{"id":348680,"date":"2026-06-05T22:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T22:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/348680\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T22:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T22:40:07","slug":"tom-hanks-visited-90-year-old-berkeley-typewriter-on-thursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/348680\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Hanks visited 90-year-old Berkeley Typewriter on Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"

America\u2019s dad, Tom Hanks<\/a>, made an unexpected visit to a local Bay Area store on Thursday.<\/p>\n

During a phone call with SFGATE, Ken Alexander from Berkeley Typewriter<\/a> confirmed that the Oscar-winning Bay Area native not only popped by, but took his time perusing the goods in the 90-year-old shop. \u201cHe tried pretty much everything in the store here, and actually walked away with a 1930s Royal standard typewriter,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cHe really liked the touch on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Alexander, Hanks spent an hour in the store testing all the available merchandise before making his selection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe guy is really knowledgeable about typewriters,\u201d he said. \u201c… He really knows his stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the uninitiated, Hanks is a huge typewriter aficionado. The actor owns over 300 and is featured prominently alongside other acolytes in \u201cCalifornia Typewriter<\/a>,\u201d a 2016 documentary about the struggles facing the long-running, eponymous Berkeley store. Unfortunately, the spotlight wasn\u2019t sufficient enough to save that business, which shut down in early 2020.<\/p>\n

Alexander \u2014 a technician with decades of experience \u2014 worked at California Typewriter<\/a> as well as Berkeley Typewriter, and is also a frequent face in the film<\/a>. He shared that beyond typewriters, Hanks has a penchant for other technology of yesterday. While the staff were busy taking photos with the actor on their phones, Hanks\u2019 assistant grabbed a Polaroid camera from the car to snap some physical photos.<\/p>\n

The experience made everyone\u2019s day, Alexander said. \u201cHe\u2019s got a really positive attitude, just about everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As far as the future of these now rarer machines, Alexander was positive and pointed to a significant online community. \u201cThere\u2019s several Facebook groups with these young men \u2026 maybe four or five Facebook groups dedicated to typewriters, some are dedicated to specific brands of typewriters,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He gives advice when needed, but knows there\u2019s a passionate group of people left to keep the tradition running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"America\u2019s dad, Tom Hanks, made an unexpected visit to a local Bay Area store on Thursday. During a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,923,1693],"class_list":["post-348680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-sfgculture","tag-sfglocal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}