telekinetic typewriter wrote:

The retrotech movement with these hipster teenagers is seeming to make it easier for me to find things, like ribbons, and repair shops (though I can't find a typewriter repair person in town, there's 3 official stores in my province). Is anyone else sort of noticing this?

 ​What exactly do you mean by "official stores"? And which province are you talking about? I'm sure that the hipsters haven't hurt the supply channels, but I don't think they're the main driving force. None of the collectors that I know could be described as a hipster, except for maybe Valiant, but he's more old-school hip. Of the hipsters that I've crossed paths with they mostly just buy one machine and call it a day, and even then I'm not sure how much the machine ends up being used. Something tells me not enough for them to need a supply of ribbons.  

Could you name these three typewriter stores? I'm very curious.

Well... I live in hipster central and I'm not really aware of anything as organised as a 'retrotech movement'.  Vinyl, eg, is more popular partly because of rave culture. My boyfriend (a photographer) and his photographer friends still prefer film - though for jobs, most clients want the stuff back faster than that and they want it digital. The hipster question never seems to go away but for the most part the question seems to be 'what is a hipster'? 

There is a hipster typewriter shop near me, in the absolute epicentre of London hipsterdom, Shoreditch - they do repairs and also sell typewriters for vast sums. (Slightly less than your average Etsy shop, however). They struck me as slapdash and whimsical - it was the fellow having his hair cut in the shop while on his own in there, and privileging that over serving me, and the fact that they had lost my contact details off my typewriter (even though I'd written my details in their book) etc, etc, etc, that made me think they were hipsters - not the typewriters per se.

Hipsterism seems to me synonymous with a sort of dilettantism, cultural appropriation of the recent past, a slapdash solipsism...  and they're not for the most part teenagers. 20s and 30s I'd have said, at least round here.

I think whatever's in the air is something more genuine than just hipsters. I sold three machines this Christmas. They went to: a woman giving it as a Christmas present to her 12yo daughter who's desperate to write her stories on it; a younger woman giving one to her mum, who's retired now and used to write radio plays; and a man who seems older, and is definitely no hipster. Another recent buyer was an 80yo lady who is doing a creative writing course and incredibly excited to be buying a Royalite from me - she had trashed her old Lettera 22, through sheer enthusiasm (and correction fluid), & I took it in part exchange. And I know a couple of older writers who have never stopped using their typewriters. One friend in his 60s only recently switched to a computer. He's a poet but he's no hipster.

The repairman I use has been going since 1975 (our very own typewriterman), & I buy ribbons either from him or from Rymans, which is just  chain stationer.
 

Several threads mention 'hipsters', but I still don't know what they are - and no help to be had in any dictionary I would trust.  Somebody please enlighten me.

beak wrote:

Several threads mention 'hipsters', but I still don't know what they are - and no help to be had in any dictionary I would trust.  Somebody please enlighten me.

Here ya go, guys.
<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hipster>

This is a useful definition but ... Be careful about wandering around in other areas of the Urban Dictionary; there's a lot of stuff you don't want to know.