Ax-Man Cometh

We had a couple of hours off the other day, so we went exploring for a bit without the baby, which is something that we rarely get to do.  We first tried a Vietnamese bakery and had a tofu Bahn mi.  Delicious.  We would have eaten a meat one, but they only served pork and we don't eat that because pigs have the intelligence of dogs, apparently.  And then we had a chocolate croissant.  Also delicious.

After that, we stopped by a bookstore called "Landfill Books and Music."  It was the oddest place.  They had a very strange selection. My husband browsed the music section, because that's his thing, and I checked out the books.  He said that it was just bizarre...something about lots of copies of one record by Olivia Newton John.  As for the books...if the worker had not been sitting on his ass in his backroom doing whatever it was he was doing, he could have been out on the floor alphabetizing the books by author.  I had to scour each and every shelf to find anything of interest.  Plus, like the music, there were a bunch of copies of one book.  I'm thinking specifically of Gorky Park.  Also, all of these books were published in the 70's and 80's, I think.  There was nothing modern at all, which was fine by me, because I used this as a chance to build my collection of Victoria Holt books.

I loved these books when I was younger.  They are gothic, I think, and they always feature a young girl and a mysterious stranger and I just ate them up.  Speaking of gothic, I also grabbed one book by Daphne du Maurier.  I have yet to find an older hardcover copy of Rebecca, so I'm making do with whatever other books I find by her.

Next up, I told my husband that there was a surplus store that I wanted to check out.  I thought it could have been an Army-Navy surplus store with some other stuff thrown in, but I was not sure.  I think he was skeptical, but not so when we stepped inside and saw this monstrosity:

Awesome.  Meet Ax-Man Surplus!  And Teddy Ruxpin as pilot of a book!

This was the best place. It was not an Army-Navy surplus store...it was just surplus! They had a ton of odd bits and things and whatnot from corks to washers to plastic bottles to whatever.

They also labeled the bins with clever signs and things.  My husband described it as someone's lifelong art project.  

Blurry, sorry:

It says, "Plug it up U.S.A. style!"

I didn't know the policy on photos, so I only snapped a few, but there were so many fun and clever things.  It was great.  I can see coming here for future birthday parties to stock up on odd favors or if we want to do an art project of sorts, this would be a great place.