The Pen Addict 203/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	203
Title:	mykewastechnicallyright
Release Date:	May 4th, 2016
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 203
Audio File:	Audio Episode 203
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 203
Length:	5151 min <br />0.85 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Myke Hurley: From RelayFM, this is The Pen Addict, episode 203. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by Mr. Brad Dowdy. Today's show is brought to you by Harry's and Squarespace. How are you on this fine day, Mr. Dowdy?

Brad Dowdy: I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good, actually. I'm a few days, or what, two days return from the Chicago Pen Show, and I actually feel like a normal person, as opposed to Atlanta, where I felt like a zombie for about a week afterwards. Oh, interesting. Yeah, well, I got the conference crud from Atlanta, so I just felt junky. You can never recover, recuperate, and I guess I had my tolerances built up in Chicago, so it didn't really come through. And it was just tiredness, and I've caught up on sleep. I'm feeling like a normal person quicker than usually after a show. So, yeah, real good.

Myke Hurley: You strengthened up the old immune system there.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, yes, for sure. For sure.

Myke Hurley: So, we've got an action-packed show today.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, we've got lots of cool stuff to talk about. Lots of randomness happened in the last week, which is pretty cool. Especially this first thing. When did you see this first link we got?

Myke Hurley: I started getting a few tweets yesterday, and then a few messages in the Pen Addict Slack. And we brought stuff like this up recently, because it's fun. There seems to be more and more people finding the Pen Addict, and kind of pointing other people towards us. We mentioned those YouTube videos and stuff recently. Well, I received this yesterday, as I said, from a few people.

Freddy & Co.

Myke Hurley: MailChimp are starting a physical stuff store, so they're going to be selling things. And it's currently, the name is Freddy & Co. is the name of the store. And they set up an email newsletter for people to find out how the store is progressing. And it's actually a really beautiful email newsletter. I'll put a link to the web version in the show notes. And it's run by someone called Meg. And Meg kind of did a who is Meg kind of issue to kind of let people know a little bit about her. And she is a listener of the Pen Addict. And she loves pens and stationery. And she linked to us in the email. So, hi, Meg.

Brad Dowdy: Hi, Meg. Thanks for putting us in the newsletter. So, her five facts are, number one, I love all things pens and stationery. And even listen to a podcast called The Pen Addict. And then, number two, this isn't a font. It's my handwriting. So, y'all got to go check out the newsletter. It's really cool. And I'm actually subscribed now. Me too. I want to see how they're going to do this store because it seems pretty cool. I like MailChimp. I mean, I'm obviously a big MailChimp customer with Knock and Pen Addict. And they're local. Yeah. And they're local to Atlanta. So, big and know a bunch of people that work at MailChimp. I haven't met Meg yet. But maybe one of these days we'll have to go out to lunch or go meet up at the MailChimp offices. They were actually, you remember last fall when we did the American Field, that show we did, Jeff and I?

Myke Hurley: Mm-hmm.

Brad Dowdy: It's actually in the same building where MailChimp's offices are now.

Myke Hurley: Oh, okay. Yep. So, a little bit more detail on that store. So, this is from the first email that MailChimp sent out about this. They said, it's equal parts online shop and research project. We hope it will show us what online sellers deal with every day. We want to get to know the struggles of our users firsthand so we can find new ways to help them. I think that's real cool. And I like that they're kind of detailing the process.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's super cool. I love this kind of stuff. You know, I'm, yeah, I just, I eat this stuff up. You want to help, you know, maybe you can learn something, help figure out, you know, what you're doing. You know, something like myself running a small business and especially one that's, you know, kind of integrated with MailChimp too. So, it's kind of some neat things I got going on.

Myke Hurley: No doubt. Talking about neat things, as of yesterday, the pen addict is now on Spotify.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's kind of crazy, huh? You've been working on this for a while?

Myke Hurley: A little. Yes, actually, a while. It's been a while because Spotify is currently a closed system for podcast submission. So, they're doing more of it, but it's currently a closed system. You can only listen on mobile devices, I believe, like not tablets, like or the desktop.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Once the relay stuff started propagating, what, yesterday or the day before, the first thing I did was pull up the app on my Mac and I couldn't even search for any podcast. But when I go to the phone, everything's there.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So, they're bringing in podcasts and they have all of our shows. So, if you are a fan of Spotify and you want to kind of consolidate, you can go there and you can follow the shows and listen to them. I just think it's real cool, to be honest.

Myke Hurley: It's nice to be there. And we like it because it's kind of like special because there's not a lot of people there right now.

Brad Dowdy: So, it's cool. Not a lot of podcasts there.

Myke Hurley: No, it's not. I mean, you know, there are things that aren't as great there. Like, you can't get our show notes and stuff. So, you know, you go to the web and get those if you like. But it's there and I like it. Yeah. So, go check it out.

Brad Dowdy: That was pretty cool. That was pretty cool when I started seeing all the screenshots we had in our little Relay Slack channel. I was like, oh, that's kind of neat.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. So, I'm going to put a link in the show notes and you can go check it out. It just looks pretty. Right. They do a good job of making things look real nice. And now you can go and check us out in Spotify. And we're also in the Google Play Music Store as well. Yes. That's a newer thing. But I can't put a link in the show notes to that because I can't get to it because I'm in the UK. But if you use Google Play, you can go and find us there and subscribe. I will find that for you so we can get it in the show notes. Perfect. Thank you. So, yeah, you can go and find those. It's just a couple of new places where we're posting our shows as more and more people get interested in podcasting. But these are two companies that we've spoken to, we have a good relationship with, and we think are a good place for Relay FM content.

Atlanta Pen Show

Brad Dowdy: Perfect. Perfect. So, we talked about last week. Was it last week or two weeks ago when we recapped the Atlanta Pen Show and some of the purchases you made? I can't, everything's running together for me.

Myke Hurley: In the last couple of weeks, we've been following up on this.

Brad Dowdy: So, anyway, you talked about your Jonathan Brooks pen and you were talking with Jonathan how it didn't have a name. And, you know, we were joking about Sky at Night and then that ended up being like, it was actually a butchering of Van Gogh's artwork. But the name is actually super appropriate for the pen. And then something happened. What has happened since then?

Myke Hurley: Last week, I called out Jonathan because he said I could name it but didn't reply to my Instagram comment, right? So, I thought he was backing away. But now, after listening to the show, he has agreed that the material that my pen is made from will be now called Sky at Night. So, I have retroactively fixed my mistake. This is quite possibly the best way to fix an error. I have gone and done it.

Brad Dowdy: This makes me so happy. I'm like just giggling. I think it's just hilarious. That's what's awesome about, you know, when you have these individual makers like Jonathan. You know, you can just kind of do things like this. You know, you're not just going to do it on a whim as a business person, you know, if it doesn't fit. But, you know, this kind of works and there's kind of a reason for it. Now, there's a story behind it. And, you know, it's not like, you know, you're going to go to Lamy and something like this is going to happen. But it's kind of cool that this happened. I think it's really, really neat.

Myke Hurley: I know this kind of sounds like I'm maybe going a little bit too far here. But there's kind of something nice about these physical objects that will now bear a name that I gave them. Like these are real beautiful pens that would probably stick around for longer than I'll be here.

Brad Dowdy: Sure.

Myke Hurley: And so, I don't know. There's something kind of nice about that. So, it's actually as much as it's a joke as well. It's quite an honor to have named this pen. Oh, it's fantastic. In something silly that I said.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm. So, I want to name this next pen. Oh, yeah?

Myke Hurley: So, thank you, Jonathan, by the way. And I will say, again, go buy stuff from the Carolina Pen Company. I've been seeing more people post pictures in Instagram and stuff of pens that they've got from the Carolina Pen Company. Oh, my God. So good.

Brad Dowdy: My God. Yeah, you know I love mine. So, yeah. So, this next pen is the Pelican M1000 Rodden Sunrise or Raiden. We haven't figured that out yet. So, we'll get the full correction. I'm going with Rodden. I'm going to go with Rodden for now. But it could be Raiden. Gosh, I don't know. Anyway, this is a beautiful.

Myke Hurley: Just real quick. RHO in the chat room. It's just hashtag Myke was technically right.

Myke Hurley: That's perfect. I will accept that. I will accept that. Thank you, RHL.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so we're getting all the pronunciations in the chat room, Punky. I don't even know what you're talking about right there. So, this pen, it's totally not for me. I mean, this is a pen I would never purchase in a million years because, one, it's probably like, I think it's like two grand. But when I saw pictures of it, I was like, whoa. Pelican has done this Rodden inlay throughout the barrel of an M1000, which is their hugest mainline pen. It's got gold trim. It's like a maroon background with the inlays all the way around the barrel and all the way around the cap. It's a stunner. You know, this came up. Everyone should be following the Pelican's Perch, which is a great blog that just focused on the Pelicans. Joshua, I've talked about him before. And he kind of keeps up on all the news and everything. So, I saw this pop a month or two ago. And, yeah, it's U.S. about 1900, looks like, to be the MSRP, we're guessing. So, what are your thoughts on this pen? And I've actually gotten other links to it prior to you even putting this in the show notes. So, are there a couple of other colors of this?

Myke Hurley: Oh, no, they're previous editions at the bottom of the page, right?

Brad Dowdy: It's a continuing edition of what they do. And I've got to hold a couple of the previous versions. My friend Richard, who I met out in L.A., I believe, who is who it was, who let me see one or two of his. I don't know if he had the moonlight or the sunlight. If you look in Joshua's post at the bottom, there's a whole, I guess, the whole list of what's been produced for this so far.

Penchelay's Instagram

Myke Hurley: It is so beautiful. I saw it on the Penchelay's Instagram. I want it. Not for that amount of money, right? $1,900. I mean, you know, whatever. But I want it because that's beautiful. Oh, my God.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I just can't do the M1000. The M1000 is too big for me. The nib is too soft. Okay. You see, that's the thing.

Myke Hurley: I've never used one of those. And also, I can't grasp how big it is by looking at the pictures. If it's a super big version, then I'm not going to be as interested. Like, if it was, because, I mean, I can't see it, but, like, if it was the size of my, is it the M200 that I have? That kind of size? I mean, I'll be all over it. But if it's a real big one, I don't think I'm too keen on it.

Brad Dowdy: It's about double the size of your 200.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, no thanks.

Brad Dowdy: And it's not the size as much for me as it was the nib. The nibs are super soft, which makes it just a complete fire hose when you're writing with.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, no, I don't like pens that are overly sized, to be honest.

Brad Dowdy: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So, anyway, it's a really, really pretty pen, so I'll keep an eye on that. So, we got on the opposite end of the price spectrum. We've been seeing a lot of the Pen Addict notebooks that we shipped out last week. Yeah. They're finally making it all across the world, and everyone's real happy with them, which makes me very happy that, you know, we did something kind of cool. And it's funny to see the people that have backed both years to where they're putting the new notebooks in their old Hightower case that they got for last year. I thought that was pretty cool. I've seen a bunch of pictures like that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, there's one from Justin here, which I'm going to put in the show notes, which is, that makes me really smiley, I've got to say. And the video is out, right? And people have been watching the video. We're getting lots of comments about that. So, if you backed for the video tier, go and check the Kickstarter updates or check your emails, and you'll get a link to that. Yeah, and we've been getting lots of feedback about that, too. So, it's really awesome. Again, thank you to everyone who helped make Atlanta possible, and we should probably at some point start planning for next year, because, oh boy, we're doing it again.

Brad Dowdy: Before we do that, if I would stop traveling, we would finalize this project and finish the giveaways. So, I will promise all the listeners and all the backers that by this show next week, we will have that taken care of. Deal.

Myke Hurley: Good man. Good man. Thank you. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I've just been traveling too much, and it ends up getting pushed down the list because I have to do a couple things on the back end to make that happen. So, Myke and I will take care of that between now and next episode.

Myke Hurley: But we've got the most important parts out, right?

Brad Dowdy: The books and the video. We just had a few extra things for the backers online to make sure they get involved in some of the giveaway stuff, too. So, we have a few extra things for them. So, we just want to finish that up, get everything in everyone's hands, and we'll start thinking about next year pretty soon. Those notebooks are superb. Yeah. I'm very happy with them.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: Talking about superb notebooks, I saw this today. So, you posted a picture on Instagram of some slightly peculiar field notes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I happened to see these. I don't know if it was on Instagram or if it was in the field notes group, but there was an anime. You're familiar with Loot Crate, which is like a monthly box with different themes, right? I think they've done some video game stuff, and they do different things. This was an anime Loot Crate. And in it, they had these special field notes with these anime characters, and I left them in the other room, of course, as we're talking about this. And I don't know the characters offhand, but I thought this was just a really cool-looking addition that they did just from a style perspective. I thought it was great-looking. And, you know, I got hooked up at the Chicago Pen Show by a gentleman named Seth who came there to meet us and hand out some swag. And he was there all weekend, and it was great talking with him and a bunch of other people in Chicago. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But this was just kind of a – I haven't bought or acquired many other field notes other than the colors editions recently. But this one I thought was a real kind of a standout in its style, and I really, really appreciate him hooking me and Ana up with these. That was pretty cool.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, this is like one of those editions that you want, not because you need to add them to your collection, but just because, wow, that looks cool.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's such a different edition. So the cover of the one that's flipped – that's the one with the skull is the backside of a book, and it's just black on the front. So, you know, they're just – they did a good job. It's a little two-pack as opposed to a three-pack, but it looks really, really cool. So thank you, Seth. That was awesome.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, totally. Thank you.

Brad Dowdy: And we're going to talk more about field notes here in a minute. Oh, are we now?

Myke Hurley: This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the simplest way for anyone to create a beautiful landing page, website, or online store. You can start building your own site today at squarespace.com and use the offer code INK at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. With easy-to-use tools and templates, Squarespace helps you capture every detail of what drives you because if it's worth the effort, it's worth sharing with the world. And that effort can be in anything. Maybe you want to start a blog, a portfolio, an online store. You can do all of that with Squarespace. They give you all of the tools you need to build a site that looks professionally designed regardless of your skill level. You don't need to know any coding at all. If you do, you can get in under the hood and tinker with things to your liking, but you don't need to. I don't know any code. I don't know how to design a website with coding text things. See, I'm even saying the correct words. That shows you how little I know. But I have built many websites using Squarespace. I'm using them for some projects I'm working on right now, and I have used them for projects that I've worked on in the past. And I will continue to because their platform gets better and better. They have state-of-the-art technology. Their security is great. Their stability is great. They have 24-7 support. They have everything that I've looked for and I know many people have been looking for a website. So you should go and check them out for your own project or maybe for a friend or relative out of a project that they want to look at with Squarespace. You can sign up for a free trial with no credit card required and start booting your own website straight away by going to squarespace.com. Then when you decide to sign up, make sure that you use the offer code INK, I-N-K, to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the pen addict. Thank you to Squarespace for their continued support of this show and the glorious Relay FM.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, so just a couple weeks ago, I did one of those, I guess it's called cover pages, where you just do like a personal landing page. I've always owned the domain braddowdy.com, I don't know, for years and years and years and just sat there not doing anything with it. And I thought, well, let me throw up one of those cover pages for me, kind of like a landing page. Not that I really do anything with it now, but it's there. Well, look at this now. It looks kind of cool. It's an out-of-pretty one, huh? Yeah, yeah. Look at that. Blogger, podcaster, maker. I like that. Yeah, so I just figure I'd throw that up there. So I can go in and put some other things later. It's just kind of a, you know, pretty much just a template right now.

Myke Hurley: I really should do this with MikeHurley.net. I really should do this. Because I do, I actually also set up a Squarespace cover page at ringpost.fm. For a project that I'm working on for the incomparable. That's a Squarespace cover page. Gotcha. But I should do it for MikeHurley.net because I don't use that at all anymore. Look at you. Fancy pants.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Squarespace makes it easy to be a fancy pants. Mm-hmm.

Myke Hurley: Talking about fancy pants.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: So you made the pilgrimage.

Brad Dowdy: I made the pilgrimage. So, yeah, I went up Thursday, last Thursday to Chicago. And I was getting in pretty early, like 10 a.m. Chicago time. Maybe 11. And it just happened to work out that Anna Reiner from the Well Appointed Desk was also going to be there. And she was going to drive up from Kansas City. And she's also good friends with Brian Bedell at Field Notes. So the three of us coordinated a little field trip to the Field Notes HQ. And I have to say, Myke, it was worth it. It was really, really awesome. We had a good time. Brian showed us around. Jim was in the office. So we got to talk with him for a little bit. You know, we toured around the current office and got to see some of the cool setup that they have. And then we got to see the new office space, which they're actually, they're on the third floor of their current building. They're actually moving to the first floor and taking over a much larger space. Oh, that's great to hear. I like that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So right now they use this bottom floor for like some storage stuff, but they're just going to move the entire office down there. So it was under construction, right? And as we were there, but we got to see it and tour around. And, you know, we got to see, see some of the secrets, some of the things that I can't take pictures of, but we didn't get to see any, anything for the summer release. But as you, you asked me to do, we will have Brian and or Jim on when summer releases because they want to talk about it. And then we'll be able to talk about, you know, what's going on at, what else is going on at field notes, they're up to move. So they're pretty anxious about this summer release. And I think it's coming at the beginning of June. So really only a month, maybe five, six weeks away at the most. And now we will, we will get them on to talk then. So that was pretty cool. Cool.

Personalized Release

Myke Hurley: Cool. And we're going to, I'm going to have to grill them about this, this personalized release, you know, the one that we just did.

Brad Dowdy: We talked about a lot. That's what I said. We, you know, we're definitely going to want to, want to know how they pulled that off and, you know, what their thinking was behind that. And, and, you know, how, how that went for them. And I mean, just not to, you know, get ahead of the episode, but they were super excited about the whole thing and what everyone, how everyone felt about it, what the response was for it. And it was really, really cool.

Myke Hurley: So what kind of things did you see? Do they have like one of everything there?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So they have a big display case when you walk into basically the foyer of the office. So they have a big display case. They have one of everything, even from the one, you know, it started with Aaron Draplin's kind of Christmas present to a bunch of people. He made these notebooks and they called them field notes in there. There's this brown craft paper with, you know, squared corners. That one's in the, that one's in the case. And then they have, you know, starting right out the gate with a butcher, orange, blue, grass, green, and everything down the list all in there. Then they have a bunch of other things in this display case, you know, that they've gotten, you know, they don't have one of everything from like every cut. It's a custom edition that they've done, right? There's not enough space for that. But all the, all the colors additions and then a bunch of other things with like little stories that they, that they were able to share with us, you know, why do they have this particular thing in there and things like that? So there was a, I forget the name, but they use like a, they have a dummy name for just like their pretend shipping name. Like if they're playing around with stuff and they just need a dummy name and they were using it for one of their, they built out a label and put it, put it on an envelope and pack a notebook in it to take a picture of and shoot a video for one of the, one of the colors additions. I forget what it was. So they just had like a made up name, a made up address. And that envelope ended up getting shipped out with all the bulk orders and it ended up making it out to San Francisco and then returned back. So like this whole fake envelope prop thing ended up getting mailed out, stamped and returned to sender. So it's a real cool story, you know, and that's sitting there in the case too. So, you know, it's, it's neat things like that, that you wouldn't normally get to see. And you get to hear Brian tell these little stories and things like that. So then we got to see like their, uh, I don't know if you call it like their inspiration room. There's just like a room in the middle of the office with like all the books and all these uncut cover prints that they've had, all these test prints. Um, and then the offices where everyone sits and works and then the shipping room is huge. It's really, really gigantic. I took some pictures. I'm going to, I'm going to try to get my post out for Thursday, which is tomorrow. I don't know if I'm going to be done in time to get, uh, everything written and edited before tomorrow to get it posted. But I'm going to, I'm going to have a post about the Chicago trip as a whole, um, coming out either this week or next week. And I'll have some pictures. Some of this will make more sense, but their shipping department is massive. Um, as you can imagine. And, um, and they're even outgrowing it, which is, uh, is great to see.

Myke Hurley: So when are they moving into the new offices?

Brad Dowdy: Um, I don't know that there's a date. I mean, like they've got flooring and walls and things like that set up, but it's a ways away from, from doing that. But it'll be the same, same physical location, just at the, the first floor of the building instead of the third.

Myke Hurley: So I want to go there so bad.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. No, make it, make it easier for a, like customer pickup and stuff. So people don't have to trudge up to, up to the third floor.

Myke Hurley: And apparently it's this like terrifying elevator, right? Or something.

Brad Dowdy: We, we didn't get to ride the janky elevator. We just took the stairs, but we heard stories of the elevator. It looks awesome.

Myke Hurley: I've got a picture here that, uh, Anna took, which I'll put in the show notes, which is that big display case. And they have a vending machine, right? Or something. I've seen pictures of that in the past. I think. I don't know. I don't think I saw that. There's like a vending machine for field notes. I've, I've seen pictures of it. Oh, well, maybe.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, and the other cool thing, when you visit, you get, um, you get a little, you can get a field notes with like a stamp on it. Um, that basically says, you know, I didn't bring it in front of me, but it says like office visit and it's stamped with the day and date that you arrived at the field notes and, and Brian initials it. It's, it's kind of cool. It's like the one, the thing you get for showing up to the office. It it's, they do everything right. I don't know what to say other than that. They're pretty, they're so cool. So jealous.

Myke Hurley: So I need, we need to get off this topic before I kill you. Uh, so how was the pen show? Like overall, what was your feeling about it?

Brad Dowdy: It was exceptional. Um, this is a new venue for Chicago. It's new promoters for Chicago. So, you know, they were trying to, you know, they obviously want to make sure they did a great job for all the, all the vendors and all the attendees. And they pretty much nailed it across the board. Um, Roger, Paul, Nathaniel, they all ran, they ran the show there, you know, long time players in the, in the pen world, but I don't know that they ever ran a show before. Um, they may have started to get involved in Chicago show last year, but this year was completely different. The venue they chose while it was out in the boonies, like some of the Chicago people were like, wow, this is way out in the middle of nowhere. The actual venue for a fountain pen show set up. I don't know that it could have been better. Um, it had one gigantic open ballroom. Well, lit must've had, I don't know, a hundred tables in it. It was really large. Um, I didn't get the exact table count. And then outside of that, it was an octagonal atrium area, which had about 30 or 40 more tables in it. So we were out there, you walk through the atrium area to get into the big ballroom, but it's all soaked like 10 steps away from each other. It's all right together, all in one space, very well lit, you know, the restaurants within eyesight of there, the bars within eyesight of there, there's a little mini Starbucks there. The classroom for all the classes was there. Everything was right there. I mean, it was really, really self-contained, really well done. Um, and then like outside the venue, like right across the street was essentially a mall type area where they had all kinds of food options. So everything was right there. Um, it was probably the best setup I've seen for a pen show. Um, just as far as ease of use and lighting, which, you know, a lot of times people don't think of. Hmm. So just in a, as a general show, it was awesome. Um, it was sold out from a vendor perspective. I don't know what the traffic was like for the promoters. You know, I don't know what their numbers were like, but we were always busy. Even on Friday, we were busy. Saturday was very busy. I couldn't leave the table hardly at all Saturday. And then Sunday was quiet, which is pretty much every pen show ever. Right. You know, even some vendors, you know, are leaving early on Sunday afternoon to get back home or, or things like that. But I mean, everyone, everyone you could think of was there except for nib grinders. There was no one really doing nib work. Um, I think independence was doing some, but they were doing more. There was plenty of maintenance type work going on repairs, maintenance, but there was no, no one who is known for being a nib grinder there. So, you know, that was one thing I'd like to see in future shows, you know, to at least have, I mean, whoever it would be would just be swamped, you know, because there's no one just, Oh, that's only doing that because, um, anything else would have to be done in between repairs or, or other things like that. Um, I worked for Van Aspen's during the show. We had three tables there and Anna and I and Lisa all worked the show that went really well. And then, you know, a bunch of our other friends like Franklin Kristoff and Anderson pens were there. Um, a bunch of other people you see it at every other show that I've been to so far, you see them there like Ryan Kruzak and you know, I, gosh, I, Susan worth, you know, you can't even name off everybody. It's everybody. You probably see. Yeah. Big crowd. And then a bunch of, a bunch of vintage vendors as well. Um, and it was interesting seeing like on Thursday night when we got there, we got there about after our field notes tour, we got over to the hotel about four o'clock. And some of the traders and vintage dealers are just hanging around the tables. And then like some of the new, some of the guys who aren't necessarily on the tour, if you will, but in the area, um, that are coming to the show for the first time or rarely attend or have a bunch of new stuff. They come and bring all their stuff and put it on the table. And it's just like this feeding frenzy of vendors trying to go through all this stuff at the same time. Um, which was interesting to sit back and watch. I just kind of peered over everyone's shoulders, just kind of, uh, kind of watching. Um, one thing they also did at this show, which I've never seen in person, it was they did a pin auction. So I wanted to watch that, which was really cool. I would have gotten involved. It's you, you get to see all the goods beforehand. You know, they give you a list of items. They display them all. You can go look at them ahead of time to see if there's anything you want to bid on. There was nothing I had to have. There was like a vintage, uh, um, vanishing point in there, but it wasn't in great shape and it wasn't that rare of one or anything like that. So I didn't really feel the need to sign up, but I went and watched and periscoped a little bit of the, uh, of the auction. That was super cool. Um, but just the show in general, I thought the promoters just did a wonderful job and, um, it was, everything was attended to, you know, everything. It was done well for the vendors. You know, they had a pizza party Thursday night. They had coffee every morning. They had water all throughout the day, but those are big deals when you're busy and you have to go to try to track things down like water or coffee. Um, they had them there for us. So it was really cool. And I would highly recommend, you know, if it's, uh, staying with these promoters and in this location, if you're in the area, you gotta go. Cause it was, uh, it was that good. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: See, I really would love to do it. Like this is a, cause as I said, I said many times, like Chicago is a place I really want to visit, but it's so close to Atlanta. It makes it real difficult for me.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So that's a, that's a difficult thing, you know, like whether, how often I would be able to go just because it's so close. Um, you know, the, uh, the weather was also awful, but you know, you can't really control that. The week before it was 80 and sunny, we barely saw 50 and it rained and was rainy and windy the whole time. So.

Myke Hurley: More reason to stay inside and look at pens.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. We were miserable every time we stepped outside, but fortunately we didn't have to very often.

Myke Hurley: All right. There's, you took part in a bunch of other little things that I want to talk to you about and also see if you bought anything at the show. Uh, let's take a break and thank Harry's for sponsoring this week's episode. It's time to stop compromising on your shave and get started with Harry's. If you haven't yet made the switch to Harry's, I bet that you are currently paying far too much for a comfortable shave or you settled for a lower quality razor. Well, Harry's offers something that you haven't had before. A great shave at a fair price. Good shave. Good price. It is simple. Get the best of both with Harry's. They make their own blades, five blade cartridges, German engineering. They're going to give you a close and comfortable shave. Something that you're going to actually enjoy. Harry's believes so much in the quality of their blades that they guarantee it. And they'll give you a full refund if you're not happy. Over 1 million people have switched to Harry's and you should be one of them. They offer a high quality shave at about half the price of other big brand blades. On average, an everyday shaver will save $150 a year when they shave with Harry's blades. They have a great deal for their starter set. It's called the Truman. And for just $15, you'll get a razor, moisturizing shave cream and three razor blades. It's time to stop overpaying for that great shave. Go to harrys.com right now and you'll get $5 off if you type in my coupon code PENADDICT with your first purchase. That's H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com. Coupon code PENADDICT at checkout for a special $5 off. Thank you so much to Harry's for their support of this show.

PEN Show Event

Brad Dowdy: Cool, cool. So on Saturday night at the PEN show, I had an event. It was myself and a gentleman named Paul Arano, who is a very, very well-respected vintage PEN dealer. He's been around for decades. He's written books and all this stuff. So we met at the LA PEN show and thought it would be a good idea in Chicago to kind of get together and just do kind of a vintage PEN for beginners seminar. So we had a lot of people who are coming to their first PEN show kind of have some questions on what are all these vintage PENs, the things they're not used to seeing, that they shop for modern PENs or things like that online and don't really have any experience with vintage PENs. So we thought we'd get together and we kind of build it. And the way I was thinking of it as it was just going to be a conversation. Paul's got a wealth of information. We talk about the history of some PENs. We talk about the parts and details of the PENs and just kind of give an introduction on what the vintage PENs are like. Like it didn't go as I planned. I definitely failed in planning this correctly. It should have been way more structured. I mean, there was virtually no structure. Paul can talk a lot. So it was hard for me to like get in and kind of stop him here and there. And then we interspersed questions while we were talking and it ended up getting off the rails really quickly. Ended up being a lot of the vintage vendors were in there. So they were going back and forth. And then some of the new people who haven't been around as much were wondering, you know, you know, how can we buy vintage PENs the best way? And there were some voices raised. There was no yelling matches or anything like that. But it was a little uncomfortable there in the middle because we kind of got off track and didn't have a good plan on how to continue with the talk and present it better. So it was a failure on my part from that aspect of planning it. You know, I thought we could have a conversation. It turns out in that format and the way we're going to do it, a conversation is not going to work. We need to have a strict guideline and a strict agenda on what we're going to talk about and time limits there within. So by the end of the show, by the end of the talk, it was, you know, it was getting pretty clear. We weren't going anywhere. So we stopped it. And Paul had a big batch of PENs and a gentleman named David Isaacson, who a lot of people are familiar with. He's one of the premier collectors in the U.S. He had a big envelope of PENs. So we were like, hey, look, let's split this up. There's a lot of people in here who don't know anything about fountain pens at all. I mean, not vintage pens, fountain pens, period. So let's split up. Let's go talk to Paul. Some of us come with Paul. Some of us come with David. Look at the pens they have. Let's discuss what makes this a good pen. You know, why is this expensive? You know, what type of filling system it is. So that part went off well. And I was happy with at least, you know, some people got something from that. But like the general talking part, I don't know that anyone who attended really got anything from that because it was kind of a mess. And, you know, but we sat and talked after afterwards. We went to dinner with Paul and David and Lisa and I because Lisa was not happy with how it was going either. And we all kind of got on the same page on what was really expected from this. And we know if we try to do something like this the next time, it will be absolutely 100% completely different. It'll be from a very beginner level. It'll be a very structured talk. And it was just it got off the rails early and I could never get it back on. I'm sorry to hear that. I mean, it's OK. It was a learning experience. I was kind of frustrated that night. But, you know, everyone, everyone who attended was really, really nice about it. And they said they actually did get a lot from it. There were some nice things written about it.

Brad Dowdy: And there was, you know, plenty of good to be taken away from. And I think, you know, me and Lisa were being hard on ourselves because, you know, I come at it from the perspective is I know there's a lot of people coming to a pen show from the first time for the first time and I want them to have a good time and a good experience. So I felt like I let them down a little bit from there. But, you know, everyone was super nice about it. And there was some information to be gleaned. We just we just had to get to it eventually. And if we do it like that again, it won't be anything like this. The setup will be completely different. I think we would benefit from almost like a lab type class to where we have different areas of parts of pens, what a bad pen looks like, what a good pen looks like. And everyone can have can I have some more hands on and Q&A stuff as far as opposed to like a conversation. So it was good in the fact that it was so bad I learned a lot.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, there are learning experiences, right? That's the whole point.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and I just felt bad for the people who who came to the event. And even though they all, you know, they were all super nice and said that they had a good time and, you know, they did get some things about it. They saw how it, you know, went off, went kind of crazy there for a little bit. But in the end, it was good. And we certainly learned what to do differently next time, which is pretty much all of it.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Hey, you know, it's how it goes.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's how it goes. You know, and it was, you know, it's my first time really sitting with Paul and, you know, and having these conversations. I mean, I've talked to him obviously plenty, but, you know, how is how are we going to work together to do this? And, you know, we'll see. Now we know for next time. We did have a good video, though, the night before, which was pretty amazing. I'm not going to lie. We set up a time for me to talk with Susan Wirth on Periscope that Lisa Vaness was recording. And that turned out amazingly. I love Susan so much. She's a wealth of information. She's a wealth of knowledge. She loves talking to people who have never been to pen shows before. So I wanted to get I've known her for a while and I wanted to kind of sit with her and find out what her background is. You know, how did she get into fountain pens? Why does she do all these shows all over the country? What type of pens she likes? Her thoughts on handwriting and Lisa, Lisa Periscope that. And it came out so well. She's she saved the video. She's going to end up putting it up on YouTube. So we'll have that to share with everyone who missed it on Periscope. That'll be up on YouTube eventually. And I highly recommend that just to hear some of Susan's knowledge. She was she was awesome. It went really, really well. That was a highlight of my weekend for sure.

Myke Hurley: Oh, man. I bet it was fun.

Brad Dowdy: It was fun. She was great.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. That's real cool, man.

Montblanc Pens

Brad Dowdy: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So I did come up with a couple of purchases at the show, which is kind of unavoidable, right? I mean, we just had Atlanta. I spent a fortune on one pen in Atlanta, the Sailor King of Pens, which cost a lot of freaking money. Um, so I didn't have the budget necessarily, um, in Chicago. And I wasn't particularly looking for anything. You know, I was more kind of looking around. I shopped around a little bit Friday. I did get one of the Frank and Kristoff new model 45s, which is their pocket pen. Um, if you like the Kaweco sport series, it's like a slightly bigger, nicer material, uh, pen that they're just introduced. I don't know if they introduced it before Atlanta, but it's definitely been this year since they've introduced the 45. Um, it's a really cool pen. I got this bright blue acrylic clear demonstrator looking one. It's pretty awesome. I I've been using this pen ever since I got home. Um, so I bought that on Friday because I missed out in Atlanta. I just never had time to go spend with Franklin Kristoff, but we weren't very busy early on on Friday. So I went over there and got this taken care of. So it's real pretty. I'll take some pictures of it. I don't know that I've taken any pictures of either of the pens that I purchased yet. Because the second pen I bought, I also saw on Friday and then I didn't buy it. And then I came around Sunday. I had some time between Friday and my purchase of the Franklin Kristoff model 45 until Sunday. I didn't make any purchases. You know, I didn't have time to go around the show. I didn't get into too many things, but I'd seen, um, a Mont Blanc safety pen on actually one of the promoters, his name's Paul, one of his tables. He had a bunch of Mont Blancs. Um, he was, um, selling and some were on a consignment and some were part of his collection and on and on. But I, I always liked this safety pen style. Like it's the one you, you and I saw two years ago in Atlanta, Myke, where you twist the nib out, right? That's what a safety pen is. The nib twists out when you put the cap on the back. So this is an older one. It's still a modern pen and it's called the noir, a noir. And that's what's engraved around one of the bands. And I, after I purchased it, I felt like it was a fair price. I mean, I, I had played with it enough, knew enough about it to, you know, realize that, okay, I like this pen. It's in really good shape. The nib is awesome. It's a medium nib. It's got a little bit of a baby's bottom, but I can work on that. That's not a big deal. Everything about it was, was spot on, except I couldn't really find any information about the noir, a noir. So I put, I put our top detective Thomas Hall on it and he came back and pretty much gave me the whole story on this pen. Once he found it online, it predates the Mont Blanc Bohème. So that's what I have linked in the show notes. It looks exactly like it, but there was a short period of time where they were making it as the noir, a noir. And I believe there was some kind of a legal wrangling that went on with the naming of it. So then it became the Bohème.

Myke Hurley: So the Bohème, does that twist?

Brad Dowdy: Yes.

Myke Hurley: Okay. Cause there's nothing on the website that even suggests that it does.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So it's a small capped pen, say a little larger than a Kaweco AL Sport in length. When it's capped, you unscrew, you unscrew the cap and you see nothing. You just see a section with a hole and you can see the nib down in there. You put the cap, you screw the cap on the back of the pen and it screws on tight and then you keep screwing and the nib comes all the way out. So I'll take some pictures, shoot a little video of it. It also doesn't look small either. It's not. It's not a, it's not a tiny pen. It's small when the nibs retracted and the cap's on in that it's easily, easily pocketable. But when it's out, I mean, it's, it's definitely bigger than like your Pelican M205. It's bigger, heavier. So, I mean, it's a, it's a good full size pen.

Myke Hurley: Can you remove the cap once the nib is out?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Okay. So you can twist the, you don't have to put the cap on to twist the nib out.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: So you can just twist the back end of the pen. The cap just facilitates that if you want to go that route.

Myke Hurley: All right. So what's going on here? Why have you bought Montblanc?

Brad Dowdy: Um, I just, I like the safety pin style and I've always wanted a Montblanc and like the 149s, which is like the traditional model or there's some rhodium trim ones, but they're always gold trim and they're just kind of basic. Saying that's basic looking is, is pretty unfair, but they're everywhere. Standard. Okay. They're standard. That's the standard Montblanc. I wanted a different Montblanc and I wanted something cool like this safety pin, um, style, you know, with the retractable nib. And I just think it's, it's really kind of neat. It kind of fits my aesthetic more of what I look for in a pen. You know, it's all, it's all, um, you know, rhodium trim. It's got a little black onyx, um, on the clip and, um, it just kind of spoke to me. You know, a lot of these, these older Montblanc styles that aren't like in the standard product lineup, um, if you will, are, are pretty cool. So I I'm really, really happy with it. Um, I just need to get the nib worked on a little bit. It's smooth, but there's a little bit of baby's bottom. Either I'll fix it myself or if I want it ground down a little bit, uh, a little bit finer, I might send it off for someone, uh, someone to get it. Oh, I was gonna say I did buy one other thing. Oh yeah. I bought pencils at the pen show. That was actually the first thing I bought Friday. I was tooling around and the same guy bought the Montblanc from. On Friday, um, he had a bunch of stackable, I guess they're called Eagle turquoise pencils and he had them just stack. So I was like, Oh, I could, I've always said I'll just grab some vintage pencils whenever I see them, if I can buy them by the dozen for cheap. So I think I paid like four bucks a dozen for like five dozen pencils that I took home. But what's cool about them is I have them in like some really extreme lead grades. Like I have a six H, I have a dozen six H pencils, which is a very, very nail hard, uh, lead grade. So that's pretty cool. I I'm excited to, to sharpen some of these up and mess around with them.

Myke Hurley: Why did you decide to go for these? Like at the pen show, like why, what, what kind of drew you to the specific one to buy immediately?

Brad Dowdy: Oh, they were there. They were there and available. It's just not something you see usually. And they were cheap, you know? Yeah. Yeah. No, I get that. I can, I can just whip out a $20 bill and have a few dozen pencils and throw them in my bag and it's something, you know, I can play around with at home, give them away. You know, I like, I always buy lots of extra things, um, when I'm shopping so I can put them in packages that I send to people and things like that. So I thought, Hey, these cool old pencils would be good to give away to people when I send mail. That's exactly what I said when I purchased them.

Myke Hurley: Hmm.

Brad Dowdy: Just kind of a thing I do.

Chicago Show

Myke Hurley: Well, what do you think then Brad is, uh, is the Chicago show going to make it on to the Dowdy calendar? Cause like, what have we got? Obviously like, um, obviously Atlanta's there and DC probably is right.

Brad Dowdy: DC is pretty much a lock. Um, you know, I haven't been to that many pin shows in the grand scheme of things. So I'm like raving about Chicago, but my, my point of comparison is pretty small. It's LA, DC, Atlanta, Chicago, right? Um, I love the setup of Chicago, the feel of the show. Chicago was really great. Um, it's not as big as LA. It's nowhere near the size of DC. It's bigger than Atlanta. Um, I would love to go there every year. You know, one of these days I'll go to a show just as, just as an, an, an, an attendee. You know, I, I like the fact that I can work for Van S and, and get to go to all these shows. Um, you know, one of these times I'm going to pick a show and just show up to go to it. You know, that would be kind of fun. And, you know, maybe down the line said Chicago is so close to Atlanta right now, maybe down the line, Chicago is that show. Yeah. Okay. Well, it was absolutely fantastic. Not a negative word to say about that show. I mean, the promoters, they were talking to us all the time, like checking in on us. Like we could get them anytime to just come say hi, you know, do you need this? Is everything going okay? Oh, we have a problem with the chairs blocking this area and they handle it. You know, things like that. They did. Roger Wooten did an amazing job, um, promoting this show. Everyone that was working for him did an amazing job.

Brad Dowdy: It's definitely like a highlight show. Like I will remember this show just because it was so smooth. It ran so well. Um, and you know, the actual, you know, in our parlance, the content was great. If you will, if that makes sense.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah. I get it.

Brad Dowdy: So I would, I would love to go to this show again. It was fantastic. I mean, not, not a negative word to say about it. It was awesome.

Myke Hurley: Well, I would, I'm interested to see if there's a way that I can try and make it work. I'll think about this next year. If it was the next week, then I would do it. Right. Because there's like a couple of weeks in between that makes it even harder.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. You know, maybe one of these years, you know, the podcast travels, right? We've talked about that.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. That could be a thing like that. We, we do it in Chicago, which could be fun because I'm sure that there are people that couldn't get to there easier than they can get to Atlanta. Yep. So it might be a thing. That might be a thing. I'm sure I'll have a reason to go to Chicago. Yeah. Aside from the pen show. Because that's my main thing is I want to go to Chicago, the city. Yes. Well, I know I've said this maybe on every show for the last four weeks, but there you go. Everybody knows it's a fact. It's a lockdown. And now knowing that the pen shows were good, that'd be great. And if the promoters seem really tuned in, then maybe they would, maybe they would like for us to be there.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. That would be very cool. And they would be absolutely receptive to that.

Myke Hurley: Cool. All right. Well, I'm pleased that you enjoyed it. Oh yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Absolute blast. Loved every minute of it.

Myke Hurley: Good stuff. And when are you next off?

Brad Dowdy: Not till DC. There might be some things in the work in between. I would say they're not likely to happen. So I'm not going to bother even saying them. So it's most likely DC, which is August, which I'm good with. I need a break. Yeah, no doubt. That stuff's exhausting. I was exhausted every night.

Myke Hurley: It's hard work.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah. You're just going the whole time.

Myke Hurley: All right. If you want to find our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm slash penaddict slash 203. If you want to find Brad online, go to penaddict.com. And he is at Dowdyism on Twitter, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M. And penaddict on Instagram. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E on penaddict. I always say that on Instagram and Twitter. I am iMike. There you go. Also go to NotCo if you're looking for some lovely places to store your pens. Thank you so much to Squarespace and Harry's for supporting this week's show. But most of all, thank you for listening. And we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.