Last month, a devastating fire destroyed Cole Hardware’s Mission store, but the spirit of the longtime local business is still intact. We sat down with owner Rick Karp to talk about how the family business is rebounding from the loss of the Mission store, future plans, and his experiences growing up in the Haight Ashbury area in the ’60s—what he deems the “nucleus of rock ‘n’ roll” and “political hub of the city” at the time.
