Boro Art and Stationery

consider this a place a large storage room, cluttered with stationary, art supplies and dusty untouched paraphernalia belonging to a man who knows a bit about art and language. True, there is no browsing. But, if you concede to have a conversation before your purchase, your needs will certainly be met.

Wait… are the people who say the owner is anti-​semetic… serious?
I’ll direct you to this article:
He’s a very opinionated Jew, and if you gave him advance notice, he can get you virtually any office supply you need, even if you don’t know the name of it.

This is one of my favorite places in Manhattan, but if you go there to buy office supplies, you’re going for the wrong thing. Go somewhere else. Trust me. You should end up buying office supplies, but what you go there for is mind-​bogglingly strange conversation, kooky ideas, and a weirdness equivalent to some of David Lynch’s best comedic work. Many people might find what they experience offensive, but the offending nature of what Mr. M says is actually a test (that’s what I think, anyway). He loves to be provocative and just wants to see your reaction, and he wants to be very clear: He does NOT need your business.
Once you really get how he sees the world, you can begin to appreciate his brilliance and eccentricity. But if you’re only going there because you need pens or something, you are truly going to the wrong place. If you’re looking for a nearly incomprehensible guru, Boro-​Art & Stationery is your place!
P. S. Warning: prices vary according to mood and weather, but if he says he’ll have it in tomorrow, it will be there tomorrow.

Weird, upsetting, anti-​Semitic experience.
My friend went in to buy ribbon; after hemming and hawing about whether or not they had it in red, the man helping her (presumably the owner) found some and rang it up for her.
He asked her what she wanted to do when she grew up. She’s in her 30s, so this is a weird question; but she politely answered that she liked her job now. He pressed her; and she said something like, «Well, hopefully I’ll have enough money by then that I can do whatever I want!» His response?
«Ugh, you Jews. All you care about is money.»
He went on about when he started the store he didn’t need money, just ideas, something something something… but she was completely shellshocked. Paid and left. NEVER EVER COMING HERE AGAIN. I’m all for small business, but don’t support this ugliness with your dollars. From other reviews it seems to not be an isolated incident.

I just… what?
This place is a disheveled mess of boxes and the clerk is super strange. Unclear whether he himself was Jewish, but he told two Jewish jokes within 30 seconds of my colleague and I arriving (1 and a half Jews between us).
Plus they didn’t carry spiral-​bound notebooks. On our way out, he urged us not to tell anyone. (Um, sorry about that?)
Truly bizarre.

As another person mentioned earlier, downright TERRIBLE customer service. I called to see if they had one simple office item and I got «absolutely not, don’t tell anyone.» It’s not funny in the slightest and I will now trek to Staples just so i don’t give this store any business. Thanks!

Great service and delivery! I kid you not, the guy got here less than 5 minutes after I placed my order. And I didn’t even order it «rush». In fact, I was only calling up to check availability of one small item so I was totally surprised when they offered to deliver it (even though I did pay premium price).
Any time I can avoid the hassle – and crowds – and less-​than-​stellar customer service – of those big-​box office supply retailers, I am happy. Add unbelievably fast delivery, and I am really happy.

I gotta say, it’s true that ‘browsing’ at boro would be absolutely NO use. I don’t think they were being rude to the previous reviewer so much as honest!
They’ve got everything, if they don’t, they’ll order it for you and it’s usually in 1^st thing in the morning — but it’s not exactly staples. Dickens counting house is an apt comparison.
it’s a special kind of New York place.

Awful customer service. I called to ask what time they close, and the person who answered wouldn’t give me a straight answer («When do you want us to close?» is not an appropriate answer to this question.) He asked what I was looking for, and I said I had a few thing in mind but I also wanted to browse. He said: «That will be a waste of time» and hung up on me.
Awesome.

Needed to get some paper and envelopes in a rush so I looked on Unilocal to see what was close to where I live. I was thinking this place was bigger and had a little more than the bare necessities but I was mistaken. When I walked in, a guy walked to the front from the back of the store and asked what I needed. I didn’t feel really invited to poke around much to see if there was anything else I wanted that I wasn’t thinking of, so I just left with the 2 items. No set prices for anything, so the way the guy oscillated between 6 and 10 and 9 dollars for my purchase was a little weird. Sometimes I like random haphazardness but maybe an office supply place isn’t the best context for that being successful. Can’t complain too much, though, since I got what I went there to get.

Now this is an office supplies store! Forsake the Staples and Office Depots of the world and support this wonderfully cluttered cupboard of a shop hidden alongside the old Port Authority building.
C. needed some CD-R’s to burn something, and I’ve been needing them lately at work, too, so I ducked out into this afternoon’s rain to go get some. My first thought was a nearby Radio Shack, but then I remembered walking past Borough Supplies. I called ahead to see if they were open — and if they had CD-R’s in stock — and then I was on my way.
Borough Supplies is like the office supply closet I’ve always dreamed about. They seem to do most of their business by mail order, because there’s no retail counter to speak of, and the shop is cluttered, cluttered, cluttered! «We don’t do counters here,» Mary says.
Before I met Mary, who’d taken my call, I spied the CD-R’s on one of the jam-​packed metal shelving units and grabbed a spindle. She was surprised I’d found them. If you pay with a credit card, they’ll have to charge you tax, so while she was sending it through, I got a chance to look around.
The store is a single aisle lined with rows of metal shelves filled to the gills with every kind of office supply imaginable. Nothing is labeled, and there seems to be no organization to the stock. Boxes litter the floor, making the aisle quite narrow. In the back room, you’ll find Mary and a man whom I’d wager is the owner. There was another man restocking one of the shelves.
Various pictures and sketches have been affixed to the walls, and some of them appear to be fair-​ground caricatures. Others have witty sayings on them. Others ask, «Who’s the Israeli?» There’s a painting of a rooster propped up against one set of shelves, and another shelf appears to be propped up with a board so it doesn’t lunge forward.
I felt like I was in a counting house out of a Dickens novel or something. This is a beautiful, old school business — and one that probably survives because its owners love office supplies. That alone makes it worth supporting. Buy office supplies from people who love them.