Caine Blog

The Home Depot in Bed-Stuy is similar to a particularly inaccessible art gallery. You are welcome to look - go ahead, gaze at this new one, it’s by a very hot Chinese artist, etc. - but actually buying the painting is a different story altogether. It’s never just an exchange of funds, like you take this money and I’ll walk out of here with the painting, but rather an elaborate dance, with each side proving their cultural bona fides before the actual transaction happens. Selling cultural capital is serious business, and the finest galleries can’t just operate as cash registers - they need to serve as gatekeepers, too.

Everything exists in the aisles of Home Depot, from spray paint to lawn furniture to air conditioners to pine hedges. After I select what I want from the store’s limitless bounty - without the help of any floor assistants, who are insanely overworked and don’t have time to help - I am immediately faced with a terrible choice, not Faustian really but rather like “death or bufu.” Are you familiar with “death or bufu?” There’s a joke about it:

A jungle explorer is taken prisoner by some natives, who declare him an enemy and seek to punish him. “You have a choice,” a tribal elder tells the explorer. “You may select death, or bufu.” The explorer is confused. “What is bufu?” he asks. “Ahh,” says the tribal elder, “bufu is when we take a stick and then _________________ [basically use your imagination for this part - a la the Aristocrats - and think of something disgusting and unpleasant. “That’s horrible,” says the explorer. “There’s absolutely no way I’d ever do that. I’ll take death.” The tribal elder nods. “Okay,” he shouts. “Death by bufu!”

Right. So the choice I’m talking about is between the self-pay option and waiting in line at a register. The first choice is comical because many machines do not work, the two that do don’t take debit cards, and no customer at Home Depot (myself included, I guess) knows how to use a bar code. Salespeople responsible for helping customers use the machine all despise me and everyone else.

The second option, waiting in line, is also miserable. For being a place where numerous North Brooklyn contractors buy all of their materials, the Home Depot keeps a comically low number of registers open - maybe 1 or 2 - and so the lines can twist back, well into the lumber section and a good 100 feet away from the cashier. The cashier doesn’t like me either.

Also the last time I went, a guy cruising in the parking lot at like 30 mph almost hit me.