Our Story

I have been collecting typewriters for more than a decade. It started with a need to get away from the distraction of the internet whenever I sat down to write. I caught a TV interview talking about typewriters and it sparked my curiosity. I fell into research, searching for that perfect machine for me – something built well, very portable in case I wanted to travel with it, and one with a unique character all its own. What I settled on was a Groma Kolibri.

“Awhat?”

Yeah, I’d never heard of it, either. But when I read an article where the author described it as, “If the people who designed the water-tight doors on submarines, designed a typewriter, this would be it.” I was sold!

I honestly intended it to be my only machine. I wouldn’t need any others. But that didn’t last too long. And when my partner decided she loved them too, it felt like I was given approval to buy more... which I did. 

What kept me going was not only collecting, which was a big part of it. Each machine is an individual with its own personality, feel and look. But the biggest part was what happened when I sat down at one. There was an initial impression that you’d need a light touch, to treat the keys carefully, the way you handle something you think might break but that soon gave way to typing away with a feel that no computer could match. The resistance of the keys, the sound of the typebars, the fact that words could not be taken back. It changed how I wrote, visibly.

Not unlike film photography, knowing there were only a limited number of frames, as opposed to endless photos a digital camera could take, it makes you slow down and concentrate on each shot. The same is true with a typewriter. It makes you think about what you’re pressing onto the page because there is no easy delete. Each word and phrase has purpose and took a little extra time to form before the snap of the typebar forced it into being.   

There is a reason these machines survived. They ask something of you: your attention, your intention, your willingness to commit ink to paper. In a world of infinite drafts and instant delete, that feels almost radical.

I have lived in Humboldt about fifteen years — long enough to know this is a place that values the unhurried and the handmade, and has always been a little skeptical of anything that costs us real human connection. Analog Pursuit is a Humboldt business, rooted here and built around what this community already cares about.

We rent working vintage typewriters from that collection, spanning the 1930s through the 1960s, to writers, to couples who want a guest book with a soul, to film and theater productions needing period-correct props that actually type, and to anyone who ever walked past one and wondered what it felt like.

Every machine is cleaned, tested, and typed before it goes out. We will not send out a machine we would not be glad to use ourselves.

That’s the Pursuit.