Before you dine out with me there are a few things you should know. First, I’m generous with appetizers but defensive about entrees. Second, nine times out of 10 I’d rather have another drink than order dessert. And third, if I ask you to put a pen in your pocket just take it and act cool.
Pilfering restaurant ephemera is an act that is more often about reverence than it is base avarice. Pocketing pint glasses is an inefficient way to satisfy your glassware needs but it is highly effective for accruing Proustian madeleines, as who hasn’t wanted to take home a piece of their favorite bar or restaurant as a reminder of the good times? Apparently, the British are especially adept at it; Monocle reported last summer that “London is experiencing a pint-, plate- and saucer-sized crimewave.” According to the piece, some 17 million Brits copped to souvenir swiping in a recent survey, costing the restaurant industry a whooping €220MM (about $254MM) in glassware alone in 2023. I’m proud to say that I came to all my cutlery, glasses, and plates the honest way, by getting married, but there is one item of my desire that only restaurant thievery can satisfy: the Bic Clic.
I first became aware of the Bic Clic via the graphic designer Aaron Draplin and his Field Notes project, those simple, slim notebooks that for a time were the working man’s Moleskine. This was in the pre-Notion era before Apple Notes became the office default, so from meeting to meeting I went with notebook in hand. Being a particular person by nature, I already had a preferred pen, the Pilot G2 Gel. Frustratingly though, my knuckles were prone to smearing its especially wet effluence across the page in an unseemly manner, so I purchased a pack of Field Notes branded Bic Clics as a potential replacement.
Almost comically simple, the pens have a two-part body that houses a retractable ballpoint cartridge, a svelte metal clip, and critically, a clicker that is immensely satisfying in both feel and sound. (I was once admonished by a former coworker for clicking too much.) The ink goes on dry, doesn’t pool or clot, and with a consistent application. Visually, I think the pens are an underrated design object, the embodiment of the “form follows function” mantra that gets tossed around in odes to mid-century Braun appliances or 1950s dive watches. You can imagine one peeking out of the pocket of a Bell Labs engineer scurrying down a hallway, a reliable instrument prized for its humility.
I quickly took to them, which of course made me want more. But to my surprise, especially in our everything on-demand era, they weren’t available at retail. Yes, you could purchase a box of the Bic Clic Stic, a crass, clumsy imposter befitting the front desk of a dentist’s office, but not the Bic Clic. Further investigation revealed why; the Bic Clic is only available in bulk to be branded and sold, as Draplin does, or provided as a service, as restaurants do with the check. Suddenly, asking for the bill took on a whole new significance.
Atop my dresser sits a smokey colored glass Diptyque vessel, formally the home of an over-priced candle, and now, my Bic Clic collection. There’s a deep green and white one with the script lettering of a favorite local Brooklyn restaurant, Cafe Spaghetti, and a black one with the blocky gold font of the departed East Village fashion haunt, Acme. There are several from the iconic Odeon, including a fake (too slim and with a metal band, not ring, bisecting the body). There are also examples removed from various hotels I’ve visited, including The Columns in New Orleans and Tourists in the Berkshires. It’s not a massive collection, and certainly not something my son will pine to inherit, but I enjoy their uniformity and the little emotional callback each represents.
I don’t write by hand much anymore, save the occasional holiday card or check. Work notes are typed out in Notes, and letters fell to email, texts, and DMs long ago. Even my signature, once a studied flourish of loops and lines on paper, has devolved into a barely identifiable squiggle on a Stripe terminal, like an EKG about to go flat. So do I need a go-to pen, especially one that requires an act of theft to acquire, however minor? Of course not, but the analog world is quickly disappearing, as are many of the places that provide these small momentos. Which is why I’ll keep taking them, not because I need more ways to write, but rather because I crave more ways to remember.
