I am upset and sad.
Hammacher Schlemmer is/was the best store in the world.
Moreover, it was a unique store, uniquely of New York, the unique City.
No discussion is possible on those points. You could try to inform me of a better store but I’ll come back at you and say, “Oh, does your ‘better’ store sell a heavy glass cheese preserver that genuinely preserves cheese? And inspires you to write a funny little essay about it?”
The joys of Hammacher Schlemmer were many. One of which was its catalogue which entered my mailbox on a regular basis, giving me many minutes of pure pleasure in perusing it, whether or not I saw something I wanted to buy.
For me, Hammacher Schlemmer was connected more to my needs than my wants and my home is replete with things I bought from them and still use, still find necessary.
For a long time, I was afflicted with headaches. HS provided me with a headache band which I kept in my freezer and would wrap around my headache when needed. And the headache would fade away.
I didn’t buy the adorable personal submarine but I bet whoever had the money for it is still submerging herself in any available body of water. Because anything you bought from HS lasted, like, forever. So somewhere the full-size fire-breathing dragon is menacing the neighborhood …
…while some rich kid is still driving around in his child-sized luxury car…
A few years ago I developed a chronic lung ailment and, per my pulmonologist, acquired a breathing device that loosened things up. I bought the one she recommended but found it plastic and not so easy to use or clean. But Hammacher Schlemmer’s Air Physio works perfectly. Indeed, my last purchase from HS was my second Air Physio, bought a couple of weeks ago, after my first one cracked when I dropped it. (My fault; not HS’s.)
There’s a password protection vault in a drawer, and a rug cleaning spray and brush in a closet and in the next week or so I’ll run into other HS devices I am grateful for. Ah, such as my slippers, tucked under my desk.
HS closed, I read, because no one was buying from catalogues nowadays, and that HS had been slow in developing its website so people could use the “online model” for shopping. That is bullshit. See above, re the purchase of my Air Physio.
Amazon was mentioned, of course, as partially responsible for driving HS out of business. I’ve never bought anything on Amazon and never will. And I curse all of you who buy Amazon crap or Home Depot junk. Unwittingly, you have been an army which overran the best store in the world.
Meanwhile, I’m in a type of furious mourning for the loss of the greatest store in the world, where I could find fully tested items that I could not find anywhere else in the universe, items that lasted forever or, if broken, were replaced by the store for free.
Leave me alone for a while.
