Woodstock Wanderings is Under Repair

Woodstock Hardware and Garden, located at 4430 SE Woodstock Blvd, an 11-minute walk from Reed, is the perfect spot for all your machinal and anthophilic needs. With a large-lettered sign that spans across its wide exterior, it’s pretty hard to miss. As the shop fearlessly displays in Comic Sans on its door, they’re open 8:00am-6:00pm on weekdays and 9:00am-5:00pm on weekends. 

Any self-respecting individual in a hardware store would immediately go to the toy section, and Woodstock Hardware and Garden does not disappoint. Along with the World’s Smallest Lincoln Logs, they also sell miniature dinosaurs, which you might need to stock up on to prepare yourself for the next installment of Alton Krueger’s Paideia course: “Before the Meteor-ic Rise of the Dinosaurs: Dinosaurs and More in the Triassic.” There’s also the “Tech Deck Sk8Shop Bonus Pack™,” Tech Deck-ing being a hobby that seems to be making a comeback at Reed.

There are also a few oddities that can be found around the store, such as a skull-shaped jar for drinking out of for $7.99 and a Chemex® coffee maker that seems to be appropriating lab equipment aesthetics into its design and branding. It’s $44.99, so the Quest will not determine whether or not the use of such a coffee maker is anywhere equivalent to the scientific precision of Reed’s nuclear reactor facility, but it has overwhelmingly positive reviews (4.8 stars) on Williams-Sonoma, Seattle Coffee Gear, and Ace Hardware. There’s also a motorcycle with old boots covering its handles, but it does not seem to be for sale.

Also featured in the store is a nice display of artistically-designed pans. These pans feature designs of various animals on the back, such as deer, moose, salmon, ducks, and bears. This, the Quest supposes, is to give recommendations of what to cook in the pans. 

But, if we’re getting down to the nuts and bolts of this store, they can be found in buckets and drawers in the back. The perfect, intricate, somewhat color-coded sorting of the smaller mechanical pieces is reminiscent of the back section of a LEGO® store. Oceans of gold and silver screws contained in buckets and rolls of chains in all different shapes and sizes are juxtaposed with small drawers that line the walls. The Quest estimates that there are over 500 boxes, but did not have time to count as it was distracted by the lure of the garden section.

In the indoor portion of the garden section, plants both large and small create a nice, cozy atmosphere, although there’s a small section to the side to hide the less-cozy plants, such as cacti and carnivorous plants. There’s also a large amount of different kinds of fertilizer, such as Crab Meal (featuring a nice drawing of a crab), Shrimp Meal (featuring a nice drawing of a shrimp), and Blood Meal. Blood Meal, notably, was one of the only kinds of fertilizers that did not illustrate its contents on the box. There were also multiple kinds of large gardening tools, one of which resembled a machete, supposedly for when gardening gets extra intense.

The outdoor portion of the garden, which is having a 30% off sale on all outdoor plants (except winter vegetables), is complete with planters for grasses, shade perennials, herbs, and edibles. Edible plants, that is, in case the clarification was necessary. There are also pretty ceramic pots, owl statues for sale with an apparently rotatable head, and what seems to be an out-of-use skateboarding ramp. Overall, Woodstock Hardware and Garden was an enjoyable wander, and Woodstock Wanderings will likely wander here again.