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strange neighborhood store
Apr. 7th, 2005 12:17 pmA while back on Der Dope there was a thread about odd neighborhood businesses that lead one to wonder how they stay open.
Yesterday I was surfing the city website trying to figure out where I could buy bus tickets. The frustratingly few places that sell them are either downtown, or way the hell out in the township i.e. not even remotely convenient to me. Except for...
...a stationery store in a strip mall, which I had ignored because I didn't recognize the street address. A little fiddling with googlemaps (and oh, my, how I love googlemaps) revealed that this stationery store was miraculously located in the little strip mall just a couple of blocks from my workplace. What are the odds of that?
So off I wander on my lunch break to "Writer's Corner". I'm having visions of designer notecards, specialty stationery, parchment, maybe high end pens and desk tscotchkes. I get there, and the store consists of:
1) a full service CanPost postal counter
2) 2 full size racks of big name brand greeting cards, holding a combined volume of perhaps one half of one rack, spread all over the place. Cards are bent, backwards, missing envelopes.
3) a small shelf of wrapping paper, the patterns of which I haven't seen since cleaning out my gramma's house in the early 80s.
4) a small pegboard holding perhaps 30 "standards": pushpins, pencils, erasers, paperclips, scissors. Everything is in blisterpacks. Half the packs are damaged and resealed. Everything is priced with masking tape and a felt tip.
5) 2 shelves of used paperbacks, estimated 25% Grisham and Michener.
6) several cases of ramen.
And that's it. Probably 25-30% of the footprint of the shop is empty. Everything except the postal counter and the ramen is covered in a visible layer of dust, so thick that running my finger over a short length left a little crescent shaped dune of dust.
Perhaps most inexplicably, the proprietress was bright, chipper, well dressed and cheerful, i.e. entirely at odds with the store itself. "I've never seen you here before!" she says. "Welcome!" Got my bus tickets and wandered back officewards in a contemplative mood.
Yesterday I was surfing the city website trying to figure out where I could buy bus tickets. The frustratingly few places that sell them are either downtown, or way the hell out in the township i.e. not even remotely convenient to me. Except for...
...a stationery store in a strip mall, which I had ignored because I didn't recognize the street address. A little fiddling with googlemaps (and oh, my, how I love googlemaps) revealed that this stationery store was miraculously located in the little strip mall just a couple of blocks from my workplace. What are the odds of that?
So off I wander on my lunch break to "Writer's Corner". I'm having visions of designer notecards, specialty stationery, parchment, maybe high end pens and desk tscotchkes. I get there, and the store consists of:
1) a full service CanPost postal counter
2) 2 full size racks of big name brand greeting cards, holding a combined volume of perhaps one half of one rack, spread all over the place. Cards are bent, backwards, missing envelopes.
3) a small shelf of wrapping paper, the patterns of which I haven't seen since cleaning out my gramma's house in the early 80s.
4) a small pegboard holding perhaps 30 "standards": pushpins, pencils, erasers, paperclips, scissors. Everything is in blisterpacks. Half the packs are damaged and resealed. Everything is priced with masking tape and a felt tip.
5) 2 shelves of used paperbacks, estimated 25% Grisham and Michener.
6) several cases of ramen.
And that's it. Probably 25-30% of the footprint of the shop is empty. Everything except the postal counter and the ramen is covered in a visible layer of dust, so thick that running my finger over a short length left a little crescent shaped dune of dust.
Perhaps most inexplicably, the proprietress was bright, chipper, well dressed and cheerful, i.e. entirely at odds with the store itself. "I've never seen you here before!" she says. "Welcome!" Got my bus tickets and wandered back officewards in a contemplative mood.
