Aka, “the home of adventure shopping.”
We call it “the used food store,” but that’s not true—every foodstuff they offer is within its sell-by date, and Nick regularly goes to buy shopping carts full of (respectable brand) canned kippers and sardines, which they always have. (Because of his RP, he is supposed to eat oily fish three times a week, and if you’re going to be doing that, the small ones have less mercury. And they’re yummy. But enough of the asides).
And there is so much more than food. We have found there:
Bonne Maman jam at half price. But that’s almost all the time. There is, in fact, lots of stuff that they always have besides fish and jam: aluminum foil bakeware, Bob’s Red Mill organic grains of all sorts, garden supplies, nasty cheap towels, nasty cheap rugs; nasty cheap tools. Etc. So you always keep coming for the regular stuff. And then you find . . .
A pair of cowboy/pimp pony-hair zebra print boots, which Nick wore regularly beneath his robes to convocation and graduation before buying his “Garden of Earthly Delights” Doc Martens.
Three boxes of 1996 “Dove” pop-up holiday cards by Robert Sabuda—one of my favorite paper artists (“engineers,” they call themselves). I have one of these cards left and I periodically, anxiously check to make sure it’s still there.
Nine boxes, several years later, of Sierra Club aurora borealis holiday cards. Unfortunately, there were a lot more cards per box than the dove cards. My excuse for not sending cards anymore that I’m embarrassed to be using the same cards year after year.
The best Colombian chocolate bars I’ve ever tasted. (No pictures. I ate them.)
Three little wooden houses with drawers in them, meant for crafty types who like painting them in pastels and displaying thimbles, etc. Milo’s favorite chew toy (corks and what’s left of the drawers conceal treats), now carefully husbanded and re-glued and patched over the years, since by the time he finally got around to loving them, they had vanished. Vanished off the face of the earth, in fact—web searches and dreadful trips to Michael’s Arts and Crafts (not my favorite store ever) have been bootless.
And then . . . adventure shopping moves into the nth dimension:
Once again, the laws of physics have been rent asunder as the meaning of “black” is tested. I’m sorry—it’s a bad (as in washed-out) likeness.
Reader, I couldn’t eat it.
I must add that, dubious caviar dye jobs and nasty rugs aside, it’s a sleaze-free adventure. This chain does good things. They collect and donate for really worthy charities. They have specials where, say, if you buy a winter coat for a veteran’s shelter, you get a coupon for the same amount (lots of coats). They bought and donated the property that is now the home of the Foster Parrots rescue organization. More blue food, mom.