Celebrating the Legacy of Crest Hardware

Since announcing the sad news of their impending closure in July, the past month at Crest Hardware has been a celebration of life of sorts — a bittersweet blend of logistics, memory-sharing, and community in a way that only a longtime neighborhood staple like Crest is really capable of. And today, that all comes to an end. Physically, anyway.

After 62 years at 558 Metropolitan Avenue, today is the day that Crest closes its doors for good.

For owner Joseph Franquinha and his wife, Liza, the past few weeks have been “wild — therapeutic, emotional, angering,” changing by the day, minute, hour. But ultimately, they wouldn’t have gone about it any differently.

“The last thing either of us want is to look back on these last two months and say, ‘Oh, we could have done this, we should have done that,'” Joe said. “We, nor my father before me, never operated the store with any regrets. Even if I’d known what I know now, I probably still would’ve done those things because that’s who we are. A big part of the process is that when we look back at it, we can look back at it with our hearts full knowing that we did everything we could and wanted to.”

Those full hearts were on full display last weekend during Crest’s final Farewell Fest, which painted a complete picture of the community Franquinha, his father Joe and brother Manny Franquinha (who first founded Crest), Liza, other family members, and the whole staff have built here. Sponsors, vendors, local businesses, and individual friends came together to give Crest the sendoff it deserved — and to give Joe and Liza a break from planning for a change.

The festival included a full bar handled — including permits — by the hospitality group behind Dolly’s, Midnights, and Vacations (Vantage Hospitality Group led by Raffaello Van Couten); food from The Meat Hook, a performance from Reverend Vince Anderson and his Love Choir, flash tattoos by artists from Three Kings Tattoo, live art from Michael Alan Alien, and DJ sets from multiple friends and colleagues.

“It was was special on so many levels. My wife and I, we had a vision and the willpower to get it done, but man, does it make it easier when dozens of people are stepping up to the plate to be like ‘Hey, I’m gonna do this,’ or ‘Can I offer that?'” Joe recalled. “It was just love and community everywhere you turned.”

Guests included employees of decades past, friends new and old, and even people who traveled from upstate New York, New Orleans, Tennessee, Pittsburgh, and beyond.

“I think one of the hardest thing about saying goodbye to Crest is our friends and community,” Liza said. “It’s really kind of jarring to think ‘Am I ever gonna see these people again?’ And it’s a big feeling of loss.”

And that’s part of the wisdom they hope to impart on younger local businesses just starting out: The importance of creating community and putting down roots (and if there’s anyone worth taking advice from, I’d say a business that can survive 60+ years in NYC is a good choice).

“It doesn’t pertain to everybody, but I think a hundred percent, in order to be successful, you must make a connection with your community,” Joe said. “Make them a part of your day; I had a fantastic example with my father, he saw the importance of bridge-building, closing those gaps between demographics and generations and making sure that while building that bridge, it’s sturdy enough for everyone to stand on too.”

But the legacy Crest leaves behind isn’t just philosophical, but physical, too. This past Monday, they held a relic sale and auction clearing out signage and store fixtures, from aisle number signs to Joe’s father’s desk, which was admittedly the hardest to part with. Though the promise of giving these items a new life and continuing their stories provided a glimmer of hope to the Franquinhas — the desk went to Eddie Tarr, who had been coming into the shop since he was born and has already shared photos of the desk in its new home.

“I watched Eddie grow,” Joe explained, getting choked up. “So seeing this young man now take that desk was amazing. It was hard, but you can’t take it all with you. I think we did a really good job of spreading the love, you know?”

“For me, it was really important that this place means so much to so many people to, like, release it into the universe and let other people hang this up and enjoy it and look at it and let them have the memory of it rather than us hoard it and keep it in storage,” Liza said.

The pumpkin scale, however, is staying in the neighborhood at City Reliquary (it actually was previously from an old factory on Metropolitan for years before Crest and Franquinhas the came along).

As the days have been ticking away — filled with unyielding support from their staff, whom Joe describes as “heroes” — it’s been sobering to see the emptiness of the space, but the spirit of Crest is determined to live on.

As for what that means to Joe and Liza, their answers were different, but similar in sentiment:

“I think that a store is capable of being so much more,” Joe reflected. “I think it’s important to see the importance of shopping locally and staying civic minded. You don’t see the immediate return on it, but you have to know that those dollars you spend in those stores, that time you spend in those stores, those relationships you build have positive repercussions that echo on for way longer than you could imagine.”

“Say hi to your neighbor, say hi to the people that you walk past and maybe you don’t know their name. Don’t walk around a store or a place and tune everything out around you, work on becoming part of it and get to know the people that work there. And if they don’t give it back to you, that’s okay,” Liza encouraged. “But find the places that do, whether it’s your coffee shop, whether it’s your local bartender, go into places and try to become part of it because that’s what community is, especially in New York where it can be such a chaotic, kind of lonely place.”

If you’ve been meaning to pay your respects, make sure to stop by Crest today.