I’m so good. I can get through a bookstore and put everything down again. I can just get one skien of floss from the craft store. I can browse, peruse, look at, and leave stuff.
Then we got a DVD player.
If the store sells DVDs I’m going to leave with at least one.
They combine everything I like, they’re pretty, creative, techy, informative, special… I need them, I need them for every movie I have ever even slightly enjoyed.
Bookshop Santa Cruz
Powell’s Books in Portland, both downtown and at the airport.
Streetlight Records in Santa Cruz
Amazon
Amoeba Records in Berkeley
Trader Joe’s at any location
Costco
I can pretty much echo Lunatic13. I have a major thing for used books. I can usually control myself in Chapters. The price of new hardcovers is enough to stop me in my tracks, but The Wee Book Inn (a chain of used book stores in my city) often suckers me into buying many, many books.
Wal-Mart is another place. I can walk in needing deoderant and sweat socks, and walk out with a minimum of $100 worth of stuff, often more. The kids are always growing and I always need more household stuff.
The Real Canadian Superstore is the absolute worst. I walk in with a grocery list, but you have to go through household goods to get to the food. Before you know it, I have a cart load of soap, shampoo, conditioner, moisturizers, razors, make-up, diapers, baby clothes and film, and I haven’t even started on my grocery list yet. I even go over on food, since they have so much stuff there.
Like most other people on this thread, bookstores are just one big pit of unplanned spending. (And Duck Duck Goose, Barnes & Noble keeps suckering me into buying those Nancy Drew reprints, too…)
And there’s this online used book store, http://www.gentlyusedbooks.com, that is getting insane amounts of money from me monthly. It’s all mass-market paperbacks, so it’s excellent for filling in things like Dorothy Sayers mysteries. Most books are under $3, so how could it hurt to buy just one more Dorothy Dunnett? And some Spenser mysteries for Mr. Del. Oh, and there’s some Star Wars novels I don’t have yet. And some Rumer Godden …
King Arthur Flour Baking Supply Store … and they now have a website, too, as if I wasn’t spending enough at the stores and via mail order. I go in to buy something normal, like Christmas cookie cutters, and I end up adding things like Groundhog Day cookie cutters, mini-scone pans, five varieties of cocoa (baking, drinking, bitter, quick-dissolve, dusting, dontcha know) and an imported Swedish rolling pin.
I’m so glad I have company here.
Mark off another victim of the evil WalMart empire. If I get out of there for under $100, I consider it a moral victory.
I’m also an impulse shopper at Lowe’s or Home Depot.
“OK, this time, I’m sticking to my list, dammit!”
Yeah, right.
It’s big and it’s blue and it’s four letters long: I-K-E-A.
Have I ever gotten out of there without “something for the kids”? Probably not. And if I did, that’s one of the times that fella bilong missus flodnak decided we really should stock up on light bulbs, paper napkins, and/or batteries.
We’ve decided on IKEA bookshelves for the family room once we get all the junk cleared out. Call it the “Ivar” room. Yinz guys should start a betting pool on how much we’re going to spend. It ain’t gonna be pretty.
Tower Records - always walk out at least $100 poorer
Home Depot - fresh-cut lumber, mmmmm
Any bookstore, especially used-book bookstores
Any fabric store
Any art supply store, especially the paper department
We don’t have Border’s. We have it’s evil clone, Hastings: Books, music, movies, computer softwear, free coffee, stationary, a reading area. AGH! Not a one person in my family can go into Hasting’s for just one thing and come out with just that one thing.
Wal-Mart owns a part of my soul by now.
Goddess help me if I happen to go into a used bookstore.
But the worst for me is the Student Union Bookstore. I cannot fo in there and just get textbooks. Thanks be to the heavens that they put a $500.00 limit to what you can charge to your Bursar’s account and that mine is paid with scholarship maoney. 
Target, and more specifically, the Garden Center at Target. I visit them so often, I am now on a first name basis with the Garden Center Manager. I’m trying to talk him into offering a frequent plant buyer’s program. (buy 10, get one free or something). Evidently, it’s out of his control. So I’m campaigning with Target’s corporate offices. Any help any of you could offer in this regard would be greatly appreciated.
My other purchasing weakness involves any nursery, or a store which has a nursery, like Home Depot.
I also have a lot of trouble with CDNow and Amazon.com. Screw Borders… I can spend $300 without even moving my fat ass up off this office chair!
Count us in on the IKEA-holics Anonymous group. It’s a good thing that IKEA is a 3 hour drive away from us, or we’d be even more broke than we are now.
Target and the dollar stores are other big wastes of my money, too. And today I need to stop at the craft store for more fabric for a quilt I’m making - and the kids are coming along - there goes another extra $25…
–tygre
Two problems:
a) Tiffany’s (the small satellite branch at the shopping mall near my house). I go in for a small engraved greeting card holder, and I walk out wearing a tiara and dripping with diamonds.
b) 7-11. I just HAVE to eat every hot dog that’s revolving on the rack.
tevya, I think that you’re my soulmate. I was hoping someone would mention Jungle Jim’s. I love that place! I live 2 1/2 hours away from there, but it doesn’t keep me from going chance I get. The wine selection is great - I end up with at least 10 bottles every trip. And there are samples everywhere - bonus! The atmosphere alone is worth it - all those monkeys outside and those cheesy animated displays inside crack me up.
[screeching halt]
Okay, what and where is this Jungle Jim’s place? (got a link?) The Jungle Jim’s in Orlando is a chain restaurant with great sandwiches (especially the peanut butter chicken sandwich)and drinks heavy on the alcohol. And decorated in bright tropical pastels, fake animals and posters for jungle movies.
[/screeching halt]
Any bookstore, hands down. The bigger the better.
Followed in a close second by any toy store.
Book stores.
Drug stores. (There you are, and suddenly, you know that you’ve needed a new thermometer for a while, and look, it’s on sale! And you may as well stock up on shampoo while you’re at it.)
But for me, the absolute worst are yarn shops.
I will go in thinking “one ball of yarn, one ball of yarn,” and if the store is about to close in the next 5 minutes, or I’m running late and must be somewhere else at that moment, I’ll actually just get that ball.
But, if I have any free time at all on that particular day - it is completely possible for me to walk out with enough yarn for two sweaters, patterns for at least two sweaters (that can’t be used with the yarn I bought), extra needles, and random accessories (buttons, etc.). Then, knowing that what I really need for either the yarn or patterns that I just bought is in one of the other yarnshops in town, I’ll take the purchases, get in the car, drive to the next place, and do the whole thing again.
Ahhhhh! jungle jim’s. my mom lives in the same area and she was telling me about how great it is. i just imagined a big health/international foods co-op. Then i saw JJ’s covered on a show on food network and i was amazed. that place looks soooooooo cool! i wish i’d gone when i was home for christmas.
Your wish is my command: Jungle Jim’s
I had no idea that it was a link on the Road Trip America Web site until I went searching for a link. I try to make a trip out there every once and awhile.
As Jay-c mentioned, all of the animatronic displays are also worth going. And the samples!–Oo la la!
Bookstores, mostly B&N and our local Shuler Books (way better than B&N). I don’t even bother going unless I know I can spend some money. If I go when our budget is tight, it’s just a plain ol’ mistake cause the budget gets even more screwed up when I drop $75 on books.
Food For Living: my local health food store. “Hey, look! Organic kalamata olive spread; and I need some more bulk parsley; yum, they’ve got honey-sweetened banana chips, and gee, that Ylang-yland essential oil I’ve been wanting is only $10 - I can get that…” on and on, ad nauseum.
Home Depot too. You know - you need that new handle for the door, but you might as well pick up some spray-in foam insulation and lightbulbs and garden hoes are on sale and I need some primer for the kitchen walls and…etc etc.
Ohh another Walmart person here…
I go in for something I need and come out with more stuff. (Though I usually only spend when I have money or gift certificates) It doesn’t really help that whenever I go to the mall I have to go through Walmart. The only buses that get there quickest for me stop across the road from the Walmart entrance so I have to go through it. I have to avoid Walmart’s electronics section or I buy cds there that I don’t need. (I just bought the newest Blink 182 there a few days ago… I sorta need to make my money last rather then spend it on un-needed stuff hates not having a job)
Sometimes HMV… which is why I avoid it. The CDs are generally overpriced. Plus I’m annoyed with them I ordered a CD in November and it still hasn’t come in. I only go into HMV to ask where my cd is (I bug them about it) and then leave before I can spot something else to spend money on.
NEVER let me loose in a bookstore. I always leave with at least one book and even though I have a discount card it adds up. Plus my Grandparents (whom I live with) disapprove of having too many books as well as reading too much. Since I don’t have much else to do I usually end up reading and it bugs them to no end. I rarely go to second hand book stores because there isn’t one very close… but I need to because I have a whole box of books I don’t want and want to trade. For Christmas I got 30 bucks in gift certificates for Coles and I left having spent 10 bucks more then that. All the books I got at a sharp discount though cuz it was sales grins
IKEA. It’s 3 hours away for me, too. This is a good thing, because the last couple of times I went there I spent over £400. I do think it’s good value - three trolleys full and 51 individual items is pretty good going for £400. We’re furnishing our first home, so we do have an excuse.
I tend to spend more than I intend to in Tesco now that there’s a housewares department right at the front of the store.
I always spend money in bookshops and record shops. I can spend £50 or so in ten minutes during lunchtime on Amazon or Jungle. God bless the internet.