don’t pass
the buck
P A E H C thrills
From solar-powered hula girls and Care Bears fabric softener to dorm-room accessories and sexual aids — what you’ll find in New Orleans’ many dollar stores BY MEGAN BRADEN-PERRY
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Unleash your inner dollar-store Susan Spicer with a banana slicer, an egg poacher and a kitchen timer (from various stores).
making it a great place to outfit a dorm room. Two locations in particular (2125 Caton St., 283-7207; 3612 S. Carrollton Ave., 488-0077), thrive on the support of resident students at Dillard and Xavier University, respectively. A message broadcast periodically over the stores’ intercoms suggests shoplifting may be to blame for the rise in prices: The message thanks customers for shopping and reminds them that all their activity is being recorded. A security employee in another location then asks employees if anything is amiss in the store. Employees respond dryly, leaving the store quiet until the next broadcast — a little too Big Brother for my taste. The Buck Stop (1519 Metairie Road, Suite A, Metairie, 841-3405) specializes in items ranging from $1 to $3, including kitchen supplies, personal care items and beauty products. There is also a full inventory of greeting cards and stationery and a special section of items for people planning garage sales. Dollar Zone Plus (712 Terry Pkwy., Terrytown, 394-0155) functions primarily as a party supply store, focusing on birthdays, quinceaneras, baby showers, weddings and bachelorette parties. Dollar Zone Plus also has a small selection of housewares, cleaning supplies (including the elusive baby-scented Fabuloso), religious candles and nursery items. PAGE 27
Fabuloso (from Dollar Zone Plus) and Jackpot Money aerosol spray (from 99 Cent Warehouse): new scents for just a few cents.
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > june 26 > 2012
hen I began working on this story, I was a Gambit intern — the poorest of the bunch. Finding dollar stores is easy when you’re broke. Or at least it would have been easy before Hurricane Katrina and the federal floods, but the local dollar store landscape has changed. Since then, the New Orleans area has had a boom in national and regional chain bargain stores, such as Family Dollar, Dollar General and Dollar Tree — but also has seen the shuttering of many longtime dollar stores including The Penny Pantry in Chalmette, Dollar Castle in the 7th Ward and Silver Dollar Store in eastern New Orleans. The remaining local dollar stores are traditional in their having quirky inventories — but nontraditional in offering many items which cost more than one dollar. The only store we found where absolutely everything costs one dollar is Dollar Tree (citywide; www.dollartree.com). Dollar Tree specializes in seasonal items and party goods, such as 3-D floral displays, blow-up balloon-grams and solarpowered hula girls (p. 27), teaching materials and cooking and cleaning supplies. Also, depending on the location, Dollar Tree offers name-brand frozen foods and movie theater candy. The mecca for New Orleans Dollar Tree shoppers is in Lakeview (5201 Canal Blvd., 488-0082). Sometimes confused with Dollar Tree, Dollar General (citywide; www.dollargeneral.com) has a vast selection of clothes, books, DVDs, cleaning supplies, personal care items and name-brand foods. Dollar General also boasts an over-thecounter pharmaceutical inventory to rival most chain drugstores. Years ago, the affordability of Family Dollar (citywide; www.familydollar.com) was the store’s selling point, but with 39 stores in the greater New Orleans area — only six more than Dollar General — the selling point now is convenience. Family Dollar specializes in housewares, cleaning supplies, personal care items and groceries,
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