Right, the Varsity! What a weird place. I was expecting some fabulous gourmet grilled-to-perfection hot dog and instead it was just like what you’d make a fussy 5-year-old for dinner.
And what is with those lines? And the order-takers YELL at you if you don’t step right up - “YOU, blondie!!! CAN I HELP YOU??? ORDER ORDER ORDER??? STEP RIGHT HERE, HURRY!” And you’d better have your order exactly right in your head before you “step right up.” It was like the Soup Nazi episode on Seinfeld.
Ah, the good ol’ Varsity. Stopped in there when my sister was still living in Atlanta. No, I didn’t get it either.
I don’t know if someone else posted this, since I read about half of all the posts… There are two many!!!
But you know those little business at the food court in the mall, that are owned by some poor foreigner? I can never understand them!
I remember I went to one called the “Bombay Grill” with this little Indian man as the only employee. I asked for a Beef Kebab, and he said they didn’t have any beef, but they had chicken. But then I looked at the food, and it looked to be a week passed their expiration date! Ugh! Needless to say, I slowly walked away… I don’t think he gets that many customers… But I still feel bad for him, since I have a feeling that is the only way he supports himself.
Hm, the Varsity. Good ice cream, and the site of one of my re amusing dining experiences.
Nothing actually happened, mind you, but we actually got silence when we walked in.
Who were we?
Why… twenty-odd suburban high school students fresh from a field trip to the Atlanta Opera!
Got some strange looks that night, lemme tell ya.
Ah ha, my friends and I see that place on the way to A-kon. Naturally we can’t pass it without someone remarking, in appropriate sagely tone, “Darkwing sure has fallen far”.
And in Houston, while visiting friends, I was shown an odd location choice. There is a shopping center, all redtile roofs and Japanese and Korean signs, with one exception. In the middle of this, proudly flying a green flag, is “Molly’s Irish Pub”.
I also couldn’t help giggling at “Slick Willie’s Family Pool Hall”. One of these was located two doors down from a place called “Condom Sense”. (Hm, what do you suppose THEY sell?)
There’s a tiny shopping center near my home that contains only two stores: a doll and teddy bear store, and a gun and ammunition store. What a combination!
Bunghole Liquors…heh. Ive seen a pic of that one floating around on the net. I didnt realize it was for real until now.
Honey Baked Ham…Mmmmmm. I’d forgotten. Gonna pick one up tomorrow.
There is a bar in my town called the White Owl. Sort of a college type hangout for the yuppie types. There is an opening connecting this bar to the bar next door which is actually a pool hall. Very run down and beat up. Behind the counter is a case containing an odd assortment of items such as mosquito spray, cigars, shotgun shells, chewing tobacco, gun cleaning accesories, oil, shoe polish.
Ive always wanted to belly up to the bar wearin’ my gomer hat and say “Gimme a pitcher o’ that Rolling Rock an’ two cases of them Remington Mags, and oh yeah, throw in some o’ that Deep Woods Off while your at it. Eweee boy we are gonna fuck some shit up tonight!”
What the hell? Now I would completely understand this if they served pitchers to go… Thank God they are not licensed to sell shotguns as well. Pretty good selection of tap beers though.
Speaking of businesses that “look like a front for something”:
In the city where I grew up, there was a store called “Lucy’s Mexican Dresses.” This city did not have a large Hispanic population, and I almost never saw anyone wearing a Mexican dress. Nevertheless, “Lucy’s Mexican Dresses” always seemed to do a booming business. What was really strange was that the store’s windows were covered. The dresses were attached to the windows for display, and almost every square inch of the windows was covered. The dresses prevented anyone from seeing inside the store. None of those dresses ever seemed to be sold - we saw the same dresses in the window week after week. My mother, father, brother, and I always said, “They must be hiding something” and “They must be selling more than just Mexican dresses.”
In the summer of 1988, in the city where I now live, there was a major drug raid. About a dozen “head shops” were raided. There was a list in the newspaper of the stores that were raided. Most of the stores had names that made it obvious what they were: “The Gas Pipe,” “Pipe Dreams,” and so on. The last business on the list was “Recycled Books and Records.” I thought that was hilarious. I still have a copy of that article.
Speaking of businesses that “look like a front for something”:
In the city where I grew up, there was a store called “Lucy’s Mexican Dresses.” This city did not have a large Hispanic population, and I almost never saw anyone wearing a Mexican dress. Nevertheless, “Lucy’s Mexican Dresses” always seemed to do a booming business. There were always people coming in and out of there at all times of the day, and their parking lot was always full. What was really strange was that the store’s windows were covered. The dresses were attached to the windows for display, and almost every square inch of the windows was covered. The dresses prevented anyone from seeing inside the store. None of those dresses ever seemed to be sold - we saw the same dresses in the window week after week. My mother, father, brother, and I always said, “They must be hiding something” and “They must be selling more than just Mexican dresses.”
In the summer of 1988, in the city where I now live, there was a major drug raid. About a dozen “head shops” were raided. There was a list in the newspaper of the stores that were raided. Most of the stores had names that made it obvious what they were: “The Gas Pipe,” “Pipe Dreams,” and so on. The last business on the list was “Recycled Books and Records.” I thought that was hilarious. I still have a copy of that article.
Why is it that so many of you say something like “where I live” rather than telling us where these places actually are??
Anyway, here in Colorado Springs there is a convenience store that used to be a 7-11. Now it’s operated by a bunch of Asian folks who have also gone into the business of selling used clothes which is really weird I think. About a third of the store is racks of old assorted clothing like you’d see in a Goodwill store.
The reason why I won’t tell exactly where I live is that I don’t want any hostile people to be able to locate me. I don’t want to reveal information that would allow anyone to find out my street address. The reason why I am so cautious is that someone on a Delphi forum posted a message to me that I interpreted as a death threat. He claimed that he didn’t mean to scare me, but the forum’s moderator banned him anyway. Luckily he didn’t know my street address or any other information that would enable him to locate me.
Why are you annoyed at me for not revealing my location? I think my stories are just as funny even if you don’t know where I live.
It’s not as if someone was going to get in their car and drive to any of the places I mentioned, just to see what I was talking about. “Lucy’s Mexican Dresses” no longer exists. Maybe no one wanted to buy Mexican dresses anymore (if that was indeed what they were selling). Or maybe it got raided for drugs, like “Recycled Books and Records.” I’ve noticed that the little two-store strip shopping center near my home is still thriving, though.
In Bastrop (pronounced Bass Drop, as in OOOPS, I done let that fish fall down) Texas, there is a place with a sign that says Ray’s.
Under that, in smaller letters it says Food, then at the bottom it says Beer. In the middle, in huge letters, it says BAIT.
You can dine on some pretty good seafood (200 miles inland) overlooking the scenic minnow tank.
Darn, that beats Taxidermy and Cheese.
In Southern Oklahoma, there is a place that everyone swears has the best bbq ever. The only wierd thing is that it shares a building with a funeral parlor. Kinda weirds the patrons out, but it doesn’t stop them from going.
Oklahoma Joe’s Barbecue in Kansas City, Kansas is in a working gas station. Great barbecue, too.
I forgot about a few places in the neighborhood where I lived during my Denver years, a gentrifying-but-not-quite-there district where the majority of residents were Anglo professionals, but almost all the businesses catered to Hispanics.
Down the street from me was a pinata store. Never saw anyone in there, but apparently they did enough business to move a few doors down to a larger location. I also wondered if the market for pinatas among the neighborhood’s disappearing Hispanic population was enough to really justify such a business.
A couple of miles from my house, there was a store that specialized in used tires, Mexican-style western wear and Norteno records. The sign just read “Ropa Mexicana Y Used Tires Y Musica Ranchero.” Strange.
Closer to the Denver city line, I wondered how the trashy quick lube and espresso bar joint did.
The strange thing about the neighborhood was that the amount of businesses catering to Hispanics grew at a steady clip, even as gentrification went on full bore. We’re talking new tortillerias, doctors with signs reading “Clinica Mexicana,” storefront Pentecostal churches with signage and services entirely in Spanish, and so on, while houses nearby were being plowed under for McMansions, and new neotraditional-style houses on the site of an old amusement park started at $350,000. No Starbucks, no “New American Bistros,” no cigar bars.
Speaking of Legitimate Business Fronts, in Lexington, KY there are something like ten Sir Pizza locations. It was the same as the number of Papa John’s locations, and slightly more than Pizza Hut or Domino’s. However, in all my years of living in the area (and a lot of asking), I never spoke to anyone who had ever eaten at one.
Lexington also features Joe Bologna’s, a fantastic pizza place in an old church. The bar is where the altar used to be.
In the little one-horse half-ass eastern KY town I grew up in, there is a small building about halfway between the town and my parents’ house that was a sewing shop for years (Granny Fanny’s). Granny Fanny died, and in the ten years or so since then the place has been (not in order) two different pizza places, a BBQ place, a pet shop, two different hair and tanning shops, a gun store, and a pawn shop.
Dr. J
I used to take the bus to work every day and I would always stand in front of the same run down “collectibles” shop. I don’t think it even had a name, it was just “Collectibles” in fading stickers in the dingy window, along with a conglomeration of items that no one in their right minds would ever collect: an old brown recliner, a lamp too tacky even for the 70’s retro craze, Power Ranger action figures that were popular 5 years ago, etc. The day before I got my new car and didn’t need to take the bus any longer the store put up a big piece of cardboard letting all know that they also now had a tanning bed for use.
Strangest combination I ever saw until I saw that just down the street there opened a new coffee house called “Sun Beans.” That’s right, you can now drink latte’s while tanning.
Competition for the Collectibles guy.
There’s an odd little dollar store in Toronto, near where I live, that’s… Just… Surreal. In a few ways.
The store has seemingly random stuff in it, the selection changes by the day. Once, I found a roll of wooden knickles in there, with tiny swastikas printed on them. I was too creeped out to buy them.
Whenever you’re in the store, you feel like you’re swimming. You become extremely dizzy. You might see little sparks out of the corners of your eyes. Why? Well, I don’t know for sure, but it might be:
The smell. The store is devoid of any smell, save the scent of burnt plastic and Febreze.
The music. The guy who runs the store (we’ll get to that later) always has five world music stations on at once, on five different radios around the store, playing at very, very low volumes. I went in there late at night, and the radios creeped the hell out of me, for some reason.
The building itself. The whole building seems to be slightly tilted, and it really isn’t in good shape.
Then there’s the owner, a little asian man, with eyes like marbles, and a strange, hacking cough. I’ve only bought anything from this store twice. The first time, I bought a pair of cheap scissors. I put the scissors on the counter, and he picked them up, and stared at them for a good minute. Then, he stared at me for a good minute. “This,” he noted, “is a good pair of scissors.” He spoke with a voice so deep and crackly that I had nightmares about it. I was nightmare free after watching The Ring, so that probably tells you something about my fear threshold.
The second time, I tried to buy a bottle of hot sauce from me. This time, he just picked up the bottle of hot sauce, stared right into my soul, and smiled at me a sinister smile, shaking his head slowly. I tried to hand him the money, and he wouldn’t take it. He just stared, and shook his head. As I left the shop, rather confused, he continued to stare. As I left the vicinity of the shop, I heard a loud “splurt” from the direction of the store, and hurried home.
I kid you not. I shiver and laugh nervously every time I think of the little store.
This may not be really all that weird to others, but it certainly was to me the first time I encountered it…A bead shop. That was all they sold. Beads. You could buy stuff to string them on, too, and they had tables set up for you to work on. Some of those beads were quite pretty, some handmade, or from exotic places. Never knew there was quite that much of a market for beads. And some of them were rather expensive!
Another place that just struck me as funny, until I thought about it was “Dud’s-n-Suds”. A combination laundromat, and singles bar. Last I heard, the owner was making a killing!
And one that’s not a weird business, just the ironic name…there was a chiropractor in Wichita, Ks named Bonebreak. Last I heard, he went into sports medicine. I always wondered if he chose the profession because of his name, or if he changed his name to match his profession. I suspect it’s the latter, but you never know.
Add to the name-thing (I just remembered this) A used car dealer in Wichita. The owner’s name was Cheatum.
I’m always in for a bit 'o weirdness. I’ll go check it out with ya.