If I may derail the thread a bit: I love combo stores. The weirder the better. And when I say "love" I mean, you know, love to look down on and laugh at.
I remember reading an article in my local paper about combo stores a couple of years ago; one of those desperate attempts by a writer to find a new trend. What's new? Can't write about all the new coffee shops... combo stores! The newest latest. Of course, the trend never really took off, at least not here. How I dreamed about a butcher / record shop, a hair salon / sushi joint, or juice bar / funeral parlor. My neighborhood ended up with a combined barber and art framer guy, but that's about it.
I worked at a family-owned pharmacy in high school that fell on hard times when the discount national-brand pharmacy opened nearby. My boss somehow came across a video store [pre-Netflix days] that was going out of business, bought up all the stock, devoted a row in the pharmacy to movies, and -- presto -- we became a combo pharmacy-video store. Weird. Although we did not carry smut, there were about a dozen movies of girls in bikinis shooting machine guns. One aisle over from the denture adhesive. Also, since the boss was not up on new movies, he was pretty content to just rent out what we had and not get any new releases. Or even put up a TV to preview movies.
It really confused the long-time customers, who were mainly elderly and just looking for their monthly pills. No one really bothered renting the videos either. There were about 6 forms to fill out if you wanted to.
