Urban Outfitters. Where worlds collide.

There's a little shopping center down the hill from me, and while it's not quite grand enough to be called a mall, it does have an Anthropologie and a Paper Source, and it's thankfully Restoration Hardware- and Pottery Barn-free, so I like it.

I swung by Sunday morning to cruise Anthro but was caught off guard by a sea of white Ray Ban- and gladiator sandal-wearing girls elbowing their way in... could it be? Urban Outfitters! It just opened right across the parking lot from Anthro.

I made my way past the mob, thinking, perhaps, I had slipped down Judd Nelson's coke-widened nostrils into some weird eighties shadow world where girls wore Molly Ringwald's sunglasses with Ally Sheedy's sandals. Just inside the front door was a large table filled with long, feathered hair clips, which only added to the sense that I had inadvertently stepped through a portal into the past and landed in a place I would not have fit in in, even back then.

Back in the day, yes, back in the day, feathered hair accessories were always attached to roach clips which were then attached to the feathered hair of stoner girls hanging out in the Indio High School smoking area with my brother, whose existence I did not quite deny, but I certainly did not advertise.

No home furnishings to speak of, save the ubiquitous button-tufted headboard and a bunch of quilts that look like they wouldn't wash well. I went online to check out what I was missing, and it turns out, not much. I do like these folksy little poufs, though. Given the way the similarly priced Calypso-for-Target poufs flew off the shelves, these should have been stacked all over the store. Stoners love a good pouf. It's a a fact.

Oh, and I also saw this online:



Perhaps I was in the smoking area.