Introducing... The Amazing Pen Guy!

Interview with Costas Schuler

A few weeks ago, I was visiting a friend of mine in Santa Rosa, California, which is right in the heart of Sonoma County. She needed to run some errands for her daughter that day and asked if I would mind tagging along, which I didn't. While driving the rainy back roads around Sebastopol that day, we happened upon a car which seemed to be adorned with something on it. It was art on wheels. In California, you tend to see a lot of unusual things, more so than in the Midwest where I'm from. I asked my friend to speed up so I could make out what was on the car. She did. Amazingly, it was covered in pens! What was even more amazing was that the car was going to the same school we were! While it was parked there, I was able to get a few close-up shots of the Mercedes Benz that was covered in pens. Seeing the car gave both my friend and me big smiles on the extraordinarily rainy day.

After returning home, I did a little research on the Pen Guy, a.k.a. Costas Schuler. It was easy to find him as he has a blog. He calls his car the Mercedes Pens Art Car, which is an apt title. I contacted him to ask him questions about his distinctive car and his mission.

Costas has been quite the world traveler. His English father and Greek mother met in Australia, traveled across Asia by land from Hong Kong on their three-month honeymoon and ended up with Athens, where Costas was born. The family moved to Cambridge, England for a year when Costas was in sixth grade, then to Qatar for almost a year, and back to England. The family settled in Sunnyvale, California in 1985. Costas (36) and his wife met in San Jose and now live in Sonoma County. They are raising three beautiful daughters, ages 10, 8, and three months.