions from an over-friendly security guard asking the worth of his old Underwood portable. Sigh. Note to graphic designers: we need to start passing out business cards with the Typosphere URL on it. Seriously.

As always, the live-typing seems incomplete compared to the amount of actual socializing we managed to squeeze into my lunch hour: Cameron did more typing than I did, as I got to look over the problem machines he brought along. I'm rather camera-shy, and didn't want to put Cameron on the spot by taking his picture, so you'll have to settle for my typecast and these photos, and imagine two dashing gentlemen typing away on a pleasant sunny day.

Cameron brought a Tippa at my request, and it's a cool little machine. I have a real soft spot for travel-size typewriters, and this one is very full-featured and well built. A little skip-prone with a "soft" left margin, but a fine machine nonetheless. Plus, it came with the manual and a load of accessories, including a ruler with which I demonstrated the magic "Olympia elite" typeface (11 characters per inch.) Touch control? I forgot to look this one up. But there's a clever "stencil" knob on the right-hand side. Both are features I haven't seen on a travel machine before. Love the plastic eraser shield that was in the case. Just outstanding. No space is wasted: a place to file everything. And leather! Not cheap vinyl. The back of Cameron's sick SM3. I took this to check against my own machines, which are newer. The other patient: a $5 Olivetti with a little rust and a loose top. Four screws will fix the top, cleaning is needed for the guts, and some Liquid Wrench or other penetrating oil is needed to loosen one of the spool nuts. It's just a Valentine, without the $200 plastic trash can attached. My view of the proceedings. Clockwise from lower left: Tippa, Skyriter, Baby, SM3, and Olivetti, hiding under the stack of lids. Cameron's view. Note the pile of smooshed bushings to the left of the Olympia. Kids! Always check your rubber. (ahem) Even the Nano Rhino got into the act, coming out at the promise of a meal. Cameron's joining the Typewriter Brigade for his first ever NaNoWriMo this year. What about you?