Tea's Weird Week: If You Don't Support QWERTY, You Might End Up Butt-hurty

QWERTYFEST MKE 2025 Fundraising is Live Now!

I wrote a similar column title last year in a plea to get people to support something I’m proud of– QWERTYFEST MKE. QF was officially started by me and my co-organizer Molly Snyder in 2023. This year will be our 3rd annual event (though I should note we do smaller events throughout the year, too). It’s been a wild ride, but I absolutely love some of the things we’ve accomplished with the resources we’ve had available.

So what is QWERTYFEST? The inspiration comes from a Milwaukeean named Christopher Latham Sholes. Sholes was an inventor, newspaper editor, and politician. He worked with collaborators at the Kleinsteuber Machine Shop, which was kind of like a Makerspace of it’s day, located on State St., right next to Turner Hall (where our QWERTYFEST opening night party will take place), it was located where State Street Pizza Pub is today. Although there had been attempts at a typing machine before, Sholes developed the first commercial typewriter. Part of that design was the QWERTY keyboard configuration (named after the first 6 letters of the first row), which we still use on our computers and phones today.

Oh, by the way, I’m giddy to say we teamed up with the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame to create a Sholes bobblehead, which you can pre-order HERE.

I won’t go on and on about typewriter philosophy, but in a world filled with parasitic AI programs, deep fakes, spam bots, disinformation, trolls, cyberbullying, privacy concerns, vapid influencers, social isolation, etc. etc. it is a relief to sit in a space with your brain and a piece of paper you can clack-clack-clack away at. QWERTYFEST gives you a chance to do that and hang out with other people who love creativity– writers, readers, artists, musicians, builders, and other creators.

But as much as we love to see (and hear) typewriters in action, QWERTYFEST is more than a “typewriter convention.” We like to celebrate the QWERTY keyboard in all iterations. This year we’re going to be working with DarkFusion Systems to feature more mechanical keyboards people can try out. Our Quick Brown Fox Typing Contest will be back with manual and electric typewriter categories, as well as a texting one. Equally important– we want to celebrate writers of all genres who use these keyboards. New opportunities for local writers to connect and showcase their work is something we love to see.

We also have an appreciation for other analog/ vintage technologies and are working some of that in– pre-digital cameras, board games, records, stamp collecting, stereoscopes– if anything like that is your passion, let us know. Last, me and Molly are both advocates of Milwaukee culture in general, so we like to share Milwaukee history and innovation and collaborate with local businesses we feel are making the city a better place.

Me and Molly are the familiar faces of QWERTYFEST, cause we’re the organizers, but I want to mention the incredible support we’ve gotten both locally in Milwaukee and in the typewriter community. It’s humbling to say that there’s too many people to thank– I would feel awful forgetting anyone. So this is just a huge blanket THANK YOU to everyone who has helped support QWERTYFEST and our related projects (like our zine, QWERTY Quarterly).

And one of those supporters could be YOU. We launched our 2025 fundraiser on Indiegogo. We are trying to raise a lot of money. Venue rental, paying entertainers, artists, and other guests, plus a ton of other costs that pop up here and there adds up to a lot really quickly, but we’re glad to say that almost all of that money goes to local businesses and creators. Our pledge levels include great perks like subscriptions to QWERTY Quarterly, our beloved “We Built Milwaukee on Beer and Typewriters” T-shirt, tickets to our QWERTYFEST events, typed letters or poems, and more. Donations help, so does sharing the fundraiser on your social media, email lists, or wherever you can.

Look, here’s the short version: we want to do big things with QWERTYFEST MKE and you can help make that happen by supporting our fundraiser here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/qwertyfest-mke-2025#/

Next week on TWW: The Nadine Zine! Want TWW delivered to your inbox? You can sign up for my Substack HERE. Follow me on: Facebook Bluesky Instagram