Philly Typewriter

06/11/2024

📣 New Merch! 📣

We don't do patch jobs at the shop, but you can now get these awesome iron on patches in store and on our website!

These brilliant 3.5-inch patches are all fully embroidered with a super soft thread and sporting our official logo!

Get yours today!

06/03/2024

🏳️‍🌈 Happy Pride!! 🏳️‍🌈

At Philly Typewriter, we strive to promote an inclusive community not just during Pride Month, but all the time. Ensuring that we remain a safe space for guests and artists to call home is a top priority.

Our door is always open. ❤️

05/31/2024

Graduation 2024, Master Mechanic Ryan
Anderson. 🎉

After four years of hard work, research, and study, we are proud to announce the graduation of a mechanic that has tirelessly given himself to a machine that has stood the test of time. Ryan joined us in March of 2020 with an extensive background in wood and metal working, concrete, kinetic sculptures, and that's just to name a few things.

Ryan immediately rose through the shop, finding his home as he would describe it "solving giant 3D puzzles. A skilled hand, Ryan performed a host of different responsibilities with detail work, cleaning, lubrication bolstered by an open mind eager to learn everything he could.

Developing into an incredible mechanic, Ryan can now take on any typewriter that crosses his bench and has been conferred "Master Mechanic" in a new era for Philly Typewriter.

Ryan overseers all typewriter foot manufacturing at Philly Typewriter, as well as managing the mechanics still working through their degree ranks. In his spare
time he enjoys traveling, performing and recording music on guitar, and daily posts to his .calendar instagram documenting the date of the day from pages of the past.

🎓 Congratulations Ryan! 🎓

05/30/2024

Who's behind the benches at Philly Typewriter.

As our major announcement this Saturday draws near, we want to take a minute to introduce you to a few of the many people who have helped Philly Typewriter grow over these past ten years working in manual mechanical typewriters.

Tristin Guanzon - Working as a Detail Specialist in their first year, Tristin takes on typewriters that have sat dormant for decades and spends hours of highly skilled labor bringing them back to a mirror state, as well as treating machines of various finishes like wrinkle and paint.

Howard Green - A retired podiatrist and surgeon, it is joked that Howard wields a qtip like a scalpel in his work as Philly Typewriters Senior Detail Specialist. With a skilled hand, Howard has spent over four years pioneering the detail process at the shop and cosmetically treating machines encased in hardened and oxidized enamel paint.

Raiddy Drake - Raiddy has developed into a jack of all trades in their second year at Philly Typewriter. Now, with a focus on our cleaning and lubrication process, Raiddy is quick to see what isn’t working when a machine is dry, dirty, or in need of proper lubrication. Raiddy works along the other mechanics and ensures quick results in her every effort.

Bill Rhoda - As Co-Owner of Philly Typewriter, Bill works as the shop's Lead Mechanic and manages the apprentice staff as they move through their rainks. Always happy to meet with clients new and old, Bill looks forward to working with everyone on their needs and wants, to make sure their machines are cared for, and are capable of lasting the client the rest of their life.

05/29/2024

So Who Uses Typewriters Anyway?

We work with a wide variety of clients from all over the world. It’s seldom those who are looking for something for the shelf. Our vast client base is historically people who are experiencing “Digital Burnout” or are writers and authors looking at having a new experience with the most advanced writing medium.

Authors looking to write and not edit. The young college student who is looking for distraction free writing away from their phone and laptop. The client who arrives with their great grandmother's typewriter, who used it for bookkeeping in the 1930s, and wants to have it rebuilt for his family to remember their legacy and use it once more.

That’s who uses typewriters, and we celebrate and get to know every one of them. It’s one the reasons we don’t ship our machines. We want to build and encourage each relationship at Philly Typewriter, where a client knows they can rely on us for anything their machine needs. Where they can swing by for a ribbon or a cup of coffee. Where our space is used to cultivate a community around the arts and sciences. Where you’re welcome to use our space as your space, work from home, use other machines free of charge, hang out with us, and feel at home.

05/28/2024

The Cumulative Care Process of Philly Typewriter.

When a machine resurfaces after sometimes decades of storage, it requires quite a bit of work to return to optimal performance. After many years of trying to “do a little,” it was decided in late 2019 that these machines deserved better, and so did their owners.

Hardened rubber, substandard storage, eraser debris, whiteout, and hardened grease made performing only a “tune-up” something daunting while trying to deliver high standards. Sometimes, only after a cleaning would it reveal deeper mechanical issues. Oftentimes, machines might need to be malaligned to achieve a modest result, only treating a symptom but not delivering a cure. Making things work and actually restoring them began to fight head to head in a match, trying to balance accessible pricing and performing the necessary work to provide a client with a machine that would last forever.

Very quickly, it became “If you give a mouse a cookie.” If we disassemble it, we’ll clean it. If we clean it, we’ll detail, polish, and manicure it. If we detail it, we’ll reassemble it, but if we reassemble it, we’ll replace the destroyed rubber and replace springs and parts… It just kept going. Just wanting it to type, although still something we can do for clients, became something that reflected poorly on the standard we’d fought hard to build. These are precision writing instruments, in many regards, the pinnacle of writing technology. They deserve the best. We aim to give them the best.

The process performed at Philly Typewriter not only works to educate and encourage retention among its mechanics but also ensure the machine is given the proper care and dedication it deserves. With each step and each set of hands the brings a typewriter back to peak performance, know that no moment was spared for giving it the care and respect dued to a machine that has waited years to type again.

05/25/2024

It is probably an understatement to say that next week will be the biggest week in the history of the shop. We're gearing up for our next major expansion, an undertaking four years in the making.

Watching the shop come alive over the past decade has been incredible. From a plastic table and a red umbrella to being hailed as the worlds largest typewriter company, it's been an amazing experience, supported by an absolutely incredible community. But we're just getting started.

Keep your eye on our socials starting Monday, with a major announcement one week from today, June 1st.

We're excited, and we hope you will be too.

02/06/2024

Freedom of the written word. It's one of the biggest points of what we do at Philly Typewriter, it's also something that is in ever growing jeopardy today. Censorship is a common topic across all bodies of media, whether in our most antiqutated forms, or on the internet.

The many incredible departments of the Free Library of Philadelphia, specifically its main branch at Parkway Central, are experiencing an example of this censorship.

An image on many of the main branch instagram pages, however not the main one at the time of this post, has appeared reading...

"Effective 2/6/24, all fliers, social media

content, and newsletters must be approved

by the Mayor's Office.

The Communications Department will

forward the request to the Office of Children

and Families, and it will ultimately be

submitted to the Mayor's Communications

Office.

Please bear with Us.

Thank you!"

This overreach and control is something that has the potential to throttle the flow of communication between the FLP and its community.

As a home away from home for Philly Typewriter, we were saddened to see this news and we stand with the Free Library of Philadelphia. We encourage you to call the mayors office and inquire as to why they feel this policy needs to be implemented.

10/01/2023

06/13/2023

The penultimate lecture is upon us!! Join us at the Parkway Central Library - Free Library of Philadelphia on June 21st as we explore The Typewriter Revolution of Today!

Join the Literature Department and Philly Typewriter for this 8-part typewriter series.

06/10/2023

Tomorrow would have been Flavors on the Avenue. Due to not know which way the air quality situation was going to go, and due to the fact the city tour up the Avenue and didn't finish the job in time as to provide safety, and a functioning environment for a street festival, the event was canceled.

This event means a lot to the avenue. It's the biggest event of the year for the corridor and the restaurants and business that call East Passyunk home do a lot of planning to ensure their customers have an incredible experience every year.

This year, we not only lost flavors once, but twice. It's a lot of work to setup food and drink specials, make orders expecting hundreds of people only to find out things have changed.

This doesn't it affect us at the shop, but it does impact our neighbors. So tomorrow, go have lunch somewhere on East Passyunk you've never been. Go out for dinner, order a drink you've never had. Find a fantastic seasonal special, fall in love with a new flavor and support an incredible community.

06/09/2023

We're about to take on something that's never before been in our wheelhouse!

The IBM Wheelwriter! This tank of an electronic typewriter is still being used by businesses the world over, and as time has gone on, these machines have fallen into disrepair. Typewriters never went away, the mechanics did!

Effective June 12th, Philly Typewriter will begin offering services and repairs on IBM Wheelwriters at our South Philly location.

If you have a machine in need of repair, please give our Selectric Dept a call to schedule a time to bring your machine in!