By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — The Writers Room, a members-only workspace for writers in Greenwich Village, will no longer be filled with the clacking of typewriter keys, the New York Daily News reported.
Skye Ferrante, a children's book author who used his 1929 Royal typewriter inside the Writers Room without problems for 6 years, was ordered to switch to a laptop or get lost upon his return from an 8-month hiatus, the paper said.
"They offered me a choice to switch to a laptop or refund my money, which to me is no choice at all," Ferrante, 37, told the News.
Writers whose membership applications are accepted by the facility pay up to $1,400 a year to use the space, which is explicitly described on the website as "quiet."
Ferrante told the News the Writers Room recently removed a sign ordering laptop users to make room for typewriter users, and added that the number of dirty looks he'd gotten from fellow authors had risen ever since.
Donna Brodie, Executive Director of the non-profit writers' den, defended the institution's decision to shut out the old technology.
"It would mean that everybody else who wanted to work in that room would flee," she told the paper. "No one wants to work around the clacking of a typewriter."
Brodie told the News that Ferrante would be be allowed to keep using his typewriter there until his term expires in June.
However, Ferrante said he doesn't plan to return. And he said not everyone likes new technology better than the old.
"Some people like to listen to vinyl. Some people prefer to drive a stick shift," he told the News.
