Penning a fond farewell
The owner of Bill's Pen Shop is closing the sanctum for devotees of writing instruments.
By THOMAS LAKE, Times Staff Writer
Published January 5, 2008
TAMPA - As a tear-jerking wind sliced through the downtown canyons Thursday afternoon, U.S. Magistrate Mary Scriven ducked into a store on Polk Street. It was her lunch hour. She was looking for a pen.
"Anything good left?" she asked the proprietor.
"What you see," he said. "You looking for anything in particular?"
Scriven had been here many times in the preceding decades. She once bought a pen - brass with black lacquer, wrapped in a silver snake - that weighed nearly a pound. Not this time.
"Just a nice rollerball," she said. This would be her last visit.
Today is a sad day for pen connoisseurs across Central Florida. Bill's Pen Shop, which survived in various forms in downtown Tampa for nearly 60 years, is finally closing its doors. This is how rare high-end pen retailers are: Bill Billingsley, the last in a series of owners, is directing his customers to a store in Boston, more than 1,300 miles away.
Billingsley, 64, said he has supplied pens to former Gov. Bob Martinez, former Tampa Bay Buccaneer John Lynch and a good percentage of Tampa's doctors and lawyers. But with rising competition from online sellers and parking difficulty created by nearby construction, he hasn't turned a profit since 2003.
"When it's no longer fun and it's taking money out of my savings," he said, "that's when I quit."
Billingsley got into the pen business more than 40 years ago, after his right leg was crushed in an industrial accident. Repairing pens allowed him to sit down while he worked. His tools have names like nib puller and sack spreader. He owns more than 2,000 pens.
"This isn't fair," Judge Scriven said Thursday after hearing the news.
"Because why?" Billingsley said. He wore a denim shirt that was spotted with ink.
"Because it's an institution," Scriven said.
She looked around. Much of the inventory had been packed away, and the display cases were nearly empty.
"I like nice, heavy, sturdy pens," Scriven said. "The quality of the pen should match the weight of the work."
She looked at one and put it down.
"That's too fancy-shmancy," she said.
Billingsley is not quitting entirely. He will keep repairing pens from his home in Riverview. He says his customers will know how to find him.
"What kind of color do you use?" he asked. "Purple?"
"Black," Scriven said. "Black black black."
She picked up a fountain pen and put it down. She picked up another pen: rich dark brown, with a pattern like tortoise-shell.
"So how much is this Sheaffer?" she asked.
Half of $125, he said. Everything must go.
Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 3416.
By the numbers
Bill's Pen Shop
$2,800 Cost of a pen he sold to the wife of a man he described as "a real penaholic."
$9 Cost of the pen heprefers to use forcalligraphy
50 centsWhat he paid for his favorite of 2,000 pens, a Swan from the 1910s that he fills with an eyedropper.
4 Locations the shop has had downtown. The current 305 E Polk St., 908 Tampa St., 412 E Cass St. and 404 Zack St.