About 500 years after a graphite deposit was discovered in England and sliced into the first pencils, a store devoted to pencils has opened in Lower Manhattan. If the enterprise seems belated, well, it is. Who uses a pencil anymore?

Pencils are like fax machines and margarine: They do a job, sure, but other things do the same job better — pens, email and butter, respectively. You can write a letter in pencil, but it’s more adult to write in pen. You can solve a crossword in pencil, but it’s more courageous in pen.

And yet, here’s the thing: Being in the presence of an obsessive hobbyist is intoxicating. Any kind of hobbyist, no matter what the locus of her attention.