Three Lasts of Chicago

Last week's Newcity Chicago featured a charming trio of articles by Maude Standish, each highlighting a "last in Chicago": the last hand-set bowling alley (Southport Lanes, one of my favorite places in the entire city), the last silent movie theater, and the last typewriter repairman, Steve Kazmierski:

"Computers I hate. Oh yeah, `cause you get in trouble with the computers. That's why everyone has much problems. The computers. Don't you know the problems we are having? With the teenagers. They get in and they deal with narcotics and they buy narcotics. They steal the banks from the people. They cheat people. On computers!"

My late father, an unrepentant technophobe (I had to reprogram the speed-dial on my parents' phone every time I visited their house; they never learned to program the VCR; their six-month-long fling with a PC and the Internet earned them little more than a single, borderline-bogus purchase on eBay) would have gotten along great with Mr. Kazmierski. I really like the fact that the latter gives priority to fixing machines that will actually be used for typing, relegating the antiques destined to be mere display items to the back of the line. Fixing the antiques probably pays better, since that clientele is likely wealthier, but he still favors the writers and other old-school typists who keep typewriters' spirit alive in this digital age.