Practical Goods

Practical Goods

St. Paul, MN

Reviewed July 25th, 2005

Unlike most antique stores, this place actually has things you want and can use... practical goods. Wow, go figure. I found saddle bags straight from Mexico, just right for Pedro, my trusty burro who will help me grow coffee when I move to Costa Rica. "Onnnnnn-eeeeeeee! Stupid human. I won't wear them," says Pedro. Hey, bad burro! You do what I say or I'll beat you! "Onnnnn-eeeee! I'll tell PeTA if you do. That's after I - onnnnnn-eeeeeee - piss on your Buster Browns." Fine then! I won't beat you, I shall adopt you and call you my brother, Brother Burro. I shall feed you sugar bread, which you shall eat. I shall teach you to go to the bathroom in the toilet and flush it. This will make for us even more dinero than coffee for you shall become Pedro the Amazing Toilet Using Burro. We shall use your talents to educate the public about the civic value to crapping in a toilet and the hygienic benefits of wiping the rear. All the people will be amazed and find hope for a new future. Someday I will find Pedro and this is how things will be.

Practical Goods has hats, baseball bats, tools, colored glass bottles in amber, emerald and azure and copper coffee things from Turkey. It also has a candle holder, wool blankets and many pristine pairs of prehistoric rubber rain galoshes like the kind worn by the Morton Salt Girl since 1915. The place is run (and owned?) by a lady who looks like mother goose and knits or does something with yarn and metal things that look like the antennae of television sets and I think she knows everything. She observes what goes on without looking directly in a kind of benevolent, bespectacled, sideways omniscience. I wanted to adopt her as my fairy godmother but I was afraid she might find this offensive or infantile or possibly all three.

The single, unisex bathroom is in the basement at the end of some stairs, which one often finds leading to basements. In a room smaller than my bedroom one finds yarn, thread, yarn working tools and clothes. Just around the corner the last stop is the bathroom. It looks so much like a "home" bathroom that I tempted to doubt that it is truly intended for the general public. Never the less, the door was wide open, there were no ominous prohibitory signs, and the bathroom abutted a public space so I will risk making an erroneous observation and state that there is a 75% chance that it is intended for use by the public. If your practical needs compel you to find the bathroom of Practical Goods, be good, be polite and check with the proprietor to make sure that consent is granted to make use of the facility.

If the word is given, you will find luxuriant cloth towels hanging from two ornate o-rings far more reliable than the space shuttle o-rings. You will find a toilet with a soft (author estimates) cloth cover and an eye catching (based on all available data), tasteful (per North American Western cultural values) geometric (not Algebraic or calculaic) painting (method of artistry not officially confirmed) behind it which causes one's bowels to reflect on infinity. Nothing is out of place here that ought naught be. It comes from a world of yarn and barn and boot. Come Pedro, my trusty burro. Do your business, flush it and show the world how civilized you are. Then let the people say that if a burro can succeed so can a people. Viva Los burros! Viva los banos! We really did it Pedro. We followed our vision and we reached a goal, using talents and abilities. Now let us grow coffee and sell the beans to Turks who will show us what coffee and copper are really about. Listen to me burro: it takes a village. "Ooooooonnnn-eeeeee! Go blow it out your ass, starry eyed dreamer! You must have eaten the peyote cactus, to think I'll help you. I'm going to hit the books so I can be a smart ass."

- Justin Teerlinck

RESTROOM RATING: 8
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