California Typewriter Page #2

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18905 for 22 years now.

I didn't want to collect

Swiss music boxes

or microscopes, or telescopes,

I wanted to collect something

that was sort of off the radar

in that regard.

The quality of how

things were built

at that time is spectacular.

Cast and machine made

parts beautifully painted.

It's the wild west

of typewriters.

My collection I call the

Martin Howard collection.

They're all typewriters

of nonstandard design.

During the 18805 and 18905,

there were many different

styles of typewriters,

but there were two main

classes of typewriters.

One was the keyboard

typewriter and the other,

what we call are now

index typewriters.

I really love typewriters

that are the genesis

of an idea, the

very beginning form.

(click)

Even if it was a

failure down the road

and died out of the

evolutionary tree,

that's okay, I like the

beginning of any idea.

(ding)

(whirring)

(clicking)

One of the things I love

finding in my typewriters

when I'm working on

them is a dried spider,

a spider from the

18805 or the 18905.

What it tells me is that

nobody has raided the tomb

and I'm the first to crack

open this typewriter.

The only typewriter of

great historical note

that's missing

from my collection

is a Sholes and

Glidden typewriter.

The Sholes and

Glidden is the first

commercially

successful typewriter,

it appeared in 1874.

It's of the utmost

historical importance,

and after years of collecting,

it still eludes me.

(metal shifting)

(downtempo minimalist music)

(clinking)

(shuffling)

(clank)

- I feel like I'm just as

much a typewriter person

as anybody who actually likes

to see typewriters intact

it's just that I have a

different way of coming at it.

Some collectors,

typewriter enthusiasts,

don't like that I do this.

They get riled up as

if I'm going to destroy

thousands of typewriters and

that's not really the case.

Most of the ones

I take apart are

in pretty rough shape.

I don't really hack into

them, I'm pretty gentle

when I destroy them.

I'd always wanted to

take a typewriter apart

since I was 10 or 11.

My mom had an old

Underwood and I'd always

sit alongside of

it and hit the keys

and look at all the

machinery inside

and want to kind of be

in there and see it,

from the key getting

pushed to the

type bar hitting the platen.

Thought it was great.

Just couldn't get enough of it.

At the time, this

Queen video came out

with bits and pieces of

Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

That's kinda how the

typewriter looked to me,

it's like those little planes

flying through Metropolis.

When I looked inside, I

felt like I was flying

through the typewriter,

as if it were this

big city machine.

I've seen Metropolis more

times than I can count.

(grinding and rattling)

I moved to Oakland

three years ago

after living in the mountains

for almost 18 years.

I was living in the

woods, basically,

making what appeared

to be naked robots

out of machine parts.

And it didn't really go

over very well there.

I didn't know for

sure if it was good

or if it was worth looking at

or if it was worth

anybody's time.

So I had to come here to see.

(clanking)

A lot of it's my own compulsion,

my own need to make

art and be an artist.

When I first moved here,

I didn't really know anybody.

I was driving through

Berkeley one day

and I saw this sign with

a typewriter logo on it

that said California Typewriter

and I looked in the window.

Sure enough, there

were typewriters.

I'm always nervous to tell

people who like typewriters

about what I do, 'cause

some people don't like it.

But the Permillions

are super friendly and

they're like the first friends

I made when I got here.

- [Herb] Hey, hey,

what's up, Jer?

- Hey, Herb.

- [Ken] 15 that Jeremy, Herb?

Hey, what's up, buddy?

How you doin' man?

- [Jeremy] Alright.

Occasionally they'll

call me and ask me

if I have a certain part,

like a carriage return lever,

platen knobs, mainsprings.

- [Jeremy] Really common parts

that I have boxes full of.

- This won't fly, but that's

the guy I need right there

so that one's gonna do

it, yeah that'll fit.

- I usually take 'em

all the way apart.

If I can give him any

kind of part that he needs

to put into a functioning

typewriter, I'm happy to do it.

It's pretty common actually.

You know, Smith-Coronas?

Herb has a lot of

IBM Selectrics.

Some of them are just too

far gone, too hard to repair.

So he gives them to me

instead of throwing them away.

Thank you.

Thanks, Herb.

- [Herb] Alright, see you later.

- Catch you later.

(slams)

(whirring)

(wipers thunking)

- I feel like I've

been peripatetic

since I was an infant.

(distant thunder)

I basically grew up in the

backseat of a Plymouth.

I don't like flying.

I'd rather be in a car.

But it's really hard to write

a play when you're on the move

because you have

to focus, you know.

I feel my great strength

as a writer is being alone.

Aloneness is a

condition of writing.

You look at all the writers

that have come up with something

worth its own salt, you know,

and they're utterly alone.

All of 'em.

(shuffling paper)

The plays that really

bore me to death

are the ones in which the

writer's thinking all the time.

Causing the actors,

the characters to

speak for the author.

It's very boring

compared to a character

who speaks for himself.

There's a certain framework

of time that takes shape

around a play.

Sometimes you might fly

through a three act play.

You can write it

in a week or two.

And a one act play

might take you a year.

One of the keys to

leaving a piece of writing

and coming back to it

is to leave it at the

point where you know

it's about to go somewhere.

Don't come to a dead end

and stop and say oh my god,

you know, and walk away.

You'll come back, you're

gonna be in the same dead end

as you left it, you know.

I just never got along

with the computer screen.

And it's somehow removed

from the tactile experience.

When you go to ride a horse,

you have to saddle it,

whenever you use a typewriter,

you have to feed it paper.

There's a percussion about it.

You can see the ink flying

onto the surface of the paper.

So a letter will go,

pam, like that, but

along with it is the ink and

pshh, flying into the paper.

I'd rather ride a

horse than drive a car,

but that puts you in

a very different relationship

to the modern world, you know.

(piano jazz music)

- [News Anchor] Well,

neither rain nor prices

prove to be obstacles for

Apple customers today,

who wanted to snap up the new

iPad on the very first day.

- [News Anchor] The rain

held off until 3:00 AM

along San Francisco's

Stockton Street.

One line was for customers

who had preordered

their new iPads online, another

was for those who hadn't.

- [News Anchor]

Throughout the morning,

we've been seeing this line here

at the downtown San Francisco

Apple Store growing.

Right now, it stretches

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