Editing The Pen Addict 227/transcript (section)

== Brands Hall Pen ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. All right. Um, now we've got one of two new products. Um, we have something called the brands hall pen, completely out of left field. wouldn't have expected that this would occur. Um, this is a new pen that field notes are making. It is priced at $160. There are 1,500 of them in total. It's limited edition. Um, the pen body. It's a, it is a rollable, right? It's a rollable, isn't it? I believe. Yes. Yeah. It's a rollable. The body of the pen is wood, but it's reclaimed wood from a building called brands hall in Chicago. That was built after the great Chicago fire of 1871, which is amazing. So they've worked with a local company, um, to make this thing. And it's made out of wood from Chicago allegory goods. It's the company. Um, and the wood has like a, uh, is it debossed or embossed? I think it's debossed where they've cut field notes name into it. It's an absolute stunner. It's got, um, Chrome on the, the, the ends of it. Like it's got Chrome furniture. Uh, it has a stainless steel tip and uses a, it comes with a Schneider top ball, eight 50 refill, but we'll take any pilot G2. And it also comes in a leather sleeve as well. This is a beautiful, beautiful thing. It's not, I don't think it's a pen for me. Um, but I absolutely think it is a beautiful addition and a, any worthy addition. Um, I like that. It's got a clip on it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So to me, this is extremely similar to the Baron fig Archer. This is a good pen for the brand.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It fits field notes perfectly,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' right? It fits fields perfectly. It's not a product for me. Doesn't mean anything about the product, whether good, bad and different for me. It's not something that interests me whatsoever.

'''Myke Hurley:''' But I'll tell you though, like if I, if some, if, if it was holiday season and I opened this on Christmas morning, I would be really happy with that. Like if somebody absolutely correct as a gift, like I would be like, wow, this is amazing. Like absolutely not just anyone like me, but I just wouldn't go out and buy it myself because I don't love roller balls enough,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' but I think it's the same with the pencils. I mean, that's, that's the correct sentiment. If I got a box of those pencils in my stocking, that would be sweet.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is like a great thing for any field notes aficionado, but it's up to you. If you want to buy it, I mean, they did call out, especially on the page that it takes Schmidt refills. And when I saw that, I was like, like I thought, thought about it for just a second. Uh, I'm not, I'm, I'm not personally going to get it yet. I'm not actually going to say I will never get this. Cause the more and more I look at this pen, the more enchanted I am by it. Um, but I just, I just, it's just not really my thing. If you lived in Chicago, like as well, it's like perfect, right? Cause this is right. Very like true to Chicago thing. Like they do, which is awesome. They really love their town. Uh, and it's, it's a nice looking thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I definitely wanted to point out the Chicago thing. They super love Chicago. And I love that they just like bring that out and, you know, teach us, you know, non Chicago ones just about their city and how much they love it. I, I, I really like seeing that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Like yesterday, I learned that there was a great fire in 1871. Right. I didn't know that. Right. Now I know this one. Yeah. This is a, this is a really nice product. It's a nice addition to their line. I think in the same way of like, um, you know, like the leather covers covers that they do, like the pony express pouch and the everyday carry thing. It's like, I think that they are amazing. I just don't buy, I just wouldn't buy them for myself. But again, like if they were given to me as gifts, I would be ecstatic.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. And same with the archival box. I think the archival box is one of the coolest things they've ever, ever made. I own zero.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's one that I would buy. Cause it's like, yeah, but yeah, they, they make these things and I think they're great additions to their line. Um, especially if they can just sit there and they could just sell them, you know, they're just every now and then someone will buy one. Yep. Um, yep. I think it's, I think it's really cool. And I like that they're doing some little extra things now. I think it helps kind of in the exact same way as Baron Fig flesh them out, you know, like you can come and buy a whole collection of stuff if you want it. So I think that adding more stuff like this to the line is, is only a good thing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I can see Jim and Brian while this pen was being made up, but they were pretty jacked about this pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They care a lot about this stuff and, you know, doing something really cool with Chicago and the, the history.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This isn't something that was just thrown together. This wasn't a pen that they just bought and stamp their logo into rather. You can see that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. So why don't you talk about what you really want to talk about? You've been burying the lead, the whole show. So let's get to it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I'm going to bury even further. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace. The simplest way for anyone to create a beautiful landing page, website, or online store. Start building your website today at squarespace.com and use the offer code INK, I N K at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace gives you all of the power that you need. They put it right in the palm of your hands to create something, to put something out into the world, to capture every detail of what drives you. Squarespace believes that if it's worth the effort for you to want to do something with it, it's worth sharing with the world. So they make sure that they give you all of the tools that are necessary to do this. They give you tools and templates that are easy to use, professionally designed, updated. They're powered perfectly. They kept secure. They kept stable. This is what Squarespace is all about. It is a platform to allow you to put whatever it is that you make, do, or want to say online. They have 24 seven support in case you need it. They have a commerce platform in case there's anything you want to sell. Many companies use Squarespace to sell stuff. Relay FM does. Not Coco. We use Squarespace to sell stuff because they have everything. They have all the integrations that we need. They have all of the inventory software that we need at an incredible price. And also with the ability to add things like blogs and galleries. And if we wanted to, we could have music pages. They are a full fleshed out thing that you can use. This is why Squarespace are trusted by millions of people around the world and some huge companies as well. Everything features responsive design. It looks great on all sizes of device. And if you know what you're doing, you can go into the dev platform and tinker around and make some changes. But if you don't, if you have no idea, if you've never built a website before, you're going to find it a breeze on Squarespace just like me. I don't know how to do any of that code stuff. And I've been using Squarespace for years because they allow me to express myself without needing to spend hours and hours and hours trying to work out the HTML code to center this header on my website. You don't need to worry about any of that with them. If you sign up for a year with Squarespace, you'll get a free domain name allowing you to choose exactly what you want your site to be called. And their plans start at only $12 a month. You can sign up for a free trial with no credit card required and start building your own website straight away. It's a fully featured trial by going to squarespace.com. Then when you decide to sign up, make sure that you use the offer code INK at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the pen addict. Thank you to Squarespace for supporting this show and RelayFM. Two weeks ago on this show, we were talking about lunacy, right? It had just been released. And we got into somewhere talking about arts and sciences and the byline edition. And I said on that show that I would give up my quest to make arts and sciences, like to try and convince field notes to make arts and sciences a standard edition in lieu of making byline a standard edition, because byline is way better for what I was using than arts and sciences are, which is just for my on-desk notes that I take during the show. Because it's perfect, it sits flat, it doesn't take up a lot of room, it's nice and long so I can stand it up and see my notes in front of me when I'm editing. I said, come on, field notes, let's make this a standard edition and then I'll stop my quest. You know, we know it makes sense here. So a couple of days ago when they announced the brand's hall pen, they also announced the front page edition, which is a standard stock edition, which is the byline in every sense of the word except a different color cover. And it came out, I immediately sent it to Brad with a, hell yeah, I've done it. And then I received many, many, many tweets and emails about this, to the point where the field notes Twitter account, hello there, whoever runs the field notes Twitter account, you're a lovely person, tweeted a few tweets. They said, there have been more mails to the HQ today about making a reporter's notebook a regular part of the line in any subject in 2016. And then said, we blame Myke.

'''Myke Hurley:''' And then I, I was tweeting at them and they use that. I said that Myke was right. And then they said, hashtag Myke was indeed right. I'll put those tweets in the show notes. If you want to see them, I just want to say, I have no delusions of grandeur here. I was obviously not responsible for this. Like they did it like two weeks ago. Go right, change the color in that printer. We're making these standard. But I have to say that I do feel very vindicated in it, at least.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is, this is now, because now I can use my bylines that I have, because I bought a bunch of them and I won't have to worry about running out of them. That was always the thing of arts and sciences. When I had that panic and begged the listeners to sell anything, I don't have to worry about it anymore. Cause this is a standard edition. I think this is a great addition to their lineup, a better addition to their lineup than, uh, an arts and sciences size book would be, in all honesty, because it's different and it's something else. Uh, I huge thumbs up field notes. I love you guys and gals so much for doing this. Um, you're a fantastic company. I will be your brand advocate for life. I have that in me. Thank you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I replied when I saw that I replied, hashtag Brad was wrong. And I'm only wrong in the fact that I didn't think they would do it until they sunsetted the steno pad. Like, I think this is a great stock product. I think the name they chose is killer. This has obviously been in the works since their original production. It's awesome. I'm so glad that they did this. Um, I just didn't think it would come, um, at least not this quickly. So we'll see if the steno gets retired. Then, uh, then I'll, I'll, I'll remove the Brad was wrong, but Myke was so right on this one. Um, it really needed to be a, it was time for a new stock item anyway. So I couldn't think of a better, uh, better product than to, to pick this one because it's really different than what they have. Um, although it's awfully similar to the steno. So we'll see what happens with that, even though that's Jim's favorite book. That's what I was going to say.

'''Myke Hurley:''' The canary and the coma. Byline is finding out what does Kudal have on his desk now.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If he still keeps the steno on his desk, that product ain't going away. Right. But if he swapped it out for byline now, maybe it will. Yep. Or for front page. Great name. Great name change. Byline to front page. Um, and I liked that they kept it exactly the same. Yep. Right. Like the, even the inside of the product has got all the stuff on it. It's got like the nice logo on the front, like the winged, uh, the wing beagle with the pen and, uh, whatever the other lightning. Uh, yeah. The lightning bolt. Like they've kept that and they've just changed the color. I love the color. Um, so yeah, huge, massive thumbs up to field notes. Um, thank you for giving me an awesome day.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I could see like, I could see the smiles just in your texts, the way it came. It was just funny. It was pretty awesome. Uh, there was something else cool in that email, huh?

'''Myke Hurley:''' There was the XOXO edition is the 2016 XOXO. The incredible, I think probably the best, um, of all the XOXO editions is for sale. I think even now there are still some left available, which is very surprising to me. I checked before the show went up and it didn't say it was sold out on the website. Did you buy any?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I did. I bought two. Um, and, uh, Tiffany, if you're listening, um, our deal still intact. Um, I know I owe you an answer on that. So she, she made me an offer. I couldn't refuse for a pack of them, but I went ahead and bought a couple too. So I want to let her know that I'm going to come through with a hold up my end of the bargain as soon as I get a little less busy. But, um, yeah, I think they're great looking addition.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I didn't buy any extras. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I mean, I bought two and I want, cause I wanted to buy one of the front page as well, just to compare.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because I have a pack, right? I figured I would let other people get in and get them, but it looks like they haven't sold. I thought they were going to set out like immediately, but that doesn't seem to have been the case. Cool. But, uh, yeah, I would suggest people go and pick them up because I think that they're awesome. I'm not going to buy any more. I would have bought some, I would have bought an extra pack if I was making an order of something else. Like when I ordered, uh, the extra lunacy, I would have had, just thrown a pack in there, but I'm not going to set up an entire order for just one pack of these. I've got a three pack. Um, I can just keep one of the books as I do and use the other ones. This is a conversation I was having with Stephen Hackett yesterday. We were talking about them. Like he bought, I think he said he wasn't also not going to buy a pack because he had one. And he was like, I already have more of these than I can ever use. And I keep buying more anyway. And I couldn't agree more.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' He's such a stealth pen addict. Like he has his one pen in his notebook, but he, he, he burns through that stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' He uses notebooks faster than I do.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep. Yep. I love it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Tony in the diary room just said, Myke, just toss them in with your order of 500 front pages.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Now that's our, that's our friend, Anthony, um, our good friend of the show and friend of the world. Anthony, uh, well, or he, he bought, I think it was when he told me it was 14 extra packs of byline. And then by the time I had talked about it, it was some other number of hike higher number. So yeah, it's good. I mean, if you find something that fits you perfectly, go for it, man. Buy it. Great stuff.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Buy it all. All right. Now we have some, uh, some fun knock news to round out the show today.