Top SF Realtor POV: In Praise of Your Local Hardware Store

Writings about residential real estate and all things home, by Cynthia Cummins of Kindred SF Homes.

Reading time: 2 minutes 

“The fellow that owns his own home is always just coming out of a hardware store.”

This is one of my favorite quotes about homeownership.

The clever fellow who said it was Frank McKinney Hubbard (aka Kin Hubbard), a cartoonist, humorist and journalist who died at the age of 62 in 1930.

Mr. Hubbard had lots of quotable quotes, such as:

“Nothing will dispel enthusiasm like a small admission fee.”

“The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.”

“Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.”

I appreciate Hubbard and yet, the last time I visited Fredericksen's on Fillmore, I got to musing about the hardware-store quote. The humor pivots on the fact that homeownership is not a static state. It’s a dynamic journey that unfolds over time and takes time, effort and money. Got it.

But what’s so bad about going to a hardware store? I’m not talking about Home Depot or Lowe’s (they have their place, they’re just not fun). I’m talking about stores like Fredericksen’s, Cliff’s Variety on Castro, Cole Hardware on Cole or Papenhausen on West Portal, to name a only a few in San Francisco.

In what other store in this modern world can you expect to receive gracious, friendly and expert attention as you shop for something that costs less than a quarter, or a dollar, or five dollars? Where else will someone talk with you in detail about ordinary tiny items like screws, fly swatters, nails, hinges, chains, wire, pencil erasers and Glue Gone?

Where else can you grab a rubber tub stopper and a new tea kettle and laundry detergent and dog food and a flat of impatiens and lightbulbs and an elegant new salad bowl for a gift and a combination lock and a box of thumbtacks and some newfangled product sitting by the cash register that you didn’t know you needed but later learn was exactly what you had to have?

Yes, you can find some of these things at Target. Yet it’s only at your neighborhood hardware store that you can buy a new socket-wrench set and also get that neighborly, small-town feeling. That homey, personable, intimate feeling that you can’t find at a suburban mall or Costco or by ordering on Amazon.

I say, “Lucky is the gal who owns her own home and is always just going IN to a hardware store.”

Photo credit: benjamin lehman