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You could spend your whole life trying to find a novel way of telling the girl in your life — whether she’s two, 22 or 82 — you love her. But the frenzy to prove it — with spontaneity and zest — boils over this week when the telltale heartbeat of Valentine’s Day draws near, challenging the imaginations of guys like you. You know who you are. Now, get those feet off the couch and lose the can of Bud!
Don’t be frightened by the storefront at Manorisms, 1577 South Pearl Street (303-715-9016). Yes, the window box is planted with tin tomato cans and plastic hair rollers, but, really, it’s a girl thing. Trust us. Go inside. Even if you’re the kind of dyed-in-the-wool jerk who gives heartfelt gifts of vacuum cleaners and skillets instead of candy or flowers, there’s at least some lightness to the accoutrements of drudgery sold here: delicately embroidered antique tea towels, decorative sink plugs and handy purple pot-scrubbers to soothe the compulsive cleaning lady in her soul. But the tiny shop also offers gifts tinted by the promise of indulgence: Choose a flannel nightshirt adorned with images of Chinese takeout and box it together with a quartet of Asquith and Somerset bath cubes done up in cellophane and tied prettily with wired ribbon and a cloth leaf. Or throw together a vellum envelope of Fizzy Salts cinched with a rosebud, a pair of Aunt Sadie’s sensually entwined braided candles and an old-fashioned bolt of cloth covered with vintage Valentine messages.
The kitschy sensibility carries over down the street at Five Green Boxes, 1705 South Pearl Street (303-777-2331). There the outer decorations consist of pink rubber gloves and artificial tulips (Remember? A girl thing.) But they’ll package jewelry purchases in clear plastic Cinderella shoes or pink boxes topped with twirling-ballerina birthday-candle holders. (Serendipity rules here, if you hadn’t already figured that out.) Buy a pair of colorful French socks or pink beaded flip-flops or a strawberry ice-cream cone lamp and they’ll throw in a pair of red plastic lips. “We’ll even wash your car using pink rubber gloves,” says proprietor Charlotte Elich. No joke.
Girls big and small are likely to fall under the spell of Hello Kitty, one of Japan’s many commercial attempts at world takeover. But here in Denver, you’ll have to find it in the strangest of places: Taiwanese proprietress Ashley Chang operates her singular Hello Kitty boutique as a sideline to the family restaurant Min Min, a hole-in-the-wall nesting at 22 South Broadway (303-871-0167). Chang started to carry the line simply because she liked it and had a connection in Hong Kong. “My mother says to me, ‘You’re too old for those things,'” Chang says, noting that what began as a kid’s thing is now being marketed to adults in Asian countries, where it’s very popular. “Many of these items are hard to find in America,” she adds, happily whipping out the catalogues to prove it. In Asia, there are ties, laptop computers, fax machines and suitcases — even a Hello Kitty car made by Daihatsu. You can’t get one of those at Min Min, but you will find sweet stuff: beaded snow caps and fluffy earmuffs and cardboard files and a chaste underpants-and-half-cami set, all decorated profusely with the cutesy Hello Kitty images. And Chang, who says Hello Kitty fetishism is a lonely calling for her, can hardly wait to share her affliction: “Tell others about it so I won’t be alone.”
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And speaking of fetishism, no Valentine’s Day would be complete without some naughtiness. And to that end — though co-owner Kevin Larson claims “anybody and everybody could come into this store and do 100 percent of their Valentine’s Day shopping” — Pandora’s Toy Box is predominantly an erotica shop aimed at women and couples, albeit tempered by a sense of romance lacking at your garden-variety X-rated emporium. “We are Valentine’s Day. We’re a romance store, and that’s what Valentine’s Day is,” says Larson of the Box, at 528 South Broadway (303-778-8828). There’s no lotion, potion or bubble bath you can’t find here, and the his-and-hers theme is played out beautifully, right down to the egalitarian displays of sexy lingerie and silk boxers (you get to decide who’ll wear what). There are sexy board games and hand-blown champagne flutes, body glitter and pheromones, Lover’s Lotto scratch cards and How to Strip for Your Man videos, sushi-dinner kits and couples vibrators that are touted to work both ways. But you can be shy at the Box, too: Nobody, but nobody, could possibly avert her eyes from a cute little teddy bear hugging a gold box of handcrafted chocolate truffles. Endless variety, Larson notes, is what sets Pandora’s apart, and he means business. “If we don’t have something,” he says, “I want to know about it so we can get it in here.”
The Denver area is full of great nooks and crannies for consumers. In “Talking Shop,” dedicated shopper Susan Froyd packages up some of the town’s best places to drop by…and buy.
