[HN Gopher] Mr. Rafieh's Tehran Pencil Shop
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Mr. Rafieh's Tehran Pencil Shop
 
Author : NaOH
Score  : 145 points
Date   : 2021-07-14 05:28 UTC (17 hours ago)
 
web link (www.ana.press)
w3m dump (www.ana.press)
 
| sparrish wrote:
| It's a colorful stall, that's for sure.
| 
| Does he make the pencils there?
| 
| I can't read the writing in the photos but it looks like there
| are no prices (I don't see any numbers). Can someone who is able
| to read this chime in?
 
  | taken_username wrote:
  | I don't think he made the pencils, but he has a huge collection
  | apparently from the basic ones to some ancient ones.
  | 
  | I searched a bit online and I couldn't find any online shop or
  | price samples for the store.
  | 
  | This is their instagram page, but not sure if it adds any more
  | information:
  | 
  | https://instagram.com/medad_rafi
 
  | ginko wrote:
  | >Does he make the pencils there?
  | 
  | The pencils in this photo[1] say 'Germany', so my guess is no.
  | 
  | [1]
  | https://www.ana.press/photo/548339/%D8%AF%D9%86%DB%8C%D8%A7%...
 
  | eternalban wrote:
  | https://media.ana.press/old/1399/09/24/637435502248341625_lg...
  | 
  | [R to L]: White Pencil. Tailor's White Pencil. White Oil
  | Pencil.
  | 
  | One the side it says "single colored pencils 250 Tomans". The
  | front matter appears to be a verse from Qur'an and below it in
  | Farsi he declares he has 'entrusted all matters to God, the
  | same God that is the protector of its creation'.
 
    | kapitalx wrote:
    | There is a 0 missing in the picture. In another photo[1] it
    | says "2500 Toman" which is about $0.10 USD
    | 
    | [1] https://media.ana.press/old/1399/09/24/637435501254726240
    | _lg...
 
      | eternalban wrote:
      | Was wondering about the exchange rate these days. Good
      | catch.
 
    | vidanay wrote:
    | God (of your choice), I wish I was multi-lingual.
 
      | eternalban wrote:
      | khwstn twnstn st
      | 
      | [[R to L]: Khaastan (To desire/wish) Tavaanestan (to have
      | ability) Ast (is)]
      | 
      | That's a popular Iranian saying. It means "To desire/To
      | will is to achieve." (Where there is a will, there is a
      | way.)
 
        | rvense wrote:
        | Also: Zabaan daani, jahaan daari.
        | 
        | (If you know languages, you posses the world.)
 
      | Phenomenit wrote:
      | Do you mean more than two or one?
 
        | vidanay wrote:
        | More than one.
 
  | oz_zyn wrote:
  | I put a translation in another comment. I don't think he makes
  | them, or at least there's nothing that suggests that in the
  | text. He's more of a collector.
 
| udev wrote:
| A mightily photogenic place, so much colour!
 
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I love this.
| 
| I'm wondering how well he knows his inventory. Like, can you ask
| for one particular pencil that's stuck in the middle of one of
| those shelves, and he goes and pulls it right out?
 
  | freshdonut wrote:
  | Kind of like Ollivader from Harry Potter haha.
 
    | [deleted]
 
    | drmeister wrote:
    | Came for this.
    | 
    | "Curious how these things happen. The [pencil] chooses the
    | [writer], remember..."
 
  | a1371 wrote:
  | My guess would be that the pencils of the same property are on
  | each shelf, and the older stuff are buried under newer ones.
  | 
  | For example, one of the labels says "oily pencils".
  | 
  | So perhaps when you go to him and ask for a purple pencil he
  | pulls out a number of purple ones from the bunch that's
  | relevant to you. Then he explains which one is better for you.
 
| ramesh31 wrote:
| It fills me with a deep sorrow knowing that I will never be able
| to visit Iran as an American. I don't know if it's just the
| "forbidden fruit" aspect of it or not, but it's my number one
| bucket list destination.
 
  | werber wrote:
  | I'm not sure what your situation is but I know Americans that
  | have gone through an intermediate country
 
    | ramesh31 wrote:
    | >I'm not sure what your situation is but I know Americans
    | that have gone through an intermediate country
    | 
    | It's _possible_ , sure. But the risk of arbitrary detention
    | would make it impossible to enjoy. The state department
    | currently lists Iran as "Level 4: Do not travel", and
    | suggests you have a will in order if you do [0]. There was a
    | brief moment towards the end of the Obama era where it seemed
    | things may have been thawing, but with the Soleimani
    | assassination I don't have much hope for the future in that
    | regard.
    | 
    | [0] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisori
    | es/...
 
      | brudgers wrote:
      | You should have a will even if you stay home. And a living
      | will in case you are vegetating and the plug needs to be
      | pulled.
      | 
      | Most people in Iran know there are a bunch of assholes
      | running things there just like there are here. Daily life
      | for most people there consists mostly of mundane things
      | like colored pencils.
      | 
      | Travel requires treating irrational fears as irrational. If
      | you want to go, you can find a way. Your life will be
      | different afterwards because that's what any travel does.
      | 
      | The ways in which people change from travel is why
      | Americans have been banned from Cuba for sixty years and
      | Iran for forty.
 
      | notsureaboutpg wrote:
      | We call it arbitrary detention, but the reason they detain
      | US citizens is frankly because the US is constantly
      | assassinating Iranians (remember the scientist who was
      | killed by a drone recently?) and they have no way of
      | knowing who is a legit tourist and who has been sent by the
      | US to spy on them and kill another of their citizens.
 
    | siva7 wrote:
    | iran - and many other countries in the world - could take you
    | happily as a hostage if your government is considered an
    | enemy.
 
      | parhamn wrote:
      | Statistically speaking insanely improbable. ~5m people and
      | thousands of Americans visit Iran every year. Unless you're
      | a anti-govt journalist or intelligence related you have
      | nothing to worry about.
      | 
      | N.B. the argument that Iran will falsely label you a 'spy'
      | feels weak to me given the order of magnitude of such
      | detentions in recent history is in the tens. It would be
      | equally improbably that most of these detentions were false
      | positives as plenty of foreign intelligence operations
      | happen in any country. Especially given the amount of
      | foreign-intelligence related sabotage in recent Iranian
      | history.
 
        | siva7 wrote:
        | of those visitors there will hardly be many at which your
        | country is basically at war which is the case for
        | americans. i can freely travel to iran but i wouldn't
        | recommend it to an american.
 
  | rmason wrote:
  | I feel the same way about Cuba. My Uncle worked there as a
  | banker and almost my entire family visited him there at one
  | time or another.
  | 
  | I asked him once when it opened up again why he hadn't gone
  | back. He said the trips are forced tours and that he wouldn't
  | be free to get a car and revisit the haunts of his youth.
  | 
  | I made up my mind that I wouldn't visit Cuba until the
  | communists were gone. I was pretty confident after Castro the
  | government would fall. Now I am not so sure.
 
    | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
    | Direct flights to Cuba have been available since 2016. You
    | can go whenever you want minus any pending revolution.
 
    | hellbannedguy wrote:
    | I wouldn't be suprised if the military rebelled within a few
    | days.
 
  | enriquto wrote:
  | don't say never. Until forty years ago you could have visited
  | the country without problem. Maybe in a few years you will be
  | able to, again. International politics is cruel, unpredictable
  | and complex, but also fast paced. You can also acquire a
  | different nationality and travel under your new passport.
 
  | jacquesm wrote:
  | So much for freedom, right? After all, the US has a _very_ loud
  | voice on all things freedom related but when it comes to the
  | rights of its own citizens to do as they please the degree of
  | freedom appears to be lower than that of many states that have
  | lesser profile in the freedom department. Countries should not
  | limit their citizens freedoms on the basis of politics, that 's
  | no different than the various dictatorships that want to keep
  | their people in (and the foreigners out), it's just a matter of
  | degree.
  | 
  | Whether it is safe - or wise - to do so is another matter.
 
    | whatshisface wrote:
    | US citizens are allowed to go to Iran. The state department
    | has issued a travel advisory, but it was issued on the basis
    | of kidnappings and arbitrary arrests of U.S. citizens.
    | 
    | https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/.
    | ..
 
      | notsureaboutpg wrote:
      | US Citizens are allowed to go, but Iran will not grant
      | visas to US Citizens easily because the US and its greatest
      | ally Israel have been participating in assassinations of
      | Iranian non-combatant citizens and lots of espionage in
      | that country for decades for a reason most Americans could
      | not even tell you.
      | 
      | I'm just saying, the US has restricted its own people's
      | ability to visit that part of the world because of the
      | actions it has engaged in.
 
  | 2dvisio wrote:
  | Lots of people from USA are visiting Iran. We travel to Shiraz
  | regularly and even during the previous presidency we have
  | witnessed planes full of Americans travelling there. It was
  | quite hopeful for all as it demonstrated USA is not a narrow
  | minded bunch... quite the opposite!
 
    | anonAndOn wrote:
    | >planes full of Americans travelling there
    | 
    | Unlike the rest of the world, Americans can only visit with
    | organized tours.[0]
    | 
    | [0]Unless you've got some Persian relatives you're visiting.
 
| efazati wrote:
| Wow Tehran is full of beautiful things that even someone from
| Iran like me doesn't know
 
  | jacquesm wrote:
  | I've spent half a day looking through pictures of Iran from
  | before the revolution, it was - and in many ways probably still
  | is - an absolutely amazing country. Sooner or later the mullahs
  | will be given their walking papers and hopefully the country
  | can then recover some of its former splendor.
 
    | anticodon wrote:
    | Yeah, I imagine it:
    | 
    | - It would be bombed and looted by foreign army ("In the name
    | of democracy!")
    | 
    | - Hundreds of thousands of people will die from bombs, same
    | amount from hunger and civil unrest caused by destruction of
    | the infrastructure and government system (police, hospitals,
    | etc.)
    | 
    | - Foreign companies will take control of Iran's oil (the main
    | reason why Iran is considered "hostile country" now is that
    | it controls its natural resources), so that profits from
    | selling the oil flow to other countries (exactly the same
    | happened recently in Libya and Syria)
    | 
    | It would become unsafe to visit, and most cities would be in
    | ruins. Crime rates would go through the roof.
 
    | brudgers wrote:
    | Europeans have been anti-Persian since before Socrates was a
    | hoplite.
    | 
    | It would be better if fifteen hundred years of Islamophobia
    | was disinfected from Europe. It's a double standard where
    | nobody sees a problem with England even though there's a
    | state religion and the religious head and government head are
    | the same person...and unlike Iran, those roles are
    | hereditary.
    | 
    | Iran today looks like what throwing off the yoke of foreign
    | influence looks like. So far it has only been going on half
    | as long as the Guerra de los Ochenta Anos took to free the
    | Netherlands from Spanish Influence.
    | 
    | Never mind the bloody legacy of Calvinism though. The
    | traditional head of the European church launched the crusades
    | and backed the long slog in the Iberian Peninsula.
    | 
    | So long as the first reaction is to frame Iran in religious
    | terms, the Mullahs are logically correct in their claims
    | about the enemy without.
 
      | eynsham wrote:
      | I agree that Islamophobia contributes to unhelpfully
      | negative attitudes towards Iran.
      | 
      | > It's a double standard where nobody sees a problem with
      | England even though there's a state religion and the
      | religious head and government head are the same
      | person...and unlike Iran, those roles are hereditary.
      | 
      | I don't think that anyone familiar with both countries
      | would consider that the role of the two is remotely
      | comparable. The Queen's influence, except when acting on
      | the advice of the PM (i.e., doing precisely what the PM
      | says), on the vast majority of policymaking is negligible.
      | The Supreme Leader's influence is much broader. The Supreme
      | Leader chooses all sorts of important ministers (e.g., the
      | interior and defence ministers). The IRGC directly reports
      | to Khamanei and he does not direct it on the advice of the
      | President.
      | 
      | As for the established church, it has barely any effect: at
      | most, a few votes in the Lords (which under the Parliament
      | Acts 1911 and 1949 can be overriden by the Commons.)
      | Government policy and the wishes of the C of E are pretty
      | clearly in tension, which is why e.g. Thatcher spent rather
      | a lot of time criticising bishops for effectively calling
      | her heartless. Meanwhile in Iran, all sorts of policies are
      | dictated by the religious establishment, e.g., Qisas.
      | 
      | > Iran today looks like what throwing off the yoke of
      | foreign influence looks like.
      | 
      | There are many ways to 'throw off the yoke of foreign
      | influence' (and hopefully replace it with a healthy
      | attitude towards foreign ideas.) I don't think it's
      | incorrect to suggest that there are pretty substantial
      | deficiencies in the seem not particularly to like the
      | present path taken by the regime. See e.g. Ahmadinejad
      | (presumably irked by being sidelined) on MEMRI (I know, I
      | know),1 or the election of Khatami and Rouhani (whose
      | ambitions have often been thwarted by those you seem to be
      | defending here.)
      | 
      | > Never mind the bloody legacy of Calvinism though. The
      | traditional head of the European church launched the
      | crusades and backed the long slog in the Iberian Peninsula.
      | 
      | This seems to be logically fallacious whataboutism--where
      | do you get the idea that OP wants a return to Roman
      | Catholic theocracy?
      | 
      | > So long as the first reaction is to frame Iran in
      | religious terms, the Mullahs are logically correct in their
      | claims about the enemy without.
      | 
      | Simply criticising the religious establishment as done
      | above is common even amongst Iranians, so this seems to
      | miss the point. Now, it may be that actually this is cover
      | for some raving about Muslims generally or Iran qua an
      | Islamic Republic as opposed to one say even less democratic
      | than e.g. Pakistan or Bangladesh. But this comment seems to
      | be a sort of reflexive defence against a certain sort of
      | Islamophobic criticism which wasn't actually made.
      | 
      | 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUW_XwvHQNw,
      | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bOfDBoQ7yA
 
        | brudgers wrote:
        | The English Parliament is allowed to pass legislation to
        | which the head of state consents.
        | 
        | Among such legislation is the English church's military
        | arm engaging in the ongoing Irish religious war. A
        | conflict that goes back to the time Henry VIII made his
        | own church to sanction his divorce...so he could marry
        | the first woman he is known to have killed.
        | 
        | More recently the English head of state created a new
        | legal structure to harden the already armed religious
        | border on Ireland.
 
    | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
    | Khruangbin has a music video featuring female pop artists
    | from before the revolution. They get systematically erased
    | toward the end.
    | 
    | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hlGqj3ImQI
 
| foobarian wrote:
| I'd be his regular customer if I lived there. The curation he
| provides is very valuable; I found this out over the past few
| years as we went through different brands of colored pencils.
| Even brands I remember from growing up as my favorite ones turn
| out to be so bad compared to the best I managed to find. The main
| two properties I found useful to look at is the color saturation
| and resistance to cracking of the lead, especially under
| sharpening.
| 
| Some noname sets found randomly in clearance bins are so bad some
| of the colors could not be sharpened even once. Maybe I need a
| different kind of sharpener.
 
| thinker403 wrote:
| To anybody with a cynical view of Iran and its people I highly
| recommend watching this fairly recent documentary about a British
| guy riding a motorcycle through the country. The people seem like
| some of the most friendly in the world.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2LEgowbzSc
 
  | BeetleB wrote:
  | > To anybody with a cynical, narrow-minded view of Iran and its
  | people I highly recommend ...
  | 
  | Do you expect any reader of this comment to say to themselves
  | "Ah, that's me!"?
 
    | thinker403 wrote:
    | I did not. But I see what you're saying and I edited it to
    | make it more chill.
 
| oz_zyn wrote:
| Here's a rough translation for anyone interested in the text in
| the article:
| 
| The world of Colored pencils
| 
| Going through the narrow alleys of the stationary bazaar, there's
| a name that's familiar to all and an address that's hacked on all
| the tradespeople's minds. If you're looking for colored pencils,
| everyone'll point you to Mr. Rafieh's shop. "It's been thirty
| years that I get my energy from setting up kids with their
| colored pencil box. At the moment I have one of the biggest
| collections of colored pencils.", he says. Beginner and
| professional painters alike come to him for recommendations on
| colored pencils. The rare old models from the west or the ones
| produced in the country, he has them all. Mr. Rafieh's colorful
| stall has been drawing the attention of passerby for many years
| now.
 
| dougSF70 wrote:
| The humble pencil is truly an amazing invention. The Gutenberg
| press of writing instruments.
 
| schnevets wrote:
| Years ago, I dismissed photography as a pretentious hobby that
| would be rendered obsolete as smartphone cameras and digital
| improvements became more ubiquitous, but I have since learned to
| appreciate the talent behind a good photo.
| 
| I only bring this up because I had a similar experience with
| these photos that I had locally. My Hudson Valley town is a
| delicate balance of many cultures (primarily white, black, and
| Central American) and our downtown reflects that blend. Most
| folks would be quick to dismiss one small storefront with a messy
| front window of leather goods, sculptures, and various Latin
| American flags, but inside is an expert leather craftsman from
| Ecuador who makes most of his products by hand.
| 
| I never would have bothered entering the store until a local
| photographer (once recognized as the "town's photo laureate")
| featured the store in a few social media posts. Some combination
| of sharing the craftsman's story and recognizing the beauty
| throughout the store struck the interest of the rest of the town.
| Suddenly the eccentric storefront became a destination for
| everyone (kind of like this colored pencil man's stall)
 
| lakecresva wrote:
| He was interviewed for a TV segment in 2018, seems like a cool
| guy.
| 
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJHIByLnGVo
 
| thomas wrote:
| Wonderful gallery! Interesting sharpening technique in image 7
| with a blunt writing tip. Typically you'd seen a more angled cone
| [0] and a sharper end, but I guess this means no color is wasted
| when doing the initial sharpening?
| 
| Anyone note a list of his brands? I think I see some Faber-
| Castell but can't ID anything else.
| 
| [0] https://unsharpen.com/the-parts-of-wooden-pencil/
 
  | JoeDaDude wrote:
  | Image 6 just looks like he is holding 2 pencils. Is he actually
  | sharpening them?
  | 
  | However he does it, I don't think he is using a razor based
  | sharpener, just look at the rough points in image 15.
 
    | thomas wrote:
    | Ah yes, good call, thanks for the keen eyes!
 
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| There was a BBC documentary called _The Secret History of
| Writing_ , where a Turkish calligrapher talks about how they save
| all their pencil shavings and after the person dies the pencil
| and paper scraps of their lifetime are used to heat the water
| that will clean their body as part of the burial process.
| 
| https://youtu.be/TyfIS9b77A8?t=7854
 
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