The Honey Baked Ham store near where I worked also had a deli, and you could get sandwiches and stuff.
I always wondered how Hallmark stores stay in business. Their shelves are always loaded with kitchsy junk, and whenever I’ve wandered in or past them, they always look deserted.
I used to have a friend that managed an Amiga computer store (anybody remember the Amiga). This store was in a little strip mall. I was on my way to see him, one day, when I happened to glance in the business next door. Arranged around the perimeter of a large room were about 20 plush reclining chairs. All of these chairs were occupied by older folks. Next to each chair was an IV pole and each of these folks were receiving an intravenous injection. It was a true WTF moment.
I asked my friend what this was about. Turns out it was a clinic for
There are stores like that here in the Kansas City area called “Dirty Don’s”. I have never gone into one because, well they do look pretty dirty, and the name “Don” has always conjured up bad vibes for some reason. Lots of people I know swear by the store, proudly showing off their soup cans or ramen or what have you and saying “4 for $1.00 at Dirty Don’s!!!”
Yechhh!!!
I live in a small town in rural PA. Within a 20-mile radius, there are several truly bizarre stores. A few years ago, a dentist set up a practice on the main street. But the front section of his office was devoted to selling genuine tribal artifacts and art from Nigeria. I’m not kidding. A neighbor went to see him and saw all this stuff out for sale, and it was all extremely expensive. He closed down about two years later.
We also have a custard stand. It’s a little shack with a service window set up on along the highway and it sells nothing but custard. It’s actually really tasty. They give you cold custard in a little paper cup and a plastic spoon. You can only get vanilla custard, but they have several toppings. It’s been in business for at least 10 years now.
We also have a store that sells nothing but hand-carved and painted wooden duck decoys. There is also a tiny store right next to the post office that sells nothing but paintings of WWII aircraft. I have never seen anyone go in or out of these places, but they’ve been there forever. The windows are covered in dirt, the signs are falling apart, but on nice days, the front doors are open.
There are a few stores which aren’t all that weird, but the vibe inside is surreal. There’s Discount Ollie’s, which is a sort of warehouse set-up and they sell unclaimed, damaged, or surplus goods. You can great deals on stuff like patio furniture cushions there, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to anything they sell. Nothing is permanently in stock; it all seems to depend on what was in the latest shipment. You go in there one day and see piles and piles of slightly-dented metal plant pots; next day these are gone to be replaced by racks of pajamas that are missing buttons or have crooked seams. In the back there’s a wooden barrel filled to the brim with disposable plastic lighters priced at 10 cents each, with a big sign on the barrel that says “Try One!”. There are never any employees around. You go up to the counter and press a buzzer, and in a few minutes, someone magically appears. I can never figure out where they’re coming from, since they seem to show up from various directions.
We also have Zern’s and the Q-Mart, which are experiences in themselves. They’re basically large indoor flea markets with some semi-permanent “stores”. All the signs are marker-on-cardboard, and they sell the craziest stuff. There’s a used tire store, an ashtray store, a vacuum cleaner parts store, a store that sells outfits for professional strippers/dancers, a sea food counter, a store that sells Christmas lights and old action figures, and a store that sells leather. Not leather anything- just big pieces of leather. Oh, and surplus Israeli army gas masks. At Zern’s on a nice weekend there is usually a large gathering of bikers hanging out in the parking lot and drinking. There is no bathroom that I have ever seen, but there’s a tree line behind it and you regularly see people peeing in the back parking lot. You are allowed to smoke inside and bring your pet.
In New Hope, there are tons of strange stores that only open at strange hours. One is the sword store- they just sell swords, and some assorted medieval waeponry. And the cheese store- they sell cheese. All kinds of cheese. Most stores seem to be just assemblages of various over-priced tchotchkes, but it has a neat atmosphere. There’s also my favorite, the corset store, which sells, you guessed it, corsets.
There used to be a restaurant in my area where the only item on the menu was a hamburger with fruit salad, that’s it (you could probably order a drink from along at least a few choices). It was in business for a few years and it must have had enough regulars who didn’t tire of eating a hamburger and fruit salad every day for lunch to stay in business for that long.
Vaguely rememberd store in Eugene, Oregon in the late 1960s or early 1970s was called “J.P. Tootle Clam & Feather Company,” which should be honored for its name alone. As I recall, it sold macrame and candles, perfumed soaps and other such vintage items.
Around here, any tanning or massage place that’s open strange hours is also referred to as a “rub’n’tug”. If you get my drift :eek:
This thread has revealed to me that a store near where I used to live off the OSU campus must have been a true head shop. It was the only place I’ve ever seen genuine full-sized hookahs for sale.
There is an adult bookstore just two miles down the road from my parents house. This is not unusual until you consider that in the county where they live (we’re talking VERY rural Ohio here) there are exactly two bars but at least two dozen churches. The bookstore is right off I-71, and it is easily the only one for an hours drive in every direction. If they weren’t just an hour or so from Columbus, it’d probably be the only adult bookstore for at least two hours in ever direction.
But the strangest part is the billboards all the local conservative types have erected around the place. Stuff like “real Adults will drive on by!” and “Real men don’t need porn!”
Up until a few years ago, the gun shop at the south end of town also provided, according to their sign, “Live Bait - Antiques - Haircuts.”
One-stop shopping at its finest.
Two blocks away from my house, there is an Italian restaurant. The windows are completely shaded and the only time I ever see the place having any business, it’s usually suspicious-looking Italian youths in nice suits, standing in front of their town cars (shaded windows all around), nervously talking on cell phones. There is sometimes a police car parked on the sidewalk right in front of the place. In terms of strategic business location, it’s in the middle of nowhere.
So, pretty obvious what that place is.
So then two blocks away from my house in the other direction, there’s a Russian place. Ditto for the windows, the location and the lack of clientele. Of course, the only people I ever see in front of the place are - guess who - young, sharply dressed Russian guys with their nervous cell phone conversations.
Turf war!
South of where I live on US 219, near Ridgway, PA, there is a strange office advertising “The L Concept.” I haven’t quite figured out what the “L Concept” is yet, but if it does half of what it promises… “Stop Smoking! Weight Loss! Relieve Pain!” blare the billboards. “Don’t drive to Canada for treatment!” “It’s here! The L Concept! In Ridgway!”
ratty, you’re not referring to “Ollie’s Bargain Outlet,” are you? There are a few of them around central PA. “Good Stuff Cheap!” is their slogan.
My dad would be perfectly happy to shop in that store, just as he did the one outside New Orleans that I had referred to. We did get a box of cereal from them once that turned out to be rancid but that was it.
BTW: guess what my dad’s name is. 
When I was a kid, my dad would take me with him to go to the local hardware store. This was a cavernous and ramshackle old place, with an oil-stained wood block floor, shelves upon shelves of goods, and a glass-walled mezzanine overhanging the sales floor. When you made your purchase, the salesperson would put the cash in a little brass cylander, pop into the pneumatic pipe system and sent it up to the mezzanine, where they made change and sent it back down, along with a handwritten reciept.
You could go in there, and ask for a left-handed sewer flute valve wrench, or whatever, and the guy would scratch his chin and think about it for a minute or so. Then he’d motion to you to come along to the stairs at the back of the store, down into the basement, back to a trapdoor down to the sub-basement, past the cask of Amontillado, push aside a new horse harness (still in the original packaging from 1932), a curtain of cobwebs and a pile of old bones, to find the part you wanted. I’d have been terrified if my dad hadn’t been there, perfectly at ease.
The place burned down in 1969. A part of history lost forever.
When I lived in Portsmouth, VA I remember a place called “Portsmouth Gun & TV”. I always thought that was an interesting combination. 
When I was in Cleveland last year and wandering through a mall-type place, I saw this store that sold nothing but artwork made with pistachio shells. Can’t remember the name of it, but it had the words “dots” and “nuts” in it. It had all kinds of weird things like a bride & groom (their heads being nutshells) on a placard with the motto “Till nuts do us part”. It took up a fair amount of square footage, too, so there must’ve been some type of market for their products.
Re: weird employees—at the indy bookstore where I used to work, both the managers mostly despised actually having to deal with customers. In fact, one of them had a cassette of horrible-sounding organ music that he used to put on the stereo whenever he wanted customers to leave.
When I lived in Walthamstow in NE London, there was the usual selection of mom and pop grocery stores, betting agents, laundrettes, butchers, pubs, banks, as well as a fishing tackle shop. No clue why. The only water around was a river that I certainly wouldn’t want to eat anything out of.
The other shop is really a lament for my former hairdresser.
His studio was on the top of a three-story residential building. You would climb the narrow, rickety stairs past the blank doors and turn up in a lovely little shop. The hairdresser was a very friendly man, always chatty, always cut your hair without an appointment. There was never anyone else in there. Occasionally your haircut would be interrupted by a phone call, the hairdresser would answer and have a brief discussion in a foreign language, and hang up. It seemed pretty obviously a front for something shady but he was the best hairdresser I ever had: nice, friendly, talented, and so on.
One day I went for my trim, made the climb, only to find a WOMAN there instead of my dear hairdresser.
“Oh …” I said, startled and dismayed but not wanting to seem too unhappy to see her. “Where’s the guy who’s usually here?”
“He’s gone.” she said curtly.
“Um … will he be back?”
“No!”
I didn’t want to pursue it - sometimes it’s better not to know. I did not want this lady to touch my hair (no one but my hairdresser had touched my hair in many years!!) but it felt a bit weird leaving, so I let her at it - and she did a terrible job, and ignored everything I said. I cut my own hair for the next five years or so.
The Baldwin Supply Company.
Now you know where the Baldwin brothers came from.
I can’t think of anything as strange as most of the one listed here in my area (DC metro) although I’m sure there are, but in downtown Fairfax there is a place that’s been there for years and years called The Ship’s Hatch. It specializes simply in nautical-related gifts and home decor. We’re a minimum of 3 hours from the ocean and there’s no connection to anything nautical in our town, historically speaking. I’ll never know how that place stays in business.
There’s this appliance repair store at a local strip mall that’s always seemed pretty weird to me. All the windows (and the door) are blocked by bright, gaudy advertisements. During the nice weather, the door is always wide open. The inside is all unorganized - microwaves, tv sets, washing machines are piled up and strewn about the floor in no logical fashion. The guy who works there sits in his swivel chair watching the TVs! Of course, that’s only when he’s in the shop. Usually he’s out wandering around the parking lot for some reason(??)
And not surprisingly, I never see any customers in there.
Well, there’s the Pensauken mart nearby. Bet I’m not the only NJ doper to know it - huge indoor ‘mall’ full of tents, basically. I think that every place in there is a front for something. It’s just…creepy. Bad vibes.
Oh, and the movie theater in Kentucky I went to this summer. In a shopping mall. One screen (didn’t know they existed any more). Not even a cash register at the concession stand. Last time they cleaned the place? Obviously, long ago. Inside, it was very very creepy. You bought your ticket, went inside, got food (if you wanted, it looked a little aged for my taste) and headed down…a Hallway. A very long, dingy, once-yellow hallway. Seriously, it was about a hundred feet long at least - I felt as if I was in an MC Escher painting. There were doors, periodically spaced. All unlabeled and locked. THeater: at the very very end. Mens restroom: right next to theater. Womens restroom: very other end of the hallway.
And one of the employees (selling the tickets) was very obviously stoned. He reeked of pot.