Sad!! :-( One of the last of the great San Francisco neighborhood old-school hardware stores -- Hardware Unlimited on Sacramento Street -- has shut its doors forever. It was the kind of place you could go, and they would patiently and lovingly explain to you (and teach you!) how to do anything! They had weird light bulbs that were impossible to find anywhere else, every size screw imaginable (and you could just buy two of them if that is all you needed, you didnt have to buy 100), a housewares dept. that had everything you could imagine (including tea towels or a potato ricer), and if you didnt understand how to fix your toilet, or what kind of paste wax would be best for the wood on your old dresser, theyd make it all clear, and make sure you had all the stuff you would need. (Try making that happen at Home Depot.) The no-nonsense, matter-of-fact 60-year-old lady who ran it, in her red flannel shirt every day and a tape measure and screw driver clipped to her belt, knew how to do anything. (When we had a leak in our garage and the rain was falling, she had me fixed up in 5 minutes with repair goop that you could actually apply IN THE RAIN and it would still stop the leak!) For years, San Francisco kept Home Depot and Lowes out of the city limits, and these neighborhood stores still thrived. (Home Depot and Lowes was in the burbs -- so when you needed the big stuff, youd go there. But for the little stuff, youd go to a neighborhood store.) But then, two or three years ago, the city relented, and in came Lowes and Home Depot. And one by one, the neighborhood stores have closed. Its so sad. But they just couldnt compete. You just cant replace the kind of personal attention -- and the feeling of being a regular customer and a neighbor -- that you felt from places like this. (And they gave you chocolate or cookies when you checked out!) In our national quest to get everything for the cheapest possible cost, we have backed ourselves into a Home Depot/Lowes/Costco/Big Box Store mentality that is so impersonal. :-( Now all thats left of this great old stores, here in SF, is Cliffs Variety on Castro, and Fredericks in the Marina/Union St. area. And I fear for them. But its all a slippery slope. I remember, when I first moved to San Francisco in 2000, that people were protesting Borders coming in, because it would shut down the independent bookstores and the independent music/CD stores. (Which it pretty much did, with a few exceptions that still survive.) And now, 15 years later, there isnt even a Borders any more (Which I would now love to have.) No music or record stores either. Id even love a Virgin Megastore now, but its gone. No Tower Records. Now its all online. I really miss the smell of a bookstore, or being able to actually look at a CD. I guess Im an old fogy.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 07:29:07 +0000
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