PHILADELPHIA -- At the second meeting of the Philly Pen Circle, attendees signed their names in a ledger from the 1800s and compared custom fountain pen nibs. Over the course of the evening, their fingers became progressively more stained with ink.
The club, for those who like pens, paper, "and other actual objects," is a bit of a splinter group. Michael McGettigan, a South Philly bike shop owner and analog aficionado, founded it in January after determining that the city's more-established pen collectors group gathered too rarely. (They meet quarterly). The new group meets monthly at a rotating space; this month, about a dozen people assembled at Iron Hill Brewery in Center City to talk pen history, pen futures, and, of course, pen gossip.
"You hear buzz — oh there's this new paper you have to try," said Lyngine Calizo, 52, a co-organizer who lives in Graduate Hospital.
