Most people who come into Meyers Ace Hardware are on a first-name basis with owner David Meyers, and they’re looking for ordinary household items, such as screws or steel wool. But a few years ago, a jazz trumpeter named Drew Nugent arrived in Bronzeville from Philadelphia. He bought a toilet plunger, asked Meyers to autograph it, then rubbed it against the wall in Meyers’s back office.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Nugent may be the oddest pilgrim Meyers has encountered, but he’s far from the only one. That’s because Meyers Ace Hardware has a more colorful history than most hardware stores: before Meyers’ parents bought the building in 1960, it was a nightclub called the Grand Terrace. Before that, it was the Sunset Cafe. The space where Meyers’s office is now was the stage. The wall where Nugent rubbed the plunger, which bears the image of a woman with claws beating a bongo, was the backdrop. (It’s been reproduced on a keychain, available for purchase at the front counter.)
Meyers himself isn’t much of a jazz aficionado, but he enjoys the attention the store’s been getting as an offbeat tourist destination. “We had a German tour group come to an African-American neighborhood to see a store run by an Orthodox Jew,” he says. “Tell me God wasn’t laughing.”
315 E. 35th 312-225-5687facebook.com/MeyersAce
