As a neurodivergent person, Apple stores freak me out. They don't seem real. Like I walked into another realm run by the fae but instead of wanting my name they want my wallet.
I don't know if they all look the same, but the one where I live looks sterile with their white (or close enough) walls. Almost makes me think of the apple store being a tech hospital.
RUN BY FAEFOLK yes. Describes the Apple Store accurately
I feel the same when going to any overly expensive and rich place like those stupid expensive clothing or fashion stores that my mom always barges into on every single trip. Everything seems fake. It's all too pristine, all too clean, all too sanitized, employees staring at you as you walk around with a few of them approaching you to try to sell you something.
I've been to the Electric Fetus (Duluth). It's not quite as weird as the name suggests.
While I have never been in a shop in America, I went into an American shop in my country. That was back when Walmart tried to get a foothold here. This Walmart was one of the weirdest shop I ever visited, and I was not surprised when they shut down not much later and left the country.
Definitely not weird in terms of what's being sold since it was something like a pawn shop/thrift store (can't remember which since I've only been once a few years back). Was a decent sized place and had rooms with different stuff in them. No doors between the rooms. Those types of stores where they have rooms instead of an open concept kinda weird me out since I'm not used to them. From what I remember, the checkout lady at the single checkout area was pretty nice and I got a copy of JSRF, but the layout weirded me out.
Second closest I could say would be a used bookstore I've only been once that was similar, except it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it was 2 rooms due to it being a much smaller shop.
Been in a great many weird spaces, but your post brought to mind an electronics store in Tulsa 30-years back.
They didn't seem particularly happy to have you there, but c'mon in, I guess. It was like a library of ancient electronic bits. Rows and rows, 10' high, of dusty, crusty bits in bins. Well and exactly labelled!
Still have some seriously funky LEDs from that place. Found a replacement for my 1980 IBM PC power light! Rectangular, red, wrapped in white plastic, original, perfect. I got 4x-bank pink LEDs, triangular LEDs, all before the internet and Chinesium manufacturing.
I'd kill to teleport there again.
I have not shopped there myself, but I think that the Bass Pro pyramid in Memphis probably is a reasonable candidate for a weird US store.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Pyramid
Both the exterior and interior are pretty unusual.
Wall Drug.
Don't be fooled. It is absolutely not worth stopping for.
If you're going past it anyway it's perfectly fine as far as roadside attractions go imo. A lot of it comes to expectations admittedly.
Jungle Jims. Massive international food store. Takes several hours to fully explore and see everything.
That's hilarious. Jungle Jim's was the name of a kiddie play-place with indoor rides and arcade games. Before reading your second sentence, I was like, "there was a store there???"
Funny, they do have some superficial marketing of it as an amusement park. For instance, it's on those highest signs, as an "attraction".
Any number of single off thrift stores. Sometimes they just have clothing and dead crockpots. Sometimes they have alligator leather jackets and mirror covered purses among weirder shit.
Ax-Man Surplus in the Twin Cities! They've got everything from graduated cylinders to clown dolls to golf club heads. They've also got a giant bobble head jesus and an iron lung that aren't for sale, they just display them in store because they're cool. They even go through the effort of hand-writing labels for each item, like this:
They also play weird novelty in-store songs like They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!
Looks like American Science And Surplus in Chicago/Milwaukee! Love those kind of stores
Lazar’s Bazar in Eugene Oregon is pretty high up there. Need a Velcro Hulk Hogan wallet from the 80s? Got it. How about some throwing stars? Got it. Weird tshirts? Got it. Vintage posters? Got it. A salad shooter? Got it. You name it, he probably has it.
