Tom Hanks visited this 90-year-old Bay Area store on Thursday

America's dad, Tom Hanks, made an unexpected visit to a local Bay Area store on Thursday.

During a phone call with SFGATE, Ken Alexander from Berkeley Typewriter 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. "He tried pretty much everything in the store here, and actually walked away with a 1930s Royal standard typewriter," Alexander said. "He really liked the touch on it."

According to Alexander, Hanks spent an hour in the store testing all the available merchandise before making his selection.

"The guy is really knowledgeable about typewriters," he said. "... He really knows his stuff."

For the uninitiated, Hanks is a huge typewriter aficionado. The actor owns over 300 and is featured prominently alongside other acolytes in "California Typewriter," a 2016 documentary about the struggles facing the long-running, eponymous Berkeley store. Unfortunately, the spotlight wasn't sufficient enough to save that business, which shut down in early 2020.

Alexander - a technician with decades of experience - worked at California Typewriter as well as Berkeley Typewriter, and is also a frequent face in the film. 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' assistant grabbed a Polaroid camera from the car to snap some physical photos.

The experience made everyone's day, Alexander said. "He's got a really positive attitude, just about everything," he said.

As far as the future of these now rarer machines, Alexander was positive and pointed to a significant online community. "There's several Facebook groups with these young men ... maybe four or five Facebook groups dedicated to typewriters, some are dedicated to specific brands of typewriters," he said.

He gives advice when needed, but knows there's a passionate group of people left to keep the tradition running.

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