No check in or extended stay is required, but, if he knows you’re coming, Mike Ritchey will leave the gate open.
Graciously and far too modestly, he will also explain what’s going on inside the thick-walled, mammoth fortress, just beyond the foot of the Maclay Street Bridge.
The former PPL electric power station is now the home of Hi Voltage Productions, an apparel printing business where, it’s rumored, some of the coolest T-shirts seen around Harrisburg have been created.
Converted into a print shop he runs with wife Tracy, Ritchey has covered nearly every inch of wall space with memorabilia—and each has a story. This includes “the cheap $3 frame” hanging in his office that once held his now-missing diploma from Shippensburg University. He says he’s not worried about the piece of paper. His mother will confirm that he graduated, and he’s more intent on explaining the importance of the Captain America picture that replaced it.
In the main room, where most of the work is done on both manual and automatic presses, a 1965 pinball machine, completely restored to working order, is just a few steps beyond the machinery, resting against a wall and waiting, waiting—until a rough day that calls for playtime brings it to life.
Ritchey says he’s acquired most of what’s hanging and perched in places around the room because people have come to know his love for tinkering and rebuilding “stuff.” And, when they don’t know what to do with something, they call him first to ask, “Hey, do you want this?”
That, he says, is how the piano sitting next to the pinball machine wound up there, too. When he and Tracy went looking for a new home to buy, he asked the agent if the abandoned piano he spotted in a corner came with the purchase. Turns out they didn’t take the house, and the new owners didn’t want the piano, so, the realtor called Ritchey back to ask if he still wanted it.
He said “yes” and then was told: “Come get it, it’s yours.” With limited time, few friends able to help and no truck, Ritchey rushed the piano down N. 2nd Street to its new home. Laughing at the memory, he recalls that it was “heavy and scary.” Then he adds, “Those wheels are small, and not meant for rolling down a busy street in the middle of the afternoon.”
Ritchey’s focus on fun doesn’t overshadow his strict adherence to quality work and an unwavering commitment to a happy customer experience, one without the hassles of added set-up fees and extra charges. He even points out pieces of machinery he’s built himself, such as an exposure unit used to burn screens that, he says, he “put together from garbage”—stuff he gathered “here and there” to make it work.
Ritchey is content to elaborate with entertaining stories about a previous life as a bicycle messenger in San Francisco (where he met Tracy) with evident passion. But the main idea is for others to recognize that “he really does know graphics,” while being unapologetic for the low-key persona that, he says, doesn’t allow him to go out on the street with self-promotion in mind.
He likes to relax, have a beer and talk “about fun things, but I won’t leave this building and go around asking people, ‘so you want to talk about T-shirts?’” He says he likes to just “do his thing,” adding that, while some days can be bad, how awful can they get— being in here, surrounded by “all this fun stuff?”
He adds “even if you do want to remain ‘low-key’, you’ve got to make things fun and exciting …”
An automatic press isn’t necessarily synonymous with fun and excitement, but acquiring one was necessary. Business was steadily growing and producing a large order with the manual machine meant working into the wee hours of the morning, less time at home and more aching muscles than he’d care to count.
Huge fans of pop culture art, both Ritcheys say their home is similar to the shop in reflecting their tastes “except that it’s a normal house.” With a deep, guttural laugh, Mike points out two posters while explaining the distinctions—obvious only to the trained eye and not the clueless—between screen prints and digital photos.
Pointing upward he says: “See where the colors bleed …” before launching into another engaging tale of how this particular poster came to take up residence on that particular spot of concrete wall—as he graciously ushers his guests down a staircase to the next phase of the tour.
Hi Voltage Productions is located at 628 Maclay St., Harrisburg. More information is at 717-695-7365 or https://hivoltagepa.com.
