Valentine's Day shopping for beloved

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http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

I’m torn between unlicensed Big Bird, the celluloid dog head, or the taxidermied indetermine mammal.
- Jennifer Torkkola
  
  you can never go wrong with a dead animal.
  - http://twitter.com/dargaud Guillaume Dargaud
    
    2 years ago we needed a new _warm_ carpet for the lodge. I had the idea of getting a sheep-skin carpet as a gift. My wife was revulsed when she opened the pack “a ded animal, gross!”. So the day didn’t start off too well. When I got back from work in the evening I found here asleep on it. So it’s been adopted into the family ever since.
- http://twitter.com/petitepoubelle petite poubelle
  
  Impress your beloved with an entire motif. Do the right thing and get all of the cotton candy-colored ceramic rodents.
http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza

Soon.
kintantee

Is that the creepy shop across the street from Page Dairy Mart in Pittsburgh?
- Evil ScienceChick
  
  This was my first guess!
- http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
  
  It sure is! At the exact point where tourists trying to get from the nice shops on East Carson St. to the Waterfront mall start wondering if they’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake.
- Guest
  
  Yesseree! I used to drive by that wonderful window and wonder how long that place will be there…
PaulDavisTheFirst

its always lovely to see posts see here that try to explain to the reader why they might care about the contents, rather than just assume that i’m a member of a secret society in which an otherwise entirely ordinary thing is embued with some special significance.

what i’m really trying to say is: i’m torn between noting how many of your posts tip the balance on BB toward insider snark, and not bothering.
- http://twitter.com/MartianEmpress Rezeya Montecore
  
  It’s a creepy old thrift shop. It’s a mildly, charmingly absurd place to shop for one’s Valentine gifts. And I didn’t even have to use my super-duper Boing Boing insider decoder ring to figure that out for myself. I think the secret society you’re describing is “people who don’t go completely hissy when confronted with an enigma.”
  
  It’s neat down here in our bunker. You do realize there’s no actual lock or password, right?
  - http://www.youtube.com/user/PipLagenta Pip_R_Lagenta
    
    Context is for the weak.
- http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
  
  I’m glad you came to the right decision.
- robuluz
  
  You liked the narration on Blade Runner, didn’t you.
- Halloween Jack
  
  Written like someone who died a little inside when they had to make their own sandwiches for the first time and realized that they’d have to cut off their own crusts.
bcsizemo

Reminds me of Hand Banana…
http://twitter.com/Beakerhead Beakerhead

Oooh! I’d fall in love with those googly eyes staring out at me from behind that window, too! Creepy…. Must have! In fact, I have a velvet painting of a bizarre gaucho in my dining room for that same reason!
http://twitter.com/petitepoubelle petite poubelle

So that’s where the stuff from Hoarders goes to die.
Antinous / Moderator

You should head out west. We have the Hootenanny Bargain Barn, which lives at a crossroads in the middle of the desert about five miles from the far end of nothing. Used plastic flowers, mineral encrusted goldfish bowls and stained 1960s neckties for all your holiday needs.
- http://boingboing.net/ Rob Beschizza
  
  Sounds a bit classy for me!
technogeekagain

I suppose that Valentine’s Day is not a bad time to go shopping for a beloved, if you don’t already have one…
danegeld

❤ ❤ could you pick me up a porcelain cat?
PS. Like the new formatting of the posts
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

Note the empty pegboard unit lurking behind the window. What does that sign hanging on it say?

I love thrift stores, but sometimes I run into one that has a bleak, pathetic vibe that makes me want to drive home and hide under a blanket until the Black Dog goes away. Example: One in Florida that I went to when visiting my parents in Florida. There was a pegboard full of sad, obscure craft items, like doll faces and hands, and packets of sun-faded sequins.
- acidrain69
  
  Must have been south florida. This is where thrift stores go to die.
http://twitter.com/DaniKrameroni Dani Erdos-Kramer

pittsburgh is getting on the map in the creepiest, cookie-jar-knock-off ways. i love this city.
- http://www.geekforce.com Hugh Johnson
  
  Shh, don’t tell anyone. Let’s keep it all to ourselves.
Wreckrob8

I work in one of these places – does wonders in minimising anyone’s need for useless acquisition. Isn’t our concept of Valentine’s day like Christmas a Victorian (19th century) excuse to sell us stuff we don’t need anyway?
Marktech

Windows on street view. The face-blurring algorithm seems to discriminate against bears based on colour.
- Mujokan
  
  That is brilliant.
- chgoliz
  
  There’s a eagle! OK, I’m set.
  
  I wonder: if this is what they’re highlighting in the front window, what treasures lurk on the back shelves?
http://halfbakedmaker.org Robert Baruch

I would totally buy the kitty in the upper left. Well, it might be a kitty. Maybe it’s a yellow Yoda, I can’t tell.
http://twitter.com/coolbev Tom Jeffery

This reminds me of the shop that used to be on the corner of El Camino and Oregon Expressway/Pagemill Rd. A sad, old, never open knick-knack shop. Turned out to belong to a widower whose wife used to run the shop. When she died, he closed it up and it stayed that way until he died. (It’s now a phone store, I think.)

A sweet, yet creepy, memorial.
Eli Horowitz

Rob, this is across the street from that amazing ice cream place on Carson, right? Page’s Dairy Mart? Before I went off to college, my family and I went there (i.e., the ice cream place) for a little good-bye party and – no joke – two guys pealed around the corner in an apparently stolen car, ran it up onto the sidewalk (right in front of that window in the picture), jumped out, and ran in opposite directions. Police arrived moments later and chased after them etc. We therefore now refer to Page’s as “the scary ice cream place,” and we’re fairly certain that that building is a front for drug dealers or something.
thatbob

According to the Google Street View, this place also sells peat moss and “patio stones”. There’s nothing very creepy about digging, re-sodding, or paving things over, is there? I mean, we all have to dig, re-sod, and pave over once in a while, right?
- thatbob
  
  I mean, especially around Valentine’s Day, hrrm?