Every store should be the dollar store

What if everything you ever wanted only cost 1 dollar?

Jul 16, 2026

Growing up, my favorite place in the world was the 99-cent store.

I never really had an allowance and mostly went to our local 99-cent “and up” store for errands. You know, those last-minute buys that are usually reserved for a bodega at 2 am, but were instead spent at the (mostly) cheaper dollar store.

Even still, it always felt special to enter that place.

First of all, if you had 10 dollars, you could buy at least ten things. For a kid, that’s a lot of things. Lots of tiny cheap gifts for yourself.

But it was more than the cheap Chinese-made plastic bracelets that made it so comforting for me.

My local 99 cents store had fluorescent lights, the scent of Pine-Sol greeting you as soon as you stepped from the gray gum-stained sidewalk onto its bright linoleum floors. Even the doors themselves had that familiar ring: a cha-ching from a small bell echoing the cash register nearby.

And then, a random pop radio song was always playing in the background, the cashier sometimes humming along, and the aisles always fully stocked and so so full of…stuff:

Plastic dinosaur toys, Water guns, Vanilla wafer cookies, loose candy, sparkly bracelets complete with plastic diamonds, soap, gum, tampons, toilet paper, plastic decorative flowers, spatulas of all sizes, hundreds of disposable paper plates…and in one aisle somehow, also clothing, tee-shirts, and flip flops with little plastic flowers on them.

Food, too: eggs that had seen better days, butter from a brand no one has ever seen before. I often wondered where they got it, but it didn’t matter, because it was cheap, affordable, and could be yours, for a dollar and change.

You know that feeling you get when you step into a department store, and everything smells clean and new? Where your credit card makes it seem like anything here could be yours?

Well, I felt that at the dollar store. Like I could get anything I wanted.

The reality though, was different. I’d go to the store with my single mother to get necessities from this place that was never meant to be so important, so essential to someone’s life. It was meant to be the place you go to in case you forgot to bring an umbrella. A last-minute stop to get chips or a soda on a hot day.

It isn’t supposed to be a place you go to 2 or 3 times a week because it’s the only place you can afford to buy anything.

And yet it was. And the owner knew my mother by name, and sometimes had a tab open for us, and when there was a silly bracelet trend, saved some for me and my brother. It was more than a store; it was a safe place, where I could go to walk through the aisles and buy a tiny piece of joy.

Now, I have long since graduated from those dollar store days and can now afford to enter a pricier store and feel at ease.

But the dollar store held something that I wish everyone could have: the feeling that you can have anything.

That the world is yours.

So it occurred to me to imagine a dream dollar store this morning.

Here goes:

The Everything Dollar Store

I used to think the Everything Dollar store only existed in dreams, but in reality, it exists somewhere in a far corner of the Bronx. I had never heard of the place, and would have imagined it as one of those New York myths kids share on the playground, like the imaginary subway station or a bridge that never existed.

I was a skeptic until a friend of mine actually went there. She met a woman on the train who happened to be holding a beautiful umbrella. It wasn’t fancy, just bright orange with a wooden handle with intricate carvings. Naturally, my friend was curious; she was one of those people who loved finding unique things at antique stores and thrift shops. A collector. She actually hated dollar stores, because she felt like everything there was too common, that anyone could get anything, cheapening the unique quality of any one thing. And so, when the woman replied that she got it at a dollar store, it was disappointing for her to say the least.

And yet, she really loved the carvings, and so decided to venture out to the address the woman had handed to her on a business card she carried for some reason.

The card was the thing that made her want to go, she told me, later that week over drinks.

“It was so beautiful; it couldn’t be just any dollar store.”

And it wasn’t.

After talking 3 trains, 2 buses, a ferry, and somehow still having to walk 20 minutes, she found the unassuming shop one Saturday morning. It was like any other dollar store at first. Same fluorescent lights, same plastic items galore. The doorbell made the usual sound, announcing a customer, but no one seemed to be there. She entered, wearily even though she felt she’d made the trip for nothing. It seemed like there was no one there, not a single customer.

The cashier stand was empty and the Miley Cyrus’ song “Flowers” played in the background from a radio somewhere she couldn’t see.

“Hello?” she asked to no one in particular as she wandered down the usual aisles stocked with soap and off-brand shampoo.

And then she spotted the umbrellas.

Not a single one looked like the one she’d seen the woman carrying.

This is a joke, some scam, she thought. But just as she turned to leave, something caught her eye. A brightly colored wooden box, hidden, unassuming in the corner next to some paper plates. It was blue. And had hand-painted carvings much like the ones on the umbrella.

She stepped closer to get a better look when a man, who looked to be south asian appeared, startling her.

He said, “Hello, welcome to the Everything Dollar Store, what brings you to us this fine morning?

“Uhmm… I don’t know, I got this card from a… friend,” she replied tentatively, hoping the trip was going to be worth it after all.

The man took the card excitedly and promptly told her to follow him.

He brought her to a door hidden behind some paper flower curtains.

It had those same carvings.

When he opened it, the light surprised her. Blinded her even, but then she realized it was the same fluorescent lighting from the shop, only 10x brighter.

And somehow, inside, was another store.

It looked pretty much the same, except it had none of the usual dollar items. It had aisles and aisles full of boxes, wooden ones labeled, “1 dollar.”

They were all beautiful, all different colors.

He let her wander, while standing by the door, patiently.

She stepped inside, half worried this was where the beginning of her Law and Order episode started. She saw the headline in her head “ Woman dies in dollar store.” But she shook away those thoughts as she drew closer to the boxes. She opened one and there was nothing inside, just a small envelope.

She opened it and it said, “my dream house.”

The man appeared beside her, again... it seemed like he was excited to explain the whole thing, so she let him start, but really it was because she was speechless.

He said, “ This is the Everything Dollar Store, where everything, everything is a dollar. Even your wildest dream.”

She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.

She looked at him, standing there smiling, thinking he was joking.

This is a scam right? She said, her New York danger radar buzzing in her ears. She started walking toward the exit, when he grabbed another box to show her.

“No, really! Look!”

The box read, “a college education.”

She was intrigued. She decided to play the game and opened another box beside the one he’d just grabbed.

“a brand new car”

“This is a trip”, she said, laughing.

And then, this is where it got weird.

“Weird?, I said, laughing, as if this story hadn’t already gone to looney town.

He spent the next 10 minutes explaining to her that the Everything Dollar store was a very real thing. And that a lot of famous people had come here to get their dollar dream.

“Famous people?”

Yeah, he explained, and then he proceeded to show her pictures, selfies of him and celebrities dating back from the 1920s to the present. This man was over 100 years old, but looked like that vague age between 35 and 47 that all Bodega and Dollar store owners are.

“Like who?”

She said, “ Marilyn Monroe, Woody Allen, Jane Fonda, Jonas Salk, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, that guy with the motorcycle, Evil Kinevil? I mean like scientists and writers and sports people…”

“So what, he can AI photoshop really well?” I wanted to say, but she seemed to be fully believing the story she was telling, so I let her continue.

“It felt real, she said. I don’t know why but I honestly bought what he was saying. Even if it was some bizarre art project, it was so unique, so interesting, and he was so fully invested in the bit, that I bought a box.”

“You bought a box?” I whisper shouted over my glass of wine.

“Yes, in fact I bought 3.” she said, and proceeded to pull a beautiful gold box out of her purse.

She said she’d already opened them, and gotten what she wanted.

What do you mean?

Well, I said I wanted to test it out. So I asked him for a car one. And he proceeded to pull out an ipad and asked me for make and model detail to give me a car… for a dollar.

“For a dollar.” I replied, half-believing her.

So, “Did you get it?” I asked.

He gave me the keys as soon as I paid. It was waiting for me outside.

“You’re lying, you took the train here,” I said, laughing.

“Parking is so expensive, and I didn’t want anyone messing with my Ferrari! See!”

She pulled up a photo of her in a Ferrari.

I was blown away. So I went along with it. “What else did you buy?”

A house for my mom. And a college education for Nini.

“For a dollar?”

“Yes.” And she proceeded to show me the deed and the account in her daughter’s name for a college fund she’d access at the age of 18.

How come no one has ever heard of this place?

Because who’d believe it?

Plus, people don’t like dollar stores, really; they’re embarrassing, she said, sipping her wine and jingling her keys.

I laughed awkwardly, remembering all the times I’d survived on dollar store food.

Now, I didn’t know if it was real or not, and maybe she really was pulling my leg, but I’d have to find out.

I asked her for the card and went there one day, with a few dollars in hand.

And that’s how I ended up here.

In Paris, living in a nice little apartment, doing the work that I love.

Stranger than fiction, no?

What about you? Would you go to the Everything Dollar Store?

What would you buy?

Lory Martinez

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