Ah Ha Ha Ha - Grassmarket

The sign alone is worth a visit. However, the inside is so crammed with jokes, novelties, toys and magic tricks that it's sure to bring out the 10-year-old in anyone.

99 West Bow
Edinburgh, EH1 2JP, United Kingdom
+44 131 220 5252

Thistle Do Nicely - Old Town

Just a little gift and tat shop near the castle, but I love the name.

1 Upper Bow
Edinburgh
EH1 2JN

Hot Topic - San Bruno

It's about the music, or so they say.

This is one of those stores targeted towards teenagers that sells individuality through heavily branded merchandise. Much of what they sell is music oriented. It is a good place to buy a band t-shirt, but shelves are also filled with Nick-knacks, toys and other clothing covered with wry sayings references to TV, movies and popular culture. It's a combination of the type of merchandise found at Urban Outfitters and Spencers Gifts.

Overall, a good gift shop for teens and the occasional old person who's looking for a Ramones t-shirt.

Tanforan Mall
San Bruno, CA 94066
650.553.5100

Brunswick Centre - Bloomsbury

On the surface, Brunswick Centre looks nice. Filled with upmarket chains including Waitrose, Oasis, Hobbs, Boots and Baby Gap, the shopping is certainly better than what is usually offered on housing estates.

It hasn't always been this way. Brunswick was one of those modernist experiments architects were fond of in the 1960s. Patrick Hodgkinson designed it as a private development, part shopping centre, part cosmopolitan housing, but no one would buy the flats. They were small, many considered the vast concrete structures ugly, and the money ran out before the buildings were painted. The developers kept the shopping centre and sold the residential part of the building to Camden Council to use as council housing. Under council management, the building mouldered. So did the shopping centre.

In 2002 renovation started. It took four years to renovate and fill the abandoned shops to current standard.



I have to wonder, though, is it just putting makeup on a pig?

The Brunswick
London
WC1N 1BS

Wink - Noe Valley

Wink sells, cute eclectic gifts for all occasions, or even for yourself. Shelves are artfully arranged with toys for the person who has everything, from cloth dolls fashioned to look like they are made out of pieces of poop, to Gamma Go clothes and nick knacks, to nice design-oriented household items and gifts for babies, both the human and the four-legged variety. The cards are beautiful, and stocked with a wide range of interesting occasions. The staff are friendly.

4107 24th St
San Francisco
CA 94114
415.401.8881

Joy - Greenwich Village

A nice little gift shop chain started by former knitwear designer Joy Bates. It's a bit like a low-rent Urban Outfitters, for shoppers a little older than Urban's demographic, but with less emphasis on clothes and more on gifts, a great place to buy a last-minute gift, or something for someone at the office that you don't know well. You can pretty much close your eyes and pick up anything in the shop and it's sure to be better than something grabbed at Woolies during your lunch hour.

9 Nelson Road
Greenwich, London
SE10 9LB
02082 937 979

The Urban Nest - Noe Valley

French chic for household items and gifts. This shop is filled with lovely things like enamleware for children, clothes for babies that are not so cute that they're twee, yet not that "hip" urbane aesthetic that's beginning to get annoying. A great place to pick up lovely smelling candles and soaps and expensive dog gifts for those who have everything else.

3927 24th St
San Francisco, CA 94110

415.341.0116

Heals - Tottenham Court Road

I have been coveting a silver pouffe at Heals for a while now, so as soon as I got my first full month's paycheck I ran to the Tottenham Court store. It was still there, under a pile of sheepskin rugs and assorted pillows and bean bag chairs. No price. I wandered around looking for a sales clerk to help me, but they were all otherwise occupied with yuppie & middle-class looking couples buying sets of furniture or expensive textiles. Finally, I managed to flag someone down. She begrudgingly looked the price up - £120. I had the cash, so I plonked down my debit card. She picked it up, and said. "We don't take electron," then turned her back on me. That was it. She didn't ask for another card, of which I have too many. She didn't ask for cash, nothing. I though "electron" was another name for debit cards. Now I know better. When I left, I couldn't help but notice the irony of the sign wishing me goodbye.


Perhaps it's not ironic, just honest.

The Heal's Building
196 Tottenham Court Road
London W1T 7LQ

020 7636 1666

Teuscher -- Union Square

Giving a Teuscher chocolate to someone feels like a real gift, even if you can only buy one piece of chocolate. As would be expected from any handmade Swiss chocolate, they taste lovely. Chocolates are flown in from Zurich each week, and the ingredients taste fresh, and the fillings really taste like the name of the filling: champagne, orange, raspberry.... Chocolates, even individuals, come wrapped in lovely little packages of twisted paper made to look like whimsical creatures.



307 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
415.834.0850

Chinatown - San Francisco

Chinatown is not all fake handbags and plastic tat, especially China Town San Francisco, which is one of the historic gateways for Chinese immigrants to America. It's got history; it's got dirt; it's got places for the adventurous to eat; but mostly, it's got shopping.

In the olden days, tea was a precious commodity carried in hard pressed blocks and often used as money. Tea was pressed into molds and carved into decorate tablets. You can still buy these in Chinatown. I don't know it they're edible, but they're beautifully decorative. They're a good conversation piece and make great houswarming gifts. Chinatown is also a place to buy pearls galore, but don't shop for jewelry unless you know the value of what you want, prices are fluid, depending on the customer.

It's also a great place to buy tea sets, strange small gifts and old world items such as ant chalk.

Grant Avenue and Bush Street
San Francisco, CA 94101

Therapy - The Mission

Furniture, nick knacks or shoes, this is the store, actually two stores for retail therapy. Both shops named Therapy sit side by side, one for furniture and one for gifts for yourself. Although the breadth of the stock is wide, there it's carefully chosen to reflect a specific sensibility, quirky, urban-cute, anti-hip.

541 & 545 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.621.5902
415.861.6213

SFMOMA Store - San Francisco Airport

With the additions of the SFMOMA store and Sephora, shopping is improving considerably at the San Francisco Airport. The restaurants are improving too, but that's another blog.

The SFMOMA store has lots of cute toys, books and decorator items. It's a good place to spend your last US dollars or to buy last-minute gifts for arty people back home. Most of the things are designer-inspired & certainly beat a key chain or t-shirt grabbed on the way the the gate.

The Five and Dime - Laurel Village

The Standard 5¢ & 10¢ is one of my favorite stores and one of the last of its kind in the city. Of course nothing costs a nickel or a dime, but shoppers can find almost anything, including cooking supplies, craft supplies, garage sale labels, toys, cards, stationary, school supplies and those strange hardware items needed for Victorian houses that are impossible to find at big box stores like Home Depot. There's a sign on the door saying "Be a local, shop local." I hope people do.

Laurel Village Shopping Center
3545 California Street

Feria Ubana - Inner Sunset

This is more like it.

Held at the Canvas Gallery on Lincoln Way, this Urban Fair is what I expected at Pandora's Trunk last night. Those who like jewelry and accessories hit the jackpot. Handcrafted baubles with a modern aesthetic shared table space with Victorianesque pieces in strange proportions.

Among the gifts for wry children, stuffed monster dolls, made more for parents than their kids, were among my favorites.

The only things that were a bit dodgy were bags made out of reclaimed materials, straight out of ReadyMade magazine and pillows in burnt out velvet that may be good for those who like to decorate with gargoyles.

I went with good intentions of buying Christmas presents, but left with gifts only for myself.

Canvas Gallery
1200 9th Ave
San Francisco, CA 94122
415.504.0060