They still carry nuts and bolts, saws and power drills, hammers and nails. They still mix paint, copy keys, cut glass. They will sell you a gasket for your leaky faucet and offer guidance on how to switch out the old one.
But these San Francisco hardware stores have also become a modern version of the old-fashioned general store, a place where you can pick up a bag of chips, a case of bottled water, a Chilewich rug, a box of Riedel wine glasses, a Le Creuset enameled Dutch oven.
In December at Center Hardware in Dogpatch, you’ll find a Christmas section with wrapping paper and ornaments, lights and illuminated Santa Clauses for the front stoop. Along with hardware, Cliff’s Variety in the Castro is a drag emporium, art supply shop and toy store, carrying boas and tiaras, pastels and sketchbooks, puzzles and Legos. Brownies Ace Hardware in Nob Hill carries an extensive line of kitchenware, barbecuing accessories and plants.
And at Cole Hardware’s five stores — four in San Francisco and one in Oakland — a hot item is something owner Rick Karp never imagined he’d stock: “take and bake” pies. Strawberry rhubarb is the No. 1 seller.
“Last year we sold over 4,000 pies,” Karp said. “We’d go broke if we only sold things you need to fix stuff.”
At a time when longevity is rare for brick-and-mortar retail — already this month Walgreens, Macy’s and Kohl’s have announced plans to shutter 20 Bay Area stores — San Francisco is home to four neighborhood hardware store owners who, through tenacity and creativity, have survived in the business for more than 50 years.
The quartet of hardware veterans — Karp of Cole Hardware, Martha Asten of Cliff’s Variety, Keith Gentner of Center Hardware and Stephen Cornell of Brownies — all recently received Golden Hammer Awards from the Estwing hammer company, which recognizes a half century of service in the hardware industry. They all grew up in their family businesses — delivering cans of paint and ringing up customers before they were in middle school — and are passing their stores along to the next generation.
As neighborhood hardware stores in a dense city, one would think that the store owners would regard each other as competitors, but that is not the case with these four establishments. The owners get together every six weeks to compare notes on trends and products. They share freight on some goods in order to lower shipping costs. The competition is not the other stores, or even the Lowe’s on Bayshore Boulevard or Home Depot in Daly City. It’s Amazon.
“What is unique here is there are four of us who have been together, friends and brethren in the business, all doing what we can to support our neighborhoods and the city,” Karp said. “The important thing about all of us is our roots in San Francisco and our resilience to changes in the economy both locally and nationally. The hardware store is the root of a strong neighborhood.”
Lance Sasser, district manager for Ace Hardware, a cooperative that all four stores are members of, said just seven Golden Hammers have been handed out in Northern California in the last 15 years. “San Francisco is one of the toughest retail environments in the United States,” Sasser said. “To have four recipients in a small market like that is incredible.”
The stores survived the Summer of Love, Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, the dot-com crash, the Great Recession, the tech boom of the 2010s and the pandemic.
After the 1989 quake, during which much of the city lost power, they stayed open 24 hours a day, with people lined up outside for flashlights and batteries. There was no electricity to operate the credit card reader, so Brownies took IOUs from people who lacked cash and didn’t bother to record who took what. “Afterwards people came in and said, ‘I owe you $10,’ or whatever it was,” Cornell said. “When the whole thing was over, we were off by about three flashlights, and that was probably an accounting error.”
When former Mayor London Breed announced the pandemic lockdown, Center Hardware delivered the first batch of gloves, Clorox, hand sanitizer, respirators and masks to the city’s emergency operation center at Moscone Center.
“These are infrastructure businesses,” said Gentner’s daughter Jamie Gentner, who now runs Center Hardware. “We don’t get as much fanfare as an art gallery or restaurant opening, but all of these stores are critical to the way the city moves behind the scenes all day.”
The pandemic, and the post-pandemic era, has been a mixed bag for San Francisco’s hardware industry. Most of the stores boomed in 2020 as residents stuck at home leaned into gardening, crafting, cooking and finally got around to the home improvement project they’d been putting off. Gloves, marks, respirators, plexiglass, hand sanitizer all sold as fast as they could be shelved.
But while sales soared at four of the Cole stores — North Beach, Russian Hill, Rockridge and Cole Valley — the sudden disappearance of downtown workers killed trade on Fourth Street, where revenue fell by 60%. Center Hardware, which had always concentrated on commercial accounts — hotels, office buildings, hospitals, the airport — was forced to pivot to more household goods and local residents.
And one beloved San Francisco store, Papenhausen Hardware in West Portal, closed at the end of last year. The store was unable to find a buyer and blamed its demise on the decrease in commuters stopping in on the way to or from the West Portal Muni station.
Beyond the central role they play during emergencies, hardware stores are barometers for all sorts of trends. Environmentally dubious products like Styrofoam ice chests, oil-based paints and fluorescent tubes have been regulated off the shelves. Hardware store locksmiths now copy key fobs popular in the new apartment complexes. Customers think nothing of spending $300 for a Yeti cooler.
The store owners have had to adapt to constantly changing neighborhoods — and sometimes make unpleasant decisions. The Karp family opened a store on Ninth Street in SoMa in 2017 when the neighborhood was filling up with tech startups and new condo buildings. But during the pandemic, as renters and businesses abandoned SoMa, it no longer made sense to stay open. The Karp family closed the store in May 2023.
The neighborhood stores also have different profiles. Cliff’s, with its clientele of drag queens, sells fake eyelashes and wigs, which might not sell as well as the Cole’s in Rockridge. The Cole Valley store fills up on weekends with homeowners doing DIY projects. Russian Hill is more likely to welcome apartment maintenance workers than residents.
“In Russian Hill, you can’t get anyone to turn a screwdriver,” Karp said.
Another change: These days, women are more hands on than men are, the four store owners agreed.
“Women are more inclined to try to fix something,” Keith Gentner said. “Men are more inclined to call someone.”
The internet, especially YouTube tutorials, serves as DIY inspiration for some who might otherwise call a professional. Customers are constantly wandering around the stores looking at videos on their phones — “How to Unclog a Bathroom Sink Drain,” “How to Wire a Ceiling Fan” — and showing store clerks photos of whatever it is that is broken.
“They come in with essentially no idea how to fix something,” Asten said. “We have enough people on staff who are very knowledgeable who can walk them through some of the process.”
Reach J.K. Dineen: jdineen@sfchronicle.com
