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Robert Horsley, Printer
By Jo Bailey
Robert Horsley, center, with production manager Peter Marsh and press operator Shelley Crites. Jo Bailey photo. |
Owned by Robert Horsley, the shop is in a charming, remodeled three-story house on Canal Street in energetic Fremont, a unique back street beside the Burke-Gilman Trail, well-used by bicyclists and walkers. From the shop there's a striking view of the Ship Canal and its marine traffic, filtered through remaining colorful autumn leaves.
Horsley's firm is devoted to printing high quality, well-designed newsletters, stationery, business forms and many other offset printing and design productions. It's a small shop, just seven employees, but it's energized.
"I wouldn't want the shop any bigger," Horsley said. "There's a synergy here, the opposites help keep a check on what we do. We're almost like a family.
"The printing business has changed but not changed over the years. It's still the process of putting ink on paper. There are new layers of expertise and the computer has changed design capabilities and given people access to design they've never had before."
Horsley knows well the changes. Now 53, he's been in the printing business for over 30 years, when he started the small San Vito Press in the University district at the age of 19.
"I loved printing as a craft. I became a printer almost by accident when I formed friendships with those who were older in the craft," he said. "I had great mentors. Rod Olsen, a bookbinder, one of the greatest, had skills in his hands. I learned an attitude about printing from him. I wanted to do something with my hands and I realized printing would be my business. It's day-to-day work, you're independent and it's very challenging. The work aspects keep you going."
When he started the San Vito Press in the 1960s he did some leaflet printing. He was an anti-Vietnam war activist.
"I wasn't a counter-culture printer. I was a young idealist, a moderate, but I didn't have an extremist view. I was a student at the UW, had a student deferment and was active in the draft resistance movement," he said. "In fact, I was walking down the freeway in protest marches nearly daily for a while," reflecting on his earlier days.
The ID Bookstore, now the site of Magus Bookstore, was a "comfortably intellectual paradise" for many college students at the time.
Horsley was also was one of a group of students and other young men working on the Helix, a monthly underground Seattle newspaper opposing the Vietnam War. His cronies on the paper included Walter Crowley, a close friend who worked at the ID Bookstore, and Paul "Papa" Dorpat, both well-known Seattle historians, writers and entrepreneurs.
"At the Helix there was a constant undercurrent that people wanted to do us harm. We used to set type at Stan Stapp's Outlook in Wallingford," Horsley said. "Stan let us have the run of the place at night. He had a police scanner and one night I was there writing a last minute article for the Helix when we heard a call on the scanner from the University campus police that someone was burglarizing a building. It was at the address of my print shop. I got there before the cops, and when asked, I told them I heard about it on the 'grapevine'. The cop looked at me and said, 'I always knew it was true'. Back then we had so many great stories."
Horsley's life with the Helix and as a student activist went on for perhaps six years. "It was when I was young and had time to dedicate to the project and to the political activity. It isn't where I am now," he said.
His printing business, which started in the U district, moved to Capitol Hill in 1970 and to Fremont eight years ago. Canal Street, the small commercial block zoned for industry with homes grandfathered in, includes a wide diversity of small businesses and light manufacturing, giving credence to the fact that Fremont is no longer the Bohemian hang-out it once was.
Horsley is concerned about the future, especially since September 11.
"Business is going on, everyone is cautious," he said. "But Seattle is resilient, there's a lot of small business energy and much strength in many small companies. Here in Fremont there's a wide mix of businesses, there's activity here all day long. I feel like I'm contributing something in my business."
Horsley is a native-born Seattleite. He attended Montlake Elementary School, Meany Middle School and high school in Shoreline after the family moved to Lake Forest Park.
"My dad coached baseball at Montlake and I had a great education in diversity at Meany, which had the highest GPA in the city. The Central Area was an energetic black community before it tore itself apart in the 1960s," he said.
Although he devotes the majority of his time to business, he thrives on sailing his 30-foot sailboat and scuba diving--with a dry suit. One of his favorite areas is north of Port Hardy, near the northeast end of Vancouver Island, at God's Pocket.
"I've been there as both a sailor and a diver. It's spectacular above and under the water where the life forms are so diverse," he said, just as his life has been so diverse.
Carl Nyberg contributed to this article. Jo & Carl are authors of Gunkholing in the San Juan Islands, a Comprehensive Cruising Guide Encompassing Deception Pass to the Canadian Boundary, and Gunkholing in South Puget Sound, a Comprehensive Cruising Guide from Kingston/Edmonds South to Olympia.
Jo & Carl, both members of Northwest Outdoors Writers Association, can be reached at (206) 323-1315 or at gunkholing@earthlink.net, for slide show presentations of Northwest waters.
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