What’s in Store? - The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House - page 193

There's also the Green Store in Esperanza, which features an outdoor seating area for
drinking and general breeze-shooting.
And then there's the store in Isabel we've dubbed the Hot Store because it's always at
least twenty degrees hotter in there than it is outside. Finally, let's not forget the new so-
called big box store across from the electric company that sells things in bulk like Sam's
Club , only at a smaller discount and with a wine bar attached to its front.
But the Vieques establishment that takes us roaring back to our childhoods more than
any other is the “dime store” on the main drag in downtown Isabel. This place bears an
uncanny resemblance to the Woolworth's of our youth, circa 1968, right down to the gerbil
on the treadmill, the chirping parakeets, and the pungent, all pervasive odor of plastic and
linoleum.
It also closes for an hour at lunch time.
We love this place simply because it's redolent of a world long past, when a Saturday
afternoon visit to the five-and-dime was something we looked forward to all week.
If the store were trying to be quaint in a time-warpy sort of way (think Colonial Wil-
liamsburg or any of the other calcified, self-conscious theme parks that pass for history in
modern America), it wouldn't be.
But it's not trying to be anything.
It just is.