**Archive. Originally posted November 20, 2007.

You don’t get stories like this at Home Depot

It took me awhile to figure out Big Brothers in Bed Stuy is a serious hardware store. I thought they were more of a discount variety shop, with all of the cosmetics and seasonal items displayed outside. When I finally went inside, I realized that they have just about everything packed into that store. And if they don’t have it, they’ll send you to someone who does.

The very first time I walked in nearly 2 years ago, David told me his life story. Turns out we went to the same junior high school but didn’t know each other. He says he was a quiet kid then. I guess he kind of came out of shell. I call him “The Mayor of the neighborhood” now.

David’s dad, Moham (who ran away when I asked to take his photo) came to this country from Guyana on a student visa in 1968. He became an electrical engineer, then in the late 70’s during NYC’s “bad times”, decided to go into business for himself. By 1980 he was one of the first legal street vendors on Fulton Street in Bed Stuy. He started out selling seasonal items: gloves in the winter, sunglasses in summer, etc.

In the mid 90’s, Moham and his family bought an existing hardware store and building on Fulton. The neighborhood was just starting to change for the better, but most of the shops still had bullet proof glass between the customers and merchants. They completely reconfigured the store so their customers would be able to come in and handle the goods rather than pointing through the glass.

Big Brothers is a family run business that takes pride in it’s customer service. No one person is an expert, but between the 5-6 of them working there, they offer a combined knowledge that you can’t get at larger hardware stores. That is, if you can even find someone to help you at the larger stores.

When asked if the opening of Bed Stuy’s Home Depot hurt their business at all, David replied that it did….initially. Their sales went down by 20%, but people started coming back after the big box novelty wore off. Big Brothers stayed the course and gained back all of their customers.

With all the buzz about Bed Stuy in the past couple of years, I wanted to get David’s take on the “new” Bed Stuy. He said that he saw most of the changes right after 9/11, when the suburbs came closer to the city. Many people wanted to leave Manhattan but not necessarily live the suburban lifestyle. Brooklyn, and especially Bed Stuy, was the best of both worlds. It’s a diverse community of people taking pride in their homes and their neighborhood.

And I had to ask “What’s with all the cosmetics and stuff out front?” David’s reply: “We don’t want to forget where we came from. It keeps us in check. Outside is our humble past and the hardware inside is our present and future.”

Big Brothers Hardware
1327 Fulton Street, between Nostrand and Verona Place
718-398-2742
Open 7 days