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Single-Purpose Shops

I was wandering through Chatham in Kent once and wandered into a shop that only sold snow-boarding equipment; populated by 5 members of South African staff, trying to cope witht the rush.
 
I know of a spy shop as well - perhaps we are both thinking of the same one - without revealing too much. Near Baker's Arms?
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Not that i know of, but near the Vue cinema/leisure complex and the dreaded Nettos!
 
Edinburgh's brush shop closed recently (amazed it managed to last this long!), but it retains a soap shop on the Royal Mile, a fossil shop on the Grassmarket and at least one more cheese shop (on the Princes St end of Stockbridge).

I presume book shops don't count. :roll:

Oh yes, not forgetting Drum Central on Clerk St, which only sells pianos.

No, drums.
 
Is the fossil shop Mr Woods Fossils? I was there back in 92.
 
There's a Canadian shop (now website) with a name like Just White Shirts (And Black Socks) and I've always wondered if that was truly all they ever stocked. I did check the website and they do sell coloured shirts ;) but I always thought it would be delightful to walk into their shop and see nothing but black and white, like somewhere the Blues Brothers would get their clothes.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
I know of a spy shop as well - perhaps we are both thinking of the same one - without revealing too much. Near Baker's Arms?
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Not that i know of, but near the Vue cinema/leisure complex and the dreaded Nettos!
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Doesn't sound like the area of NE London I'm thinking of...


=
 
There are two violin shops (ie they only deal in bowed instruments) within 100 yards of one another by the Bristol Royal Infirmary. I asked the proprietor of one (I bought my son a cello to abuse there) how two shops that sell the same stuff could co-exist so close: his reply was that a) they both sell different violins etc, and that b) if they don't have something, the other one will, and it saves them having to send disappointed customers to the other side of the city.

He said they get on rather well, which is nice to see :).
 
Watching The Avengers, I have learned that these shops are all fronts for various sinister organisations plotting a new world order.
 
Did I mention the Cheese Shop in Truro?
 
Cheese shops don't seem weird. There's been a cheese shop in my city for over a decade.
 
Southport used to have two cheese shops within a few hundred yards of each other - both White's Creamery, iirc. As a small kid I used to cry about the stink. I'm told I did the same about the monkey-house at the zoo! By the time I was appreciating a good ripe Gorgonzola, I think they were struggling a bit.

If White's offered a bit of Stilton on Special Offer, you knew the thing would more or less follow you out. No one else did for days - but it was worth it. A cut of that and some of the ten year old Rioja that came with a wire cage around it from Marks - that felt like living!

Well Rioja has gone downhill more that somewhat since then. Thankfully, Blue Stilton is a cheese that the makers never seem to get too badly wrong. I can do without the other silly sorts with bits of apricot in them to disguise the fact that Stilton without a good blue vein in it is like nothing at all. Could say the same about a few things!

Sorry, that was a reverie brought to you by Blue Stilton and old Rioja! And the thought that singular cheese shops probably are now a rarity, though they survived a tad longer than many specialisms. Probably the stink. Which is where we came in. Can I get out of the monkey-house now, mum? :D
 
'Mushroom World' in Llangollen, North Wales sells nothing but ornamental mushrooms and mushroom-based fantasy figures for the discerning mushroom aficionado.
 
kinnikinick999 said:
'Mushroom World' in Llangollen, North Wales sells nothing but ornamental mushrooms and mushroom-based fantasy figures for the discerning mushroom aficionado.
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erm - what's the address and do they have a website?

Gordon
 
In reply to gordonrutter

Haha, I see you're a mushroomy kinda guy.

They used to have a website, but it appears to have been disabled! I hope this doesn't mean that the shops' closed down - the demise of 'Mushroom World' would be a terrible loss to the mushroom..er..world.

Found this though:

Address
3 Berwyn Street, Llangollen, LL20 8NF
Tel (day)
01978 869199
Website
http://www.mushroom-world.co.uk

Description

A little shop in Llangollen, North Wales. We design and hand make exquisite marble/stone life size mushrooms in wicked shapes and exotic colours.
Customers say they’ve never seen anything like Mushroom-World anywhere in the world.
We have a wide range of different types, from Really Natural looking through to our Fun Range, all of which are hand made in our studio at Mushroom World, and are individual and highly collectable!
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http://www.freedom-connections.co.uk/at ... formresult
 
The Christmas shops here switch into Swimming Pool Shops in the summer.

There was a weird storefront near my house a number of years back, with front windows covered over with paper so you couldn't see inside. Up above on a display shelf was an inflatable snake, about 3 ft. long, and a wooden dove. It was freaky. I peeped thru a hole in the door once and inside the air conditioner was running and I saw tables and chairs and a coke machine. Empty as hell though. Actually I think it was a private night club, pretty common here, but I liked to pretend it was the meeting place of a terrible and secret society of voodoo wizard. I still think the snake and dove were kinda weird.

Saturday Night Live had a running gag about the shopping mall with the Scotch Tape Shop. Nothing but tape.
 
I think there used to be a cheese shop in Guildford - I believe it was called Cheese World. No idea if it's still there.

The best place I've been to for both single-purpose and randomly-selected-multiple-purpose shops is Istanbul. Not only do they have most shops arranged in to sectors (i.e. all the shops that sell a particular thing are all huddled together) but they have some very specialised shops (and therefore sectors) - generator sector; wig sector; chandelier sector; hunting, fishing and diving sector; safes; weighing machines; satellite dishes; electrical goods..... You get the idea. I seem to recall the rope-and-sack emporia being down the road from the party-goods-&-wrapping-paper shops.
It seems like a good idea in principle, but the sectors are arranged in a very random manner. Istanbul is a very large place, so it can take ages to find the bit of the city you need to do your shopping in. And if you've got a whole list of things to buy, you could be gone for days
 
There is a Christmas shop in the village where I live - it is called The Christmas Shop all year round but in summer seems to sell wedding related stuff.

In Goa I noticed that men who wander around selling newspapers in the mornings also usually sell garlands of flowers, which seems as arbitrary as shoe repair and key cutting, which always seem to go together, but does sort of make sense out there as the locals generally spruce up their shrines in the morning.
 
There's a proper tobacconist in Liverpool called Turmeaus. No concessions to being a newsagents or sweet shop like most places do, just smokes and smoking accessories. It even has a live webcam!
 
Chester has a tobacconist, a hat shop, a bead shop, a shop selling antique dolls, a cheese shop, a couple of perfumeries and a sweet shop that sells loose sweets. I think there is also a shop selling fires, a bicycle shop and an Aga shop.
Our small town (we older residents still regard it as a village) has a loose sweet shop too, as well as a cobblers (just shoe repairs no key cutting or anything of that ilk) and a shoe shop that sells only shoes (we also have a shoe shop that appears to sell luxury lingere as well as over priced shoes:? )
Liverpool used to have a shop selling just rope but I expect that it would have closed by now as it is a few years since I was in that neck of the woods.
A while ago there was a proliferation of tie shops and sock shops, there seemed to be one in every town centre.
 
I used to manage the Cutty Sark Shell Shop, which sold sea shells.

Big ones, small ones, things made out of sea shells, you name it. It was in Greenwich, London, which isnt exactly by the sea either.

It probably was a front for a sinister secret organization too, as we never really did that much business, and the shadowy owners never seemed to care.

It is, of course, A Starbucks now, though.

Anyone hailing from Sarf London might remember it, though, it was near the Cutty Sark, right next to the Gypsy Moth pub...
 
rev_dino said:
I used to manage the Cutty Sark Shell Shop, which sold sea shells.

Big ones, small ones, things made out of sea shells, you name it. It was in Greenwich, London, which isnt exactly by the sea either.
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but it is a very tidal river there. I've sailed past there a few times.

and once upon a time, oysters from the thames were so plentiful, they were the food of the poor. oyster shells are not that decorative, though!

(aside: pub in ipswich called the Ostrich - corruption of oyster reach, after the nearby creek.)
 
Year round Christmas shops are oddly common in Canada and the United States in recent years. Some people are Christmas mad. There's one on Elgin Street here in Ottawa, Ontario.

There was a bead shop in the Byward Market.

There are lots of little carts and booths selling only one line of merchanise in the shopping malls--cellphone covers, framed insects, t-shirts, scarves, gloves, etc. They come and they go seasonally or as the market dries up.

As for the query about bookstores, I don't know how it is in the UK, but in North America a store selling only books is becoming a curiosity even in towns as literate as Ottawa (and we have about 65 bookstores for a metropolitan area population of about a million which is fairly well-served).

Many bookstores, large and small, chain or unaffiliated, now have so many gifts, knick-knacks, stationary sets, cards, candles, etc., that you can have trouble finding books. On the other hand, pharmacies are turning into grocers, and large grocers have banks, travel agencies, and pharmacies in them.

If you like stores with ingenious or completely mad combinations of merchandise, the place to go is New York City. Apparently there is a constant and vast supply of stores with cute names not unlike those on The Simpsons (Bloodbath and Beyond--a classic based on stores called Bed, Bath & Beyond).

Speaking of firearms, I saw a comic do a set of jokes last evening about a store in Winnipeg that sells musical instruments and firearms. It seemed to be a local landmark, as the audience seemed to recognize the reference. Their motto ought to be "Come in to buy a accordion, buy a Saturday Night Special and blow your brains out instead."

In much of the United States you invariably see signs which say FOOD GAS AMMO. Sometimes you see odd combinations such as ANTIQUES & AMMO. EARTHWORMS & AMMO, ICE & AMMO, HOME MADE PIES & AMMO, etc. This only goes to confirm a deep-seated prejudice that urbanites and foreigners have about Real America, namely that they can go without the necessities of civilized life as long as they have plenty of ammo.

I think you can pretty much make up combinations and be sure that there will be a store selling them somewhere in America.

Which reminds me of the store which specialized in Hot Sauce (Tabasco(TM) and variants thereof) in the Byward Market. Although they did branch out into t-shirts and other gifts.
 
I have just recalled another store in Southport. It was situated on Virginia Street, on the corner of the narrow alley which led to the long foot-bridge over the railway to London Street. Called, IIRC, "Sweet & Dry" this was a shop devoted entirely to home-brewing paraphernalia. The window had a never-changing display of dusty demijohns with air-locks, rubber bungs and campden-tablets. In my mind's eye, I see the flaking paintwork as purple. Maybe it wasn't.

This was one of those archetypal never-open shops. Perhaps, by appointment, once every decade it would admit customers. The odd thing is that it lasted for many years. For all I know, it may still be there!

I can only suppose that it was the outward and visible evidence of a business which operated mainly by mail-order. Can't see any Internet presence, though. :?
 
Most large cities with a tourist trade have a christmas shop, I always seek them out on holiday, no not to firebomb them as some might expect ;) but to buy something. Then every Yule I decorate the tree and everything on it reminds me of a holiday or daytrip.
 
lemonpie3 said:
Weird dual purpose shops must be much rarer. I can't think of any except the hairdresser/wedding dress shop in Croydon, which isn't all that weird.
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There used to be a weird one somewhere in Bracknell, years ago - half of the shop was a greengrocer's, and the other half sold plastic model kits.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I have just recalled another store in Southport. It was situated on Virginia Street, on the corner of the narrow alley which led to the long foot-bridge over the railway to London Street. Called, IIRC, "Sweet & Dry" this was a shop devoted entirely to home-brewing paraphernalia. The window had a never-changing display of dusty demijohns with air-locks, rubber bungs and campden-tablets. In my mind's eye, I see the flaking paintwork as purple. Maybe it wasn't.

This was one of those archetypal never-open shops. Perhaps, by appointment, once every decade it would admit customers. The odd thing is that it lasted for many years. For all I know, it may still be there!

I can only suppose that it was the outward and visible evidence of a business which operated mainly by mail-order. Can't see any Internet presence, though. :?
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Sorry, James, guess I'm a little confused here: what's so intrinsically odd about a homebrew shop? There are a couple here in my city. Or are you commenting on its never-open state?
 
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