Tuesday, August 08, 2006

New York Stories, Part 3: Shopping

You cannot go to New York and NOT visit a discount shopping store. They're ubiquitous, which means they're all over the frickin' place! Daffy's was highly recommended to us by my friend Valerie. The first one we went to, however, was full of Daffy's leftovers. The second and third Daffy's were much better, and I bought about 3 shirts for under $20 each.

Valerie also mentioned Century 21, which is not the insurance company but a building housing one of the biggest discount stores you will ever see. Actually, I only went in and took a peek. It was just too daunting, and we only had 90 minutes before we were set to see Spamalot on Broadway.

I think it was also Valerie who mentioned Macy's, the largest department store on earth apparently. Four blocks and several floors worth of merchandise. I'd hate to do inventory in THAT store!

We also went to H&M, which is coming to Pasadena in a couple months. That place is wild...and cheap! Oh, I should mention it here that every purchase we made under a hundred bucks was tax free. Go figure. I wish they'd do that here in California.

I have this vacation rule I follow just about everywhere I go: I like to buy underwear from the country I visit. This way, I have a nice souvenir that I am reminded of at least once every two weeks. But this vacation, even though it wasn't to a foreign country, had H&M, which is based in Europe, and they had these cool sport boxers that reminded me of the WE store's in Amsterdam. So, I think I bought about 9 pairs.

We also visited Zara, which as you know is one of my favorite stores in Santa Monica. I bought a sweater there.

On Saturday, we finally got to visiting SoHo, but for the life of me, I don't know why we didn't go there on the first day. Man, they have some cool shit there. And tons of sales going on. I went to Kenneth Cole and bought a leather-covered notebook journal with replacement notes for $11.

At some point, we were getting exhausted. But then we saw some street vendors selling handmade jewelry, and ended up spending about a hundred bucks there. It was worth it, though. Some folks sold junk, others sold real cool shit that was at a major discount to what a retail store would charge for the same thing.

It was here that I spotted a store called Parasuco just down the street. There was a big "Grand Opening" sign, and so I suggested we check it out. Someone from that store just emailed me for my input, after she probably did a search and found my blog. So I'll post my response on my next entry. But the shortened version? We ended up spending over an hour there and bought three pairs of kick-ass jeans. Cool location, too.

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