What was the most oddly specific physical retail location you have seen?
-Today I saw a store called the “Bird Seed Depot” selling nothing but seed and bird houses.
-“Purrrniture” nothing but cat furniture and toys.
What do you guys have?
I used to go to a store in Midtown Manhattan that sold nothing but seashells.
“The Leftorium”, owned by stupid Ned Flanders. He only sells things for left handed people.
David Letterman used to do a bit about a store that only sold light bulbs, called Just Bulbs, and another store called Just Shades. There is still a Just Bulbs and a Just Shades in NYC, I think they are the same businesses, but not in the same locations that were featured on the show. Every time I pass Just Shades, it’s like I hear the entire sketch in my mind.
That Letterman bit is the first thing I thought of. I think he annoyed people in those stores by asking them if they sold anything else.
We have one around here that just sells batteries.
We used to have two stores called Purrsnickety and Bow-Wowsers (they were in the same space, with two different signs and entrances) that sold nothing but cat- and dog-related stuff.
Funny story about BatterysPlus:
Drove a friend down there to pick up some obscure projector bulb. While there, he says, “I need a battery for this watch”, and takes it off, handing it to the guy behind the counter.
Guy says, “We’re not allowed to open these. We’re afraid of getting sued if we damage them”.
At which point, Guy hands over a* Big Fucking Sharp Knife* to my buddy, and says, “You open it”.
When I visited the Mall of America, something like 25 years ago, there was a store selling just socks. Not that unusual, I suppose, but in my naiveté at the time I thought it was pretty odd.
There was a store in the Daly City (just south of San Francisco) area, again a few years back, that just sold batteries, everything from those little disc batteries and hearing aid batteries, up to car batteries. They don’t seem to be there any more.
It’s SPATULA CITY!
We have a store that sells oil and vinegar. I’m sure it’s very nice oil and vinegar, but I don’t know how they can pay the rent (even for a tiny little store) by selling oil and vinegar.
Maybe the owners have a more nefarious business concern and the oil and vinegar store is just window dressing.
I always thought the Door Store was oddly narrow, but I guess it isn’t as weird as all that. A lot of things need doors, knobs, hinges, or latches.
I went into that store once and didn’t like it at all. The two people who ran it were very unpleasant. One was tart to me and the other was oleaginous.
I also think the phone case stores that clutter up the aisles of shopping malls have to be fronts for something, because there’s no way my low-income suburb can sustain all fifteen of the damn things.
There used to be a nationwide chain that only sold ties called “The Tie Rack” with hundreds of stores mostly located in malls. It had so much cash it was able to get product placement in the Adam Sandler film “Eight Crazy Nights” which is the only reason I know about them. They shuttered their last stores in 2013.
Do the specialist shops inside airports count? I’ve seen some really specific examples of those - one that just sold live lobsters (I think in that case you buy them, they put it in the hold of the plane you are travelling on, and you collect it at the arrivals baggage reclaim at your destination)
Well they might sell those in the same store now, but they will inevitably separate.
I used to drive past a store in Lakewood, CO that sold nothing but T- shirts. They weren’t even decorated T-shirts, just plain old white and colored shirts without any kinds of pictures or sayings on them.