Post-DC Post-Covid Recap
Back in December 2020 when my parents caught Covid-19 I wrote a post urging people to stay strong amid the lockdown fatigue, and to continue wearing masks and washing their hands and social distancing and undertaking similar techniques to undermine the spread of the virus. The post was published on December 18th, four days after the beginning of the coronavirus vaccine rollout in the US, but still almost three and a half months before I was eligible to receive my first vaccination myself in late March of 2021, and just about a year and a half before my children were finally eligible for their first vaccinations in June of 2022. At the time I wrote that post the possibility definitely crossed my mind that I might someday write this follow-up, but I would not have expected it to be twenty months in the future.
Covid-19 is my least favorite thing I brought home from the DC pen show. Please, for all of you who are planning to continue attending pen shows and Pelikan Hubs and the like in the near future, enjoy them, but enjoy them responsibly, with masks and hand washing and distancing, and just generally being considerate for the sake of others and yourself. I wore a mask much of my time in DC, as did many others, but I know I could have been better. Then again, maybe it was one of the times I shared a crowded elevator instead of waiting for the next one, or when I shared a dinner table with an unmasked stranger because the hotel restaurant was so limited for space, or maybe it was from the clerk at a fast food drive thru that I stopped at on my way home from the show when I was exhausted and just wanted to grab some dinner fast. There’s no way to trace the vector, and no reason to at this point. After a course of Paxlovid I’m feeling mostly better, and the rest of my family is doing alright. It’s more of a shock ultimately that my kids caught it from me rather than the other way around, but at least they had antibodies in their system before it happened.
But enough about my family’s ailments - I mention all this solely to encourage responsible behavior at the San Francisco pen show later this week and others later this year - let’s get on to the pen show recap I would have posted during the last two weeks had I been in any shape to:.
“all my bags are packed, I’m ready to go…”
The DC show in 2022 was my second time around as a pen show vendor, and my first time really running the table by myself. On Friday I shared my table with my friend Cory Myers of Head-bone Stationery, and on Saturday my brother Michael came and helped me out at the table so I could get in a bit of browsing and shopping. Since my father was out of the country on a trip he had planned before learning the dates of the show, I was really the one in charge of the table, unlike Baltimore earlier this year where I was able to sneak away for longer stretches of time. Unfortunately, as I’ll touch on later, the lack of space for the normal after-hours social scene meant that what little time I snuck away for browsing was the only time I got in to visit with some of the pen friends I came to the show looking forward to seeing.
As a first time vendor at the show I was incredibly fortunate in the placement of my table. I was in the front half of the main ballroom, seated right next to Ben Walsh of Gravitas Pens. Seated behind us were Nik Pang of Entropy Ink, and JC Ament the Nib Tailor himself. Like I said, I was incredibly fortunate with my table placement, when other options at the show included being placed in a downstairs hallway. A lot has been said about the adapted layout of the show this year, both before and after, but if you are unaware the DC show usually features a second sort of overflow room, commonly called the “cool kids room”, because that is where historically many of the smaller makers have been placed. The cool kids room was one of the temporary casualties of this year’s hotel renovations, and so the solution instead was to use space downstairs from the main ballroom for the vendors who would have been in the side ballroom.
There was actually a small benefit to this change that I didn’t realize until I was walking the show floor myself. And that is the fact that the steps to the lower level are in the side hallway off of the main ballroom, and as such they encouraged attendees to go into that side hall that sometimes features vendors who don’t get as much traffic as those in the ballroom itself. However, once downstairs, the flow of the space just didn’t work. You had to choose between a small room full of vendors or a hallway full of vendors, and at the other end was just a bank of elevators. There was also an ink testing station tucked away opposite the elevators that I didn’t even notice until Sunday. I don’t know if any renovations are occurring in that lower level, and if they open up the other end of that floor a bit more to provide some better flow then maybe this could remain a good alternative to the side ballroom, but if the layout remains the same I sincerely hope that next year’s show involves a return to the old layout.
The other major issue caused by the renovation was the fact that the hotel bar and restaurant were relegated to a small corner of the make-shift lobby. There was minimal seating, minimal bar space, and a fairly early last call, all coming together to stymie the usual after hours activity at a pen show. Usually at a pen show if I’m not going out to a restaurant with a group I’ll grab dinner at the bar so I can hang out and chat with whomever is there. However, I actually ended up ordering room service two of the three nights I was at the show. With space as limited as it was, I didn’t want to take a whole table to myself. The room service staff were courteous and relatively quick, and despite the limited weekend menu, I did find some things I enjoyed, like the cheese cake flight.
My experience on Saturday night, after finishing the cheesecake flight and venturing back out of my room, was an incredibly validating moment for myself as a pen collector and member of the community. I began attending pen shows in 2017, but I always attended with a family member and basically did my browsing/shopping and left without really socializing. My fourth pen show, DC 2018, was my first time attending a pen show solo, and actually making an effort to be a part of the community, not just to browse through. That was also the day I first turned up at a bar after a pen show, and introduced myself to makers and bloggers and other show attendees, and showed off my humble pen collection to them. At the time my collection was quite a bit smaller, but it still had enough eccentricity just because of my personal tastes that I was called out by Elaine in her Owl Ink recap as having the “Most Unique Collection”, which I wore as quite a badge of pride. Since then, my collection has grown, and includes some of your more common “grail” pens, like a Pilot 823, or a Visconti Homo Sapiens, but I still have a particular interest in finding some of the more “unique” pens out there. On Saturday I found a corner of the entry way with a couple tables and chairs, I spread out my 80 pen case, and I spent hours showing off some of my favorite pens to anyone who stopped by. I met new people and spent time catching up with people I hadn’t seen in years due to the pandemic. It wasn’t the same as the usual mingling at a pen show bar, but it was still a highlight of my weekend.
Another highlight of the weekend was what I managed to bring home with me of a non-viral variety. The one purchase I knew I wanted to make coming to the show was something (anything) from the Mayfair Pen Company. I ended up buying one of their newly revised Silmaril eyedropper models, which I hope to have an inking video up for on TikTok very soon. Then there is the giant stone and acrylic Acriv Authority which came with an entire pen wrap because there wasn’t a case big enough for it. When I saw that pen wandering through the show floor it called to my love of pens that are unique and different. There are also a couple of my own PenQueue pen blocks I took out of inventory Sunday evening for myself and my daughter, and I also purchased a dancing cat pen stand for my daughter from Ahnitol, who I was very excited to have a chance to meet at the show, even with the language barrier stopping us from having a real conversation. I also brought my daughter home a Head-bone sticker pack.
i also picked up two pencils from the Legendary Pencil Company, one for my father and one for myself. And a couple of pens that friends of mine brought for me knowing I wanted them: a second gen rOtring Newton in copper that Kimberly Lau hand delivered to me from California, and the Erasble Podcast x Baron Fig Squire from my friend Katharine . I didn’t get any nib work done at the show, but I did swap 3D prints with Damien Alomar of All in the Nib to check out his design for a resin printed three-nib stand. Luxury Brands USA also provided me with a couple of pens that I’m very excited to review for you all very soon, the Benu Talisman in Four Leaf Clover, and the Waldmann Tango Imagination in Dark Teal. Keep an eye out for those reviews on the coming weeks, as well as some unboxing/inking videos on TikTok.
Finally, sitting next to Gravitas all weekend, it was inevitable that I’d be bringing a few of Ben’s pens home. I grabbed an Ultematum Twist rollerball for my mother who has been hunting for a lightweight pen that isn’t too thin, and a Skittles Twist for my wife, because she loves the rainbow/oil slick look on my own Skittles Sentry that I purchased a little bit ago (check out Joe’s recent piece at the Gentleman Stationer for more details about these types of pen finishes). For myself, I was originally planning to buy one of the red pocket pens that Ben had on display which aren’t up on his site yet, but then This gorgeous dyed Delrin Big Dropper caught my eye. I’ll admit that at first I thought it was urushi, and others who I showed it off to later thought it was made of wood, but the moment I picked it up I felt the soft smoothness of delrin. Ben mentioned he had only dyed a few of his Delrin pens this particular color, and I knew I had to have it. I would have bought even more pens from Ben at the show, but discussing a couple of pens he has coming to the site soon, I decided to wait and order those when they are ready instead. Gravitas Pens is definitely a site to keep an eye on if you aren’t already. And if you ARE already a customer, make sure you keep an eye on the special part of the site that I’m not supposed to talk about 😉.
So that was DC. As a vendor, I had a successful show. As a pen enthusiast I saw some exciting new pens, and came home with some new pens I love. As a human being who has spent the better part of the last two and a half years isolated, I didn’t get to spend much time socializing, and I ended up catching the disease that I spent all that time hiding from. If I could go back and change things, I wouldn’t cancel my attendance at the show, but I would have spent more time wearing a mask, and focused more on washing my hands. I might even have socialized a little bit less, or at least paid more attention to social distancing. I’m not happy to have brought Covid home, and believe me, the initial few days of being ill were absolutely miserable, but I do believe it is possible to attend pen shows safely. To that end, I’ve already signed up for a table at the 2023 Baltimore Washington International Pen Show. DC was always planned as my final pen show of 2022, but I’m still looking forward to the return of Pelikan Hubs this November, and debating showing up to the Philly Pen Show in January not as a vendor, but just as an attendee, so that I actually have time to browse and socialize and catch up with all the friends I’ve missed these past few years.
I’ll leave you today with this image I took as the show was coming to a close and we were all packing up, when my friend Jesse Tanenblatt of The Pen Blotter stopped by to show me the latest addition to his Sheaffer ink collection. These are the finds that make pen shows so exciting. I missed them when they were gone, and it’ll take more than this to keep me away, but you can bet I’ll also be more careful at the next show. I hope that all of you will as well.
This post is very link heavy because I want to encourage you all to check out all of the awesome people who were at the show. None of these links in this specific post are sponsored or affiliate links.
