Five Below Is Her Woolworth’s

We’re out running errands and she spots it. Like always. That black-and-blue beacon of cheap joy — Five Below.

She lights up. I groan. Because of course we’re going in. We always go in. Doesn’t matter if we just left one two days ago, doesn’t matter if she has no money, doesn’t even matter if we’re in a rush. The gravitational pull of Five Below is stronger than logic, time, or reason.

I’m already annoyed. I’m standing in the doorway like a bouncer outside a rave for squishy toys and crappy iPhone cases. But then it hits me — this is her Woolworth’s, her portal to wonder, just as mine was decades ago.

And I go there still. I see it. Clear as day. My own ghost, walking into Woolworth’s on Fordham Road and Valentine Ave., the Bronx. The cacophony of parakeets chirping from the back of the store (they sold live birds!). The lunch counter, with cramped stools. The toy aisle’s siren call pulling me in with its kaleidoscope of colors and possibilities. The spinning racks, the linoleum floors, the smell of popcorn and impulse buys.

Woolworth’s wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t even that big. But to me? It was a kingdom. And one day — if the world doesn’t implode — she’ll tell some poor kid about how magical Five Below was, how the slime aisle made her heart race, how the LED lights and funky headphones were everything, and the kid will roll their eyes the way I used to when my mom talked about Chock full o’Nuts.

Every generation gets its own plastic paradise.

Mine just happened to sell parakeets and G.I. Joes.

Woolworth’s: The Scene of the Crime

The Woolworth’s by my house is carved into my memory like a name in a school desk. Every inch of that place is still there in my head; the lunch counter, the scent of hot dogs and buttered popcorn, the faint, frantic music of birds chirping from their cages in the back.

But it was the toy aisle that broke me. That little stretch of plastic hooks and hanging cards — that’s where I saw the new G.I. Joes for the first time. Not the big ones I’d known in Puerto Rico. Not the Eagle Eye Joe or Bullet Man or The Intruder I’d left behind when we left in a hurry due to parent’s divorce. These were smaller. Cooler. Apartment-sized warriors that could sneak under couches and behind radiators.

And I needed them. Bad.

I wish I could say I got them the honest way. But I was a kid with a hole in his chest and too much memory for what he’d lost. So I did what a desperate little boy sometimes does. I stole a twenty from my mother’s purse. I went to Woolworth’s on the sneak, and I bought all of them — Snake Eyes, Scarlett, Stalker, Flash, Bazooka, Grunt, Short-Fuse, Zap. The whole damn first wave. My very first premeditated sin — executed flawlessly in the aisle of Woolworth’s, like a mission from Cobra Command.

I played with them in secret, behind the couches, in the bathroom. Every plastic rifle and colorful military grade backpack whispered guilt, but I couldn’t stop. They were mine. I had returned from exile and assembled a new army. A true Cobra original story.

Woolworth’s wasn’t just a store. It was the site of a holy reunion and a quiet betrayal. Both lived in my chest for years.

Crazy Eddie: Syntax Error of the Soul

Crazy Eddie wasn’t a store. It was a trap with a jingle. A temple of bait-and-switch wrapped in a straightjacket and screaming through a TV at 2 a.m.

But I believed.

I wanted a Commodore VIC-20 more than I wanted air. I told my mom it was “for school,” which was the ancient kid-language for “I will die without this.” To sell it, I made a prototype out of a calculator taped to a cardboard box and a ‘keyboard’ I drew on it, sat her down and demoed my little Frankenstein like it was Shark Tank. I had graphs. I had a pitch. She bought it.

We couldn’t afford it outright, so we did what broke families did; layaway. Every payment was a prayer. And finally, the day came. We showed up at Crazy Eddie, receipt in hand, ready to claim the promised machine.

Except. Yeah. “We’re outta VIC-20s,” they said. “But we do have this amazing Atari 800XL.” They acted like it was an upgrade. A deal. A favor.

I didn’t know any better. And I didn’t want to leave empty-handed – leaving empty handed to a kid is like signing a surrender. So we took it.

Turns out, I was the only kid in a hundred-mile radius with an Atari 800XL. While my friends shared BASIC code and cassette programs, I sat in the corner muttering syntax errors and praying for compatibility. Their games loaded. Mine crashed. Their magazines had tips (‘memba Compute magazine?). Mine had warnings.

I still feel burned.

That was Crazy Eddie. You walked in thinking you were getting a portal to the future — walked out with an overpriced off-brand time machine to nowhere.

And still. Part of me loved it. Because we almost had it. And “almost” was a kind of magic too.

Alexander’s: The Scarlet A

Alexander’s was like a battleground where dignity went to fight clearance tags.

It had everything — jackets, jeans, school clothes, Christmas chaos — and most importantly, it had prices my mom could swing. Not easily, but swing. That made it sacred. When you grew up broke, new clothes were like getting leveled up in public.

But Alexander’s had a signature. A cruel one.

The big red A. Not just on the shopping bag — stitched into the damn collar tag of some of their store brand clothing. The affordable stuff.

Kids would literally flip your collar over in the hallway like they were TSA agents for shame. They were looking for the logo, for the proof. And if they found it? Laughed on. Roasted. Marked.

That tag was the Bronx version of a scarlet letter. Didn’t matter how nice the shirt looked — if it had that A, you were outed. There was no such thing as quiet poverty back then. Your clothes did the talking. And sometimes they screamed.

But even with all that — I still loved that place.

Because when we left with something in a bag, it meant my mom had pulled it off. It meant I had something new. And even if I had to spend the next week guarding my collar like state secrets, I still wore it with a little hope. A little pride.

Shame and survival, always sold as a bundle.

Tower Records: Mixtapes and Apologies

Tower Records wasn’t just a store. It was a confession booth with speakers. A place where emotions got pressed to tape and handed off like sacred relics.

Ours was in the Village — a pilgrimage spot for anyone chasing music, healing, or hormones. I went mostly for the custom mixtape station. One of the greatest inventions in the history of teenage survival. You’d browse a catalog of songs, punch in your picks, and pay to have your heartbreak, rage, or romantic delusion immortalized on cassette.

Fighting with your girl? Mixtape.

Got dumped? Mixtape.

Trying to land someone new who doesn’t know you’re an idiot yet? Miiiiiixxxx tape.

I remember standing there like I was building a time bomb — every track had to mean something. Side A was the plea. Side B was the promise. And if you picked right? She’d listen. And maybe forgive you. Or at least pause the emotional homicide for a week.

That’s how serious it was. Songs weren’t background noise. They were spells. You had to cast them right.

And even when the mix didn’t work — even when she stayed mad, or worse, played your tape for her next boyfriend — you still made magic. You curated a whole emotional biography in 60 minutes. That’s power.

Tower Records gave us that.

A place to turn feelings into plastic. And maybe even redemption.

P.S. Lisa Lisa’s “All Cried Out”. Trust me, bro! Get that one in.

Toys “R” Us: The Museum of the Unaffordable

If Woolworth’s was where you got toys, Toys “R” Us was where you dreamed about them.

It was cathedral. High ceilings, fluorescent lighting, aisle after aisle of plastic prayers. The scale of it was overwhelming. This wasn’t a store — it was a theme park of things you’d never own.

Woolworth’s had the single figures — maybe you could swing a Snake Eyes or a Hot Wheels car if your mom felt generous or your fingers got sticky enough. But Toys “R” Us? That was the vehicles. The command centers. The massive, glorious kits that sat on the top shelves like museum pieces, too expensive to touch.

I remember the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier. That seven-foot monstrosity. It was more boat than apartment. I would’ve sold a kidney for it if I knew what kidneys were. But it just sat there. A monument to what other kids’ parents could afford.

Still, I went. Just to look. To run my fingers along the boxes. To breathe in the hope of it. That maybe, just maybe, one Christmas, some miracle would hit and I’d walk out with it under my arm. It never happened. But the dream was real. The wanting was enough to keep me going.

Toys “R” Us didn’t sell toys. It sold longing.

And that longing lived in you. Sometimes longer than the toys ever did.

And that Times Square Toys r Us? The fucking Louvre!

Epilogue: Let Her Have Five Below

Back at Five Below, she’s still walking the aisles. Studying neon tech gadgets that’ll break in a week. Debating between three different squishies that all look exactly the same to me. I’m standing there like a man out of time, arms crossed, wallet ready, patience thinning.

But I don’t rush her. (Ok maybe a little…)

Because this is her place. Her memory in the making.

We had our own temples — Woolworth’s, Crazy Eddie, Alexander’s, Tower Records, Toys “R” Us. Most of them are gone now, buried under chain stores and eBay listings. But they lived once. They mattered. They shaped us.

And someday, she’ll be grown, walking past some future chain store with her kid, rolling her eyes while they beg to go in. And maybe — if the wind hits her right — she’ll remember this moment. This feeling. Of being small, and overwhelmed, and excited by five-dollar treasure.

We don’t get to choose what becomes sacred for them. We only get to let them have it.

So I exhale. I unclench. I watch her hold up a lava lamp like it’s the Ark of the Covenant.

And I think, yeah. Let her have Five Below.