I know it sounds ludicrous, but there is a store where I live that always seems to have the same prices, same people working in it, same tire sales, same people shopping in it, the same everything from the 1970’s. It’s called Benny’s and I never find what I’m looking for in it, I never find anything but a feeling of utter bunk.
When I say dead I don’t mean pushing up daisy’s of course, but more like why the hell has the store been around so damn long, there’s nothing useful in it. I’ve only been in Benny’s maybe a dozen times since I was 10 in the 70’s. I’m not sure why I even go in anymore.
So does anyone have a store like this near them? A store that gives you the feeling you’ve walked into a time warp. Where if you’d strolled in 20 years ago you’d see the same things float’in around everywhere? What an odd, indifferent feeling.
Yes. There are a couple here in the Twin Cities, where I drive by and think “I haven’t seen a car in that store’s parking lot in two years, yet it remains open”. I’m left thinking mafia front, drug front, alien front, or a drug front for the alien mafia.
There is or used to be one in the Bronx, on Westchester Avenue on the odd-numbered side, somewhere between Castle Hill Ave and Parkchester and closer to Castle Hill. It has a display window with a couple of truly odd metal…uh, things…that might by a moderate stretch of the imagination be thought of as art objects I guess? And some things made out of fabric, conceivably hats but I’m not sure, it’s hard to tell. There’s a visible layer of dust on everything. The overhead sign giving the name of the establishment is so faded you can’t read it easily and I’ve forgotten what it says. The hours are posted on a sign but the door is always closed and locked as if the proprietor was taking a break. Speaking of whom, I think I’ve seen her, she appears to be a woman in her mid-80s. I wonder if she stopped operating as a business one day and just lives there on retirement and never bothered to rent out or sell or close up the storefront?
What you may have is a situation where the building is fully paid off, so that the propriater can operate at a ridiculously low volume, and yet make enough to make a living. The owner probably pays him or herself a salary, and the business makes just enough after expenses (like a dollar a year) to keep the IRS at bay.
We have a local store that sells mostly penny candy to the kids after school. It is in a prime location that would probably command an enormous rent if it were on the market, so there’s no way that the candy sales could cover it any other way…
I didn’t realize that Benny’s was a chain-unless you are talking about the one in Rayham, MA, that is. It’s a strange store. Though I went there many times, I can’t actually recall buying anything besides candy. However, my grandfather loved the place, so there are people who actually buy things there, hence the staying in business thing.
Maybe the store’s previous owner made a deal with the Devil to sell cursed tires and cheese logs and now the two geeky but good looking cousins are retrieving the cursed items while actively appearing to not want to jump each other’s bones even tho we all know they want to…
What was that, Evil Talking Doll? You want to tell Phlosphr something?