Dollar General

Recently I had occasion to take one of my kids by an old storefront that had been a Woolworth’s when I was a kid, and I found it difficult to explain the wonder that was the Five and Dime. He asked if maybe the Five and Dime was now the Dollar store, because of inflation?
And it is true, the same basic small footprint of the old Five and Dime is similar to the Dollar stores, but the retailing niches have changed much more significantly. Target, et alia, now basically take the niche of the «little bit of everything for daily household life» that Woolworth’s once had, except instead of ten Woolworth’s there’s one Target or Walmart.
But the equally odd thing is, even as we no longer have Five and Dimes, we don’t really have Dollar Stores anymore. It used to be things were actually a dollar there — remember the schtick, «everything for a dollar»? You don’t see it anymore. What you see in Dollar stores are closer to the general stock of a larger department store, much more regular, but with lower quality goods. The prices aren’t that much better, for the most part, than Target; Dollar stores have more moved back into the niche of neighborhood stores for people with relatively bad transportation options and the occasional bargain. But item for item, I’m not really seeing anything these days in dollar stores that can’t be had in higher quality for the same price at Target et alia, and that’s really saying something.
Dollar General, having been one of the original exemplars of the dollar store, is in sort of bad straits, with older stores and considerable more wear and tear on them than some of the other dollar stores, but they also seem to have moved into the Woolworth’s-Lite niche relatively sooner. The advantages here are if you want to look for, say, school supplies, you can find some, although maybe not everything on your list, and if you cherrypick the true bargains and go to the Walmart aisles you might just save a dollar. But it’s a lot of work, which is sobering, to save a very little amount of money.
The staff at this location are nice, but it doesn’t quite make up for the overall dim atmosphere of the press of economic necessity suggested by both store and customers here.