Not us. A girlfriend and I had a great time shopping today -- in a hardware store! We spent probably an hour wandering around Finkel’s in Lambertville, NJ. The store is 100 years old this year. I had heard for years that it was a neat store, and it didn’t disappoint. The sales people must have thought we were a bit odd, somewhat aimlessly going up and down aisles as if we were browsing a clothing rack without real purpose. Or maybe they are used to it, I don’t know. Once I picked up a $4.85 bottle of Glass Wax Polish that promised to cure me of streaky windows, we became legitimate shoppers.
The next thing we landed on was sparkly… glass drawer pulls that were orange! They were really cool and would be the perfect perk-up for my friend’s kitchen post-divorce, don’t you think? Their collection of drawer pulls alone was great – way more than what Home Deport offers. Salesman Sven (who it seemed couldn’t be stumped with any question) then proceeded to humor me while I spit out a silly girl question with made-up words and lots of hand movements about how to attach my new vise to my workbench because the holes on the base of it are too big. Washers. Duh. Should have thought of that. He also confirmed that the mouse poison pellets I couldn’t find this past winter have been pulled off the market – probably the result of a liability lawsuit. But the blue cubes are the same thing. Sven was a good generalist…not, “wait here, I’ll get you someone from the tools department.”
A good hardware store is dusty. Shelves are high and loaded with small boxes of unusual parts that even most handy men can probably not explain. The inventory is impressive. They have brands of old cleaning products that can’t be found anywhere else anymore and the place smells like metal – all those nails and plumbing/ventilation parts I guess. And they gladly give information away for free. I think they like to be presented with new things to fix. Every new person in the door potentially comes in to solve a problem. I asked Sven what the most unusual question was that he’d ever had but he kind of ducked the question by saying, “Ask me at the end of the day.” I might be in the running with that vise question.
The next thing we landed on was sparkly… glass drawer pulls that were orange! They were really cool and would be the perfect perk-up for my friend’s kitchen post-divorce, don’t you think? Their collection of drawer pulls alone was great – way more than what Home Deport offers. Salesman Sven (who it seemed couldn’t be stumped with any question) then proceeded to humor me while I spit out a silly girl question with made-up words and lots of hand movements about how to attach my new vise to my workbench because the holes on the base of it are too big. Washers. Duh. Should have thought of that. He also confirmed that the mouse poison pellets I couldn’t find this past winter have been pulled off the market – probably the result of a liability lawsuit. But the blue cubes are the same thing. Sven was a good generalist…not, “wait here, I’ll get you someone from the tools department.”
A good hardware store is dusty. Shelves are high and loaded with small boxes of unusual parts that even most handy men can probably not explain. The inventory is impressive. They have brands of old cleaning products that can’t be found anywhere else anymore and the place smells like metal – all those nails and plumbing/ventilation parts I guess. And they gladly give information away for free. I think they like to be presented with new things to fix. Every new person in the door potentially comes in to solve a problem. I asked Sven what the most unusual question was that he’d ever had but he kind of ducked the question by saying, “Ask me at the end of the day.” I might be in the running with that vise question.