Broken typewriter? Trust MapQuest: Guadalupe Solis has got you covered

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA

Only in today’s world of Intel technology and gigahertz computers does inquiring about typewriter ribbon get you weird looks at Staples (negating both of their slogans in one visit). Thankfully, though, we’ve got Guadalupe Solis, a retired Mexican immigrant who answers the side door of her house off Studebaker Road in last night’s pajamas, plops your vintage portable typewriter on her washing machine and reassures you that although the technicians will have to take a look at it (she can’t fix typewriters), she has everything you’ll need for that broken thrift store find (repeating “Of course!” like you’re a fool for thinking otherwise).

AVC Business Equipment is one of the few results that came up when I Googled “typewriters” and “Long Beach,” but its address on a side street in a residential part of town threw me off. So much, in fact, that even after calling to make sure owner Solis had the part (“Of course!”), I drove by the address on two separate occasions, passing the one-story stucco home each time wondering if MapQuest was just kidding.

After a two-day stalk fest (during which I convinced myself that Solis’s home address had somehow accidentally been put as her business’s and it was the public listing that was just kidding) I called back and, embarrassed, admitted I had been rolling up and down DeLeon Street in my Ford Crown Victoria, unable to find any hint of a typewriter repair store (any probably scaring the neighbors).

“It’s the house with the bricks outside,” she said politely with a heavy Spanish accent, seemingly accustomed to explaining her situation. “The city won’t let me put any signs up but come around the side.”

And so with birds chirping and lawnmowers whirring in the distance, I entered through a gate, rang the laundry room doorbell and waited patiently (clutching my portable Underwood) while she turned off the TV and made her way across the house. See, while most of our parents are cashing out retirement funds, spoiling grandchildren and spending their savings on summers in St. Tropez, Solis relaxes on her terms—watching telenovelas; planning trips to see the Monarch butterflies in Pueblo, Mexico; and waiting for the next broken dot matrix printer to show up at her side door.

Although Solis hasn’t always had repair stations set up in the same room as her bookshelves of photo albums (“The Family Dec. 1983-April 1986” and “My trip to Italy 7/2004”, among others), she’s no stranger to waking up at work. When AVC Business Equipment started in 1979, customers (wooed by a handmade fluorescent-colored sign) waited in the living room and on benches in the backyard of Solis’ former Craftsman on Seventh near Long Beach Boulevard while, in the spare bedroom, typewriters, calculators and cash registers were cared for by her ex-husband, a former employee of typewriter giants Olivetti (who had sponsored the couple’s American citizenship a few years earlier).

An accounting degree earned back in Mexico allowed Solis to handle the bills and her husband’s technical wizardry took care of the repairs. And AVC grew—to the point that Solis started off the ’80s by moving the business to Seventh and Redondo. Eliminating the waiting couches and expanding into a one-stop office supply store, over the next 24 years Solis watched as customers made photocopies, rented IBM typewriters, sent faxes and dropped off MFC Machines to be fixed.

“Before there was Office Depot and all that, there was us,” Solis says proudly. “But when computers started to flourish, the business for everything else went away.”

What’s worse, in 2004 the new owners of AVC’s building added a zero to Solis’ rent (an amount which had, until then, remained fixed since they moved in) and, seeing no future growth in the typewriter and fax machine industry, Solis brought what she could home and gave the rest to Goodwill.

Now operating out of her one-car garage and half of her in-use service porch, Solis—who can rattle off part numbers for your HP Officejet 9110 but wouldn’t know how to put them in if you begged her—writes up work orders, complains about how her children never call her anymore (we’re talking to you, Rocky!) and sells the cheapest typewriter ribbon in town.

Getting something fixed may take a while, since the technicians only stop by once a week, but the price is right and the conversation in the meantime is well worth it.

“I’m happy,” Solis says. “I don’t care about money. Only piece of mind.”

AVC BUSINESS EQUIPMENT 6729 E DE LEON ST | LONG BEACH 90815 | 562.430.0330

Tags: avc business equipment, Long Beach, repair, typewriter