I love Dollars and Sense, my little go-to spot for party favors! If you are entertaining anyone…read morebetween the ages of 5 and 12, and 40 to about 70, you'll find a bunch of stuff that will be appreciated by all (save for the teens and Millennials as they are always sooooo bored; I get it, we were then as well). What kid or septuagenarian would hate confetti poppers in a patriotic theme (well under three bucks a dozen), handheld propeller launchers in a variety of colors, tin whistles made of plastic, and train horns made of real wood at a party?
Dollars and Sense is a terrific little junk shop that has nearly anything a person living in the 21st Century might not realize they need, though no buggy whips, phonograph players, VCRs (but they have blank VHS tapes!), flip phones, or similarly extinct stuff like a postcard, which would be a difficult find in ANY bedroom community, let alone a drive-through like Colmar Manor. Nearby Bladensburg is awash in history from Colonial times; and yet not a single postcard vendor exists there. The injustice! Occupy Bostwick!
I have never had a problem with communication here at Dollars and Sense or anywhere, if I exercise a little patience. I speak several languages and usually can find a lingua franca (though not French, which I never learned beyond the required tourist phrases strictly for use in Canada as the French are cheesy-smelling surrender-chumps) where we are both at a disadvantage communicating if neither of us is good at the others native tongue(s). Interacting with native English speakers daily is a terrific way to learn our quirky language in a useful manner rather than the stilted, formal English so many of our grandparents learned... NOT. My grandfather took a fabric sales job to learn English, along with reading the English and foreign versions of the same newspaper and listening to FDR's speeches. Live. In between bringing up a family in the Depression.
It is easy to get to (it's on something like eight bus lines), has a big lot for parking, there are several restaurants nearby-- chains, mostly, but a couple of independent places actually worth trying, and the history of the neighborhood is really cool. Right next door is where Washington DC came to duel for decades. Think of the ghosts! In another direction is where the two lines of defenders were arrayed to repel the British invasion force, where the War of 1812's invasion of Washington was lost, where Commodore Joshua Barney was shot by a bullet that wouldn't kill him for another four years, and where President James Madison himself directed troops in war. Bladensburg Road itself has been in use for over 250 years. All that AND you can get laundry baskets, motor oil, costume jewelry, and a zillion other things at Dollars and Sense.
I have to wonder why one would assume that a non-English speaker, most likely new to this country and working in a minimum-wage (we hope he or she is getting at least that) job would have a phone intelligent enough to translate things. I expect most folks with the kind of money postcard buying-- in a notions shop, in Colmar Manor-- involves should be so lucky.
