After pummeling myself with water jets and flipping through a book I had bought at Artists & Authors, Marblehead's first-rate store for used and rare books, I set out for dinner.
With the economy groaning rather than growing, the country's once throbbing fashion retail scene is in a chokehold, with sales slowing at mono-brand shops and many top multibrand boutiques now behaving like cash-strapped, third-rate stores.
The latest of Sir Terence Conran's mega-feederies, it is the upscale element at his new King's Road Gastrodrome, a complex centered on a first-rate food store reminiscent of Dean & Deluca and an adjacent Chef Shop selling kitchen- and tableware as well as an enticing flower market and a cafe serving quick but satisfying food.
There are first-rate reggae record stores, most notably Moodie's in the Bronx and the VP retail shop in Queens.
Also first-rate is the store's pristine packaging of its catering orders (white paper separates each slice of cheese, orange juice is fresh squeezed and each cheese blintz is handmade).
But it is easy to buy, at one of the neighboring stores, first-rate yogurt (or curds are they are called here) and pickles (the lemon and mango pickles are particularly good).
A decade later, the store is a first-rate delicatessen and pastry shop — a result of Mr. Minnocci's decision to concentrate on house-made foods and pastries.
O.K., that caveat aside, Rowland's is decidedly what it says it is--a true bar and grill, named after the store's founder, Rowland H. Macy, who had always insisted his stores serve first-rate food to its customers.
More so than Bernal Heights, Glen Park feels like a real town, with a dry cleaner, a hardware store, a library branch, liquor stores and a first-rate greasy-spoon diner.
Many retirees and people near retirement find cities not only vibrant and full of culture, but also loaded with easily accessible services, from first-rate hospitals and doctors to grocery stores that deliver.
And in Christopher Dickey's first-rate thriller, "The Sleeper," a former member of Al Qaeda stores lethal smallpox in his freezer in Kansas.
