Eccentric Flower:201102/The Number 3 Pencil
From Eccentric Flower
«February 2011 «Eccentric Flower
The Number 3 Pencil
Or, Why It Isn't Getting Better
I use #3 pencils by choice. I'm not saying that the #2 pencil hegemony is a vast conspiracy or anything; nothing that sinister. I suspect it's simply another case of consumers sacrificing all other desirable aspects to get the one they want most (as they do). #2 pencils write nice and dark, but that's not high up on my scale. I write hard and I write fast, and when I write with #2 pencils I have to sharpen them about every thirty seconds or I might as well be writing with sidewalk chalk. #3 pencils make lighter marks; so what? They stay sharp (and therefore usable) longer, and because I don't sharpen them as often, they last longer.
If you are going to buy office supplies in Harvard Square, you have three choices; you can root around the minimalist selection at the drugstore; you can go to the slightly less minimalist selection at Staples; or you can go to Bob Slate, a genuine stationer of the old school with an amazing variety of products, some of which you thought didn't exist anymore.
I have here:
- The kind of fixed-distance 3-hole punch with the little metal flap you lift up, that's thin and portable enough to carry in the rings of a 3-ring binder. Sure, it can only manage about three sheets at a time, but it can travel in the binder with the document(s), which is nice.
- A box of #4 pencils. (They were out of #3s; I'd still rather have #4s than #2s. Damn all #2 pencils to hell.)
- A thick 200-sheet Engineer's Computation Pad (National brand, if you please), on their patent greenish paper that improves visibility, with the grid lines printed on the back of the paper so they show through just enough on the writing surface to guide you (and the lines don't photocopy later), and with the margins for labels or notes. I go through tons of this stuff, and they are the only people who make it. There are no substitutes.
- Three pressboard binders, the kind that have two separate front and back pieces with the long metal tabs that you pass through and fold down and secure, so they can handle pretty much any arbitrarily thick stack of document, and expand and contract as needed.
Not one of these items can be found at Staples. I know. I checked. Staples has three different brands of yellow pencil, including triangular ones, and every last one of them is a filthy #2. Actually, I don't know that they don't carry the thin 3-hole punch, because I never found any of their hole punches at all.
I actually only went out to buy the binders, which I urgently need for paper management today. But I bought the other stuff defensively. Because when I got to Bob Slate, there was a sign on the door that they were closing their three stores (two in Harvard Square, one in Porter Square) sometime in March. Harvard Square rents combined with changing purchasing habits (i.e. they don't get enough business) have killed them.
So here's where the world stands: After March, if I want a #3 pencil, I'm sure I can order it on the web somewhere; I'll have to, because as far as I can tell there will be no physical location anywhere in my normal orbits where I can buy them.
Buying on the web is fine. I do it a lot. But it's become the story of my life. The web has become the place where niche products go to barely hang onto survival, where they can still be sold to their limited audience without the overhead of physical storefronts. And sure, that's nice, it's better than having those products disappear (like my beloved, discontinued sandals, whose loss I'm still not over). But do you know how much stuff I basically have to buy this way now? Do you know how disconcerting it is to be told over and over that the things you would never have thought were niche products have now become so, and to watch over and over as The Good Stuff vanishes in favor of two-or-three-at-most choices of far more useless crap?
And it makes me cynical, because the only explanation I can find is that most people don't care or don't bother to seek out the good stuff, so when Staples decides that they're going to carry only this one kind of pencil because it reduces their overhead and most people will just nod happily and eat whatever shit their masters of commerce feed them, they're right.
I don't ask much. I don't ask for the masses to be made smarter or more discerning. I know that you can indeed fool most of the people most of the time, and I guess I'm okay with that. But, as I have said a thousand times, I don't understand why this always, inevitably, has to extinguish the alternatives for the minority. I don't see why the success of Staples must inevitably mean the demise of Bob Slate. Isn't there enough room for both? Why isn't there enough room for both?
This isn't just about #3 pencils, folks; that's merely today's example, so stop snickering. The point is, everywhere I look, the bad (or at least the mediocre) steadily drives out the good. Why is this? And is it inevitable?
Once upon a time, Whole Foods was a hero, an alternative to the mediocre. Now Whole Foods is itself mediocre (expensive mediocre, at that). They have become what they fought against. Why did this happen? How did we get screwed yet again? How do we prevent this from happening to us over and over?
And, most importantly: Why don't more people care? No, wait, I'll answer my own question: Most people don't care because at this point they are either too poor, or their expectations are too far lowered, or both, to be able to. And this is all part of the grand master plan, you see. Keep everyone downtrodden enough, and they will happily settle for whatever scraps of shit they can damned well get. Teach them to eat garbage, and they will happily eat garbage without ever questioning whether there is something better than garbage to be had. And commerce is happy to oblige, because providing only a limited selection of mediocrity and trash is a far better work-to-profit ratio for them.
While meanwhile, if you are a creature of privilege in this country, you don't care, because commerce will fall all over itself special-casing for you. You aren't like the masses. You can always place a special order. You can have it any way you want it.
The longer I go, the more convinced I am that, while class and money divisions are not the sole major social problem this coountry faces by any means, they are the keystone; they are the block which has to move before we can get around to moving any of the other ones.
So remember: It all connects. The next time you hear me talking about how the rich need to be punitively taxed and maybe even broken on the wheel, remember that it's all because I can't get a #3 pencil when I need one, even though there's absolutely no reason why I shouldn't be able to.
And don't tell me how the world is improving because once upon a time I'd no longer be able to get #3 pencils at all. That does not count as forward motion.
And don't tell me how some things being left behind by progress is inevitable, because I don't consider that forward motion either, not when it's something whose available alternatives are considerably worse than what they're replacing. (Please see also: The demise of land-line telephones. That's one we're going to regret one day, at least those of us with sufficient awareness.)
I could go on about this all day, but I realize (and this is the most frustrating thing of all) that not even my friends take me seriously on this, that you all think this is just me shouting into the wind, that you don't consider this a real problem. You've proved this before with your comments when I go off on one of these tears.
So I suppose I'd better quit while I'm behind.
The only reason I would give up my land line is if I decided I never wished to speak to anybody on the telephone ever again. This may happen, someday when my mom is gone.
-- 20:46, 10 February 2011 (GMT)
Utrecht carries art supplies. It's possible they have drawing pencils which are the equivalent of #3 hardness, but which will cost approximately ten times as much as writing pencils. (I might add that Utrecht is the Staples of art supplies, being the bland chain that bought out the bland chain that killed all the local art supply businesses.)
Paper Source carries stationery and paper, and books about things to do with paper, and paper tchotchkes, and also paper. And that's all they carry.
-- 20:59, 10 February 2011 (GMT)
Mel:
There's never been a Staples store near me until lately, but they built one, and I finally went in it, and it's awful. It makes Office Depot look wonderful by comparison. Bad selection, as you said, and not very good prices at all, which is odd considering all that advertising they do about how low their prices are. I guess we're just supposed to take them at their word?
Paper Source has a limited selection of art supplies, but I seriously doubt that they have #3 pencils, unless they're in some kind of cute kit, or something. Near as I can tell, they make most of their money selling things like Sarah Palin paper dolls (I guess that counts as one of your paper tchotchkes) and wedding invitations.
-- 21:29, 10 February 2011 (GMT)
Have you ever tried 2.5 pencils? They are mine and Goldilocks' favorite -- dark, but not too soft; firm, but not too light.
I see no correlation between the "rich" and the demise of No. 3 pencil outlets or the degradation of Whole Foods. What you are actually seeing is the byproduct of size of suppliers creating economies of scale for consumers -- and those consumers have no taste. When you get to a certain size, you can't pitch to a niche anymore; you need the volume that comes with pitching to the masses, who have no taste or judgment. I submit this happens with ANY niche supplier that suddenly gets big. The problem is not with the rich; it's with the middle and lower classes.
-- 21:33, 10 February 2011 (GMT)
The correlation to the 'rich' part, Robert - and I admit there I was indulging my inner Screaming Man a bit, it's been a very bad day today - is that it strikes me that it is to the benefit of the rich (I count the behemoth corporations among the rich) to KEEP the tastes of the masses undiscerning and undemanding.
In other words, while I agree with you that the masses have neither taste or judgement, I am postulating that those in this country who have wealth and power may find it rewarding to keep them that way.
-- 21:46, 10 February 2011 (GMT)
That may well be true. But I think it's a real chicken-and-egg issue. Do corporations make shoddy/generic because it sells to the masses, or do the masses buy shoddy/generic because corporations have conditioned them to do so? My suspicion, FWIW, is that there's no specific intent on either side; it's simply the forces of economics that reinforce one another.
-- 21:52, 10 February 2011 (GMT)
In Austin, I would probably go down to campus to the University Co-op and try to find #3 pencils there. Otherwise, I would have no idea. The stationery stores here are dreadful and twee. But when I go to the New Orleans area I always stop in a Scriptura and buy a lot of locally made stationery and odd sorts of pens, because I love that stuff and want those stores to survive.
Chip and I were in an Office Depotmax (or whatever) the other day trying to find the binders you describe. They didn't have them, and the not-really-acceptable substitutes all came in packs of 20 or 50. He needed two. Not only are these big-box office supply stores awful at less popular items but they sell most things in larger quantities than you need, which is pricey and wasteful. Gaah.
Whole Foods is pricey and not fabulous but I'm still in there once a week because their produce is far superior to other area groceries, although not as good as the farmers market. They don't have to actually be good, they just have to be better than what's around them. Sadly.
-- 22:10, 10 February 2011 (GMT)
Ah. I just did a search for "Cambridge, MA art supply stores" in Google Maps; my thought was that they should have #3 pencils and found the two stores mentioned (living in Boca Raton, FL leaves me with little indication of what's what in Boston).
And perhaps it might help to think of Amazon (or other online sellers) as the Sears and Roebuck of the 21st century.
-- 08:56, 11 February 2011 (GMT)
This news makes so sad. Pretty soon the only thing I'll recognize in Harvard Square is the Au Bon Pain. And, I guess, Harvard.
The Coop used to carry school supplies, and nice ones. They used to be up on the second floor of the textbook building, back where the still-missed CD section used to be. At the rate the Square is changing, though, it's probably another fucking Tannery now.
-- 12:43, 11 February 2011 (GMT)
Discontinuing a product I really like happens alarmingly often to me. One is Jubilee Kitchen Wax. Love that stuff. It smells good, leaves shiny surfaces without ammonia or bleach, lots of good things about it. But try finding in in stores. So I ordered a case of it directly from S.C. Johnson Wax, who still manufacture the stuff, for whom, I don't know, since it's no longer in retail stores.
All my nutritional supplements are available locally, but are so prohibitively expensive, I have to resort to amazon to be able to afford them at all. I suppose I'm contributing to the demise of local stores, but what alternative do I have? Who wouldn't love to be able to browse their local shops and find all sorts of eclectic, arcane, obsolete-but-still-the-best merchandise at reasonable prices. Enter the Time Machine.
Still, as far as I'm concerned, The Good Ole Days are now. Whether the internet caused the demise of local stores or is compensating for their demise is debatable. But at least there IS an alternative. Too many things simply cease to be. (Incandescent light bulbs are next. I gotta stock up!)
-- 16:12, 11 February 2011 (GMT)
Joy:
Just chiming in with sympathy at the demise of incandescents. I need to stock up too. I get it I get it, but I cannot STAND light from CFLs, and I hate that there are disposal issues, and the one time I broke a CFL when 6 weeks pregnant it freaked me right the fuck out. In permanent fixtures I've been going halogen. But I want someone to figure out the LED issues so we can just skip over a CFL phase, please.
-- 18:05, 11 February 2011 (GMT)
Amen. The light is ugly, the bulb is ugly, and... I hate being bossed around by the Nanny State. If there's a BETTER alternative to incandescent, fine. But CFL is not better.
I recently purchased a new washing machine with "high efficiency" technology. Huge, spinning tub, very little water, fancy schmancy new HE soap. Much to my dismay, I hated it. It didn't clean worth spit, I couldn't open the lid to see what was happening (by design, I think, so you won't know it's not doing anything). I complained to Home Depot where I had bought it and asked what, if anything I could do. They agreed to take it back so I could buy one with a regular agitator, but first I had to contact GE to let them try to make it right.
The consumer relations lady at GE told me mine was not an unusual complaint. They are inundated with dissatisfied customers. All this so-called "high efficiency" is government-mandated, to save energy, and there is little GE or anybody else can do about it. We must trade performance for efficiency. Phooey. I got my new, old-fashioned agitator washer and I think it's great. Not as much capacity, but at least what I put in there gets wet (not necessarily so with the previous stinker) and clean. There will come a day when I can't even find an agitator washer anymore, but at least I've staved it off for a number of years more.
I agree, skip the CFLs and stay outa my laundry room, please.
-- 20:12, 11 February 2011 (GMT)
Joy:
Well, if we don't get more efficient machinery (and even if we do, but don't solve the basic energy problem), we'll all be going back to the very effective and yet time-consuming manual agitator machines or washboards.
-- 03:20, 12 February 2011 (GMT)
See, my point is, the government doesn't know that I may be conserving water in any number of other ways, so that I can have the luxury of clean laundry. I hate that they try to legislate conservation. I should want to, and do, conserve, all on my own. I resent that they automatically assume I'm a wastrel, incapable of making intelligent decisions all by myself. It's the same people who believe they know better than I do how I should spend my money, educate my kids (if I had any kids)and all the other Nanny-oriented attitudes we seem to be increasingly saddled with. If Al Gore can have his carbon credits, then why can't I decide where in my lifestyle to conserve water? I hear people decry all the freedoms we're giving up with things like the Patriot Act. What about our lifestyle choices? We seem to be giving them up, too, and not enough people are complaining about it. (I'm not talking about alternative lifestyle choices, just basic day-to-day living choices, that we're quietly ceding to government control.)
-- 05:46, 12 February 2011 (GMT)
On the other hand... at the time that they were mandated, low-flow toilets were terrible, requiring multiple flushes, thus defeating the purpose of requiring them. They now work just as well as the older models, while using less than half the water. Would we ever have gotten ones that worked without the governmental intrusion?
-- 19:19, 19 February 2011 (GMT)
Interesting. I've never seen one that worked. When I have to replace a unit, I go for what I can afford, which isn't usually anything new or innovative. Putting a brick in the tank works perfectly well, without having to learn new technology that costs three times as much as what I already know.
I dunno. I'm not opposed to progress. I'm opposed to having to sacrifice performance. Progress, to me, includes making the product at least as effective as it was before. And I still hate the idea that the government mandates it. In this case, they're right, I won't voluntarily select and make do with inferior technology unless they make me. I'm waiting for affordable LED bulbs and new technology that actually, ya know, cleans the clothes. I'm confident that free enterprise will provide these innovations without government intervention.
I don't think anybody deliberately wastes resources just for the heck of it. If there's a viable, effective, affordable alternative, who wouldn't choose that? Maybe the government should be helping to finance the R&D, if they have to be involved at all.
-- 00:00, 21 February 2011 (GMT)
@Bunny: I'ven meant to respond for nearly two months, and it always slips my mind. We got a Maytag, of all the cliches, when the old washer's belt died for like the third time. It's high performance with no center column agitator, and we think it's awesome. You have to use the special high performance detergent, but that's really the only complaint. According to Clare, it does a much better cleaning job than the old one (even when the belt was working fine).
-- 20:26, 12 April 2011 (BST)
Spc476:
What? Utrecht Art Supplies (Mass Ave and Ellery St) don't carry #3 pencils? Or Paper Source (Mass Ave two blocks south of Porter Square)?
-- 20:33, 10 February 2011 (GMT)