Steve Lipson has been a customer at Poe’s Rentals for more than 50 years. As an advertising photographer, he visits the long-standing hardware store in Coral Gables often, usually to rent a generator for a location shoot. But when he was younger, he used the store’s products for a less profitable purpose.
“When I was about 14 years old, Jeff Apple —who actually produced In the Line of Fire with Clint Eastwood — a few other friends and I saved up our money and went to Poe’s to buy an engine to make chain-driven go-carts,” he recalled. Two weeks later, they had fashioned a vehicle ready for the neighborhood streets.
After Friday, Lipson and the other customers who have visited the store for 64 years will need to shop elsewhere. Owners and sisters Wendy Poe Whitmire and Roxanne Poe will close the neighborhood landmark on Le Jeune Road and U.S. 1. Two other locations will remain open.
