1. Inside... not quite sure where the lumber is:
2. Click (and click again) to enlarge and see the bird in a cage:
3. Custom screens and Revenge fly catchers:
4. "We don't know how strong we are..."
5. "Loving You," Elvis, Bobby, Lou:
6. "Making Grown Men Cry Since 1975":
7. Epoxy Paste attaches the golf ball to the A-Treat beverage bottle:
8. The way out:
9. All the soda and lemonade is 65¢, but the water will cost you $1:
10. "Our customers are the best":
11. Street view:
Posts
34 comments:
If Trump had a hardware store, it would look like that. NYT: delicious chaos, WaPo: premier toilet valves, HuffPo: woke, NRO: no f**king screw anchors.
Our rural Minnesota farm town has a similar hardware store. Its motto is "if we don't have it, you don't need it".
The hardware store in Keene Valley NY was the only interesting place, when the usual vacation in the Adirondacks was taken.
"If you need it, we have it. If we can find it"
"Do you have a taxidermist in this town ?"
"What's that ?"
"It's someone who mounts animals."
"Yeah, we got one of those."
Nice clutter, but doesn't look dingy enough.
Like the glass, is it Indianapolis or Althouse's camera?
It was his favorite place in Indianapolis.
It's always good to have a favorite place in Indianoplace.
Hardware stores can be great - especially if they're not Home Depot. The small-to-medium-sized mom-and-pop places are usually better.
That picture of Bob Knight made me recall that the former coach was recently investigated by the FBI for allegedly groping a female government employee back in 2015. It was just leaked. The FBI did nothing. No charges. Knight is or was friends with the chief of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. He was there to speak when the alleged incident happened. This agency has 16,000 employees. I hope this agency is keeping full tabs on Iran, Russia and North Korea.
Leak was payback against a Trump ally.
Hiller Hardware
That place looks FUN. Even Lowe's is fun; actually, it's a big amusement park where your wallet is in danger at all times.
Anyone who happily remembers the old-time hardware store would probably enjoy seeing the work of Russ Johnson, who for decades owned such a store himself (in Gibson City, Illinois) and for sixty years published "Mr. Oswald," a monthly comic page lovingly detailing the ups and downs of the hardware business. These appeared only in Hardware Retailer, the publication of the National Hardware Retailers Association. A collection of these comic pages is still available at a reasonable price from Amazon and you could, of course, buy it via the Althouse Amazon portal. I re-read it periodically and always find it absurdly enjoyable.
http://booksteveslibrary.blogspot.com/2005/12/forty-years-with-mister-oswald.html
There is no such thing as a good, neat hardware store. There used to be one in Pasadena that, along with everything else, sold fly fishing gear, including a huge selection of flies.
The Pasadena place was called New York Hardware.
Now it is just another decorator place for fancy drawer pulls.
The lumber's on another floor. You tell them what you want (since you're obviously the sort who already knows exactly what you want), and they bring it down in the freight elevator while you bring your truck around to the back loading dock. You've never been to a hardcore hardware store before ... ?
My hometown had a place like this. It was staffed by retirees from other jobs who just wanted something to do, and the joke was that an alien ship could land and need a part for its warp drive and these old farts could pull one out of their ass. One smoked a pipe, the other was a Marlboro fan.
@roadgeek -- they carry compression coil catalyzers?
Very cool store. Guys like these. Amazingly, there was one on Mission Street in San Francisco, run by two brothers. You had to ask for what you were looking for, and they would always have it. I don't think its still there, as the brothers were getting up in years and it was at ground zero for the yuppification of the Mission District. But it was comforting to me when I lived there.
JLS, but dilithium crystals are a special order.
Something that a lot of folks don't know is that Ace Hardware is one of the largest Cooperatives in the US.
Where I still go to get jam jars, here in Harvardlandia, Statisthan, is with these Fellows. They are Silvas, by the way. If I show up at the right time of year, can still get the 'Monkeys doing things' calendar.
http://www.inmansquarehardware.com/
***
Glad to see that there is still a little bit of East Cambridge left in Indianapolis.
My grandmother sold parakeets from their General Store in Essex, Connecticut.
Looks a lot like Hasagawa's General Store at the end of the Hana Highway in Maui.
That's the only place where where I've found replacement galvanized gas pipe and fittings positioned next to the cans of tuna and fresh mangoes. They've got everything there...
Good, small, independent, neighborhood hardware stores are what separates us from the Godless Communists.
I'm dead serious. Well, sorta.
I'm guessing Hedlund's Ace Hardware at 62nd & Keystone in the Glendale neighborhood?
Scratch that: it's on Virginia Avenue near the intersection with Shelby. I've never had the guts to go in.
Ya gotta love Ritmo at 6:36. Proving he can be rude and insulting even when working with non-political topics.
Michael.
Kinder hardware in Des Plaines. Up until the 70s when they paved their parking lot behind the store there was a shed where they used to store their dynamite.
It looks like both the Bobby Knight and the Babe Ruth/Lou Gehrig pictures are autographed. Not sure who the scantily-clad babe in the car above is.
That place looks like what would happen if a hoarder ran a hardware store.
A hardware store like that really should have a creeky wooden floor to be authentic.
Not quite as funky but close...at least the last time I was in, which has been a while...but Meade if you need a fix closer to home, Ace Hardware at the corner of Williamson and Dickerson in Madison, son.
Ace
Those pictures remind me of the Ace Hardware store on Atwood Ave.
Oh! That hardware store's just down the road from Milktooth on Virginia, isn't it? Huh... been away from Althouse's blog for too long, didn't realize she was in Indianapolis recently.
That area of Indy's getting developed a bit. Last time I was in town, a friend brought me to Rook for dinner. Then the arcade bar Tappers just a few doors down. That was fun. :)
Also: In surrounding towns, there's often a small, independent hardware store somewhere, but that's the most cluttered one I've seen, hands down. And most eclectic; I normally don't see celeb pictures outside of restaurants and barber shops in central and southern Indiana. But in those places, I often see a ton of them.
Great shots. There's a hardware store in Chico, Ca that may do battle with that for anachronistic funkitude. I'll try to drop by for a couple of shots later. If so I'll put up a pointer here.
Not sure about the comment wondering where the lumber is -- in my experience (male, 60 years old, reasonably handy, grew up living across the alley from an excellent TrueValue hardware store complete with creaky wooden floors) a hardware store typically doesn't carry a wide selection of lumber. That's what the lumberyard is for. There are exceptions, but they're usually lumberyards with a lot of hardware rather than the other way around -- Maynard, MA's Butler Lumber is a good example. The store pictured here looks like a great spot. By the way, our local Ace has several caged birds (parakeets, zebra finches, etc.) that add to the atmosphere.
Post a Comment