Variety store

A variety store (also pound shop, dollar store, and other names) is a retail store that sells a wide range of inexpensive household goods.

Variety stores often have product lines including food and drink, personal hygiene products, small home and garden tools, office supplies, decorations, electronics, garden plants, toys, pet supplies, remaindered books, recorded media, and motor and bike consumables. Larger stores may sell frozen foods and fresh produce.

Variety stores arose in the early 20th century, with Woolworth's model to reduce store overheads by simplifying the duties of sales clerks. They may now be found all over the world.

A variety store often sells all goods at a single price, in which case it may be called a price-point retailer. The name of the store often reflects this, and in different markets it may be called a dollar store, pound shop, euro store and so on.

Economics

Some items are offered at a considerable discount over other retailers, whereas others are at much the same price point as conventional retail establishments. There are two ways variety stores make a profit:

Five and Dime

Five and Dime is a cartoon short by Walter Lantz Productions, and stars Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. It is the 74th Oswald short produced by Lantz and the 125th overall.

Plot summary

Oswald is dancing on an urban street until it suddenly rains. He then runs into a five and dime store. Because his shorts are quite saturated, Oswald grabs a wringer and heads somewhere within the store to dry it. The place he goes to, however, turns out to be the shop's display window where the outside crowd see him and laugh. When he returns to the main part of the shop, Oswald befriends the store clerk whose appearance resembles the girl beagle. The clerk asks Oswald if he could play the piano. Oswald insists as he plays the instrument and sings the song I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store), thus getting attention from the store patrons.

While the patrons watch Oswald's performance, a puppy, who looks like a browner version of the boy beagle, parts from his mother and decides to explore the store. After a few moments of wondering and playing some toys, the puppy finds a stout man and a thin man. Obliged to play a prank on the two men, the puppy throws a fish at the stout man's head. The stout man thinks the other person did it, and therefore delivers a haymaker onto the thin man. The thin man is sent airborne, knocking all the dishes off the shelf. To avoid trouble, the puppy knocks a Venus de Milo statue off its platform, and replaces it with himself.

Kathy Mattea

Kathleen Alice "Kathy" Mattea (pronounced ma-TAY-a) (born June 21, 1959, South Charleston, West Virginia) is an American country music and bluegrass performer who often brings folk, Celtic, and traditional country sounds to her music. Active since 1983 as a recording artist, she has recorded seventeen albums and has charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks charts. This total includes the number one hits "Goin' Gone", "Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses", "Come From the Heart", and "Burnin' Old Memories", as well as twelve additional Top Ten singles.

Life & career

Mattea was born in South Charleston, West Virginia because it had the nearest hospital to her parents' home in Cross Lanes, where she grew up, graduating from nearby Nitro High School. She discovered her love of singing at Girl Scout camp. In 1976, while attending West Virginia University, she joined the bluegrass band Pennsboro, and two years later dropped out of school to move to Nashville. She worked as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame, did backup vocal work for Bobby Goldsboro, and sang demos for several Nashville songwriters and publishers including Nashville songwriter/producer Byron Hill who brought her to the attention of Frank Jones (then head of Mercury Records), who signed her to her first record deal in 1983.

Nanci Griffith

Nanci Caroline Griffith (born July 6, 1953) is an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter, reared in Austin, Texas, who currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Career

Griffith was born in Seguin, Texas, and her career has spanned a variety of musical genres, predominantly country, folk, and what she terms "folkabilly." Griffith won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1994 for her recording, Other Voices, Other Rooms. This album features Griffith covering the songs of artists who are her major influences. One of her better-known songs is "From a Distance," which was written and composed by Julie Gold, although Bette Midler's version achieved greater commercial success. Similarly, other artists have occasionally achieved greater success than Griffith herself with songs that she wrote or co-wrote. For example, Kathy Mattea had a country music top five hit with a 1986 cover of Griffith's "Love at the Five and Dime" and Suzy Bogguss had one of her largest hits with Griffith's and Tom Russell's "Outbound Plane".

The Five

The Five may refer to:

Music

Religion

Film

TV

Construction

Transportation

See also