Is this a Portlandia sketch or an Onion article? It almost feels like someone is trolling me here…
And I had thought the artisanal mayo shop was the whitest place on earth.
I have an ongoing thread on the flavor profile of pickles here and even I think this is a bit much.
There are probably less than half a dozen locations in the entire world with a critical mass of hipsters/pencil aficionados where the revenue/expenditure ratio of this sort of business would actually be sustainable, but Lower Manhattan is certainly one of them.
I’m sure the rent per square foot is abominable, but when you only need a couple hundred sqft it’s probably doable.
Do they also offer artisanal pencil sharpening?
It does look like they offer an impressive array of pencil sharpeners in the online store.
The problem, I would thing, is the lack of a stream of new offerings.
There just aren’t that many new pencils being offered- especially if they’re limiting themselves to woodclinched (which they appear to be).
There’d have to be enough people interesting in coming that a visit once or twice a year was sufficient AND they’d still have to worry about per-transaction numbers- you’d be looking at each customer spending comparatively little per transaction.
Don’t get me wrong- I like pencils. But this seems like a tenuous business plan.
$500 for a pencil sharpener?!?!
Am I even located on the same planet as this store? Because I got a major case of the WTFs going on right now.
True, it could be that the small number of high-value “collector” pencils like the Blackwing 602 do enough business to make up for the fact that most people are going to come in and spend a couple of bucks.
Or it could be that the whole enterprise is just the non-profit hobby of a bored, rich millennial spending a relatively small portion her parents’ money.
My very first impulse was snide cynicism…
Then the illustrator side who’s totally enthralled and finicky with her pencils completely bowled that over.
Pencil lead/graphite from alibaba…
Wood blanks, ready for turning.
It’s a satirical video.
According to the Amazon reviews, that model of sharpener is highly recommended. (“I gave it one crank and my pencil was sharp enough to stab through an apple with ease. I tried two cranks and ended up hospitalising my sister. After three cranks the pencil itself began to radiate light…”)
It was (mostly) a satirical post. 
But the $500 pencil sharpener in the online store of this shop appears to be real.
I went to the shop’s website. I didn’t look at any videos, I looked at the available stock of pencil sharpeners for sale.
[edit] @nonentity: I 
Amazon reviews. 
Maybe they could do a side business of providing pencil ASMR ?
I’m all about the clutch-pencil, me.
Pure genius.
I’m gonna open up an artisanal shop selling artisanal shops.
What kind of crazy meta hipster are you?
