One of Life's Small Mysteries

[queerbychoice]

Where does one go to buy matches?

I see candles for sale in grocery stores all the time, but I've never seen matches for sale anywhere. What do they expect you to light the candles with? Where does one go to buy matches?

I think you're supposed to learn where to buy things by seeing your parents buy them. But I can't recall ever seeing my parents buy matches. My parents have a big silver bowl on top of their tallest bookshelves (they put it there to keep it out of reach of their small children, I believe, and then just never moved it anywhere else after we grew up) which is full of matchbooks that they brought home as free souvenirs from restaurants and vacations long ago, and when they need matches they just take one out of there. But I haven't been on vacation to anywhere that offered souvenir matchbooks, so I have no collection to draw from.

If I ever really needed a match for anything, I think I'd have to resort to rubbing two sticks together.

Comments

[zagg.livejournal.com]

matches like inthe lil packages and they break easily, are given away, especially at old bars and stuff like that. nice firm ones that actually work well, you buy, i like the water proof ones with the ship on them, i used them forever until i finally taught my self the ways of a lighter.


now i have lighters and no matches, life is well.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Yes, the free ones are the kind my parents had.

Where do you buy a lighter?

Re:

[zagg.livejournal.com]

you can buy a lighter anywhere... i mean, at like wal-mart, or convienience stores, or dollar storessssss

[arhuaine.livejournal.com]

If the US is anything like the UK you can buy matches in the same places where you can buy cigarettes.

[littlewashu.livejournal.com]

It's not! I thought that was SO fucked up that you have to buy a whole BOX of matches for 10p! Here, when you buy cigarettes, they say "would you like matches?" and you say "yes please" and then they give you a matchbook -- cardboard matches, not nice wooden ones, but heck, they're free -- and then you say "cheers!" and leave. Ha! I'm just kidding, we don't say "cheers" here because it would sound funny because we pronounce the "r" and it sounds stupid that way.

[crazyredhead888.livejournal.com]

Matches are free. Go to a conveniance store and ask.

[frankepi.livejournal.com]

we buy wooden kitchen matches all the time, in bodegas and grocery stores. perhaps you aren't looking in the right aisle?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

shouldn't they be next to the candles?

i've looked for them in at least three grocery stores and i haven't seen them anywhere.

[roxann-ireland.livejournal.com]

I always find them in the paper stuff aisle, next to the picnic plates. I guess the theory of their placement is Barbeque.

[acidremix999.livejournal.com]

yeah the house aisle with the bar-b-que stuff

[aliendreamer.livejournal.com]

Matches are free in America? Wow. In Britain they sell matches behind the counter in newsagents and "convenience stores" as you call them, usually underneath the cigarettes where they're hard to see unless you're really looking. You have to ask for them.

_Imp

[humanx.livejournal.com]

You can buy big boxes of kitchen matches in the paper/kitchen supply aisle, or lighters usually at checkout area of drug/convenience stores - and yeah, little books of matches plague the lives of US smokers, as stores generally hand you one every time you buy a pack of cigarettes, and most people use lighters. They have ads on, is why they're free, I guess.

But where can you buy hangers? I've never bought a hanger in my life, and I don't think I've ever seen them for sale, except highly padded/decorated expensive ones. The ones that populate every closet in my life are just sort of there.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Wow, hey, we need to trade stores. I see hangers everywhere I go, at every store I shop at, hangers of every possible shape and size, metal and plastic, with or without clips attached - I even saw a bunch of tiny wire "children's hangers" last time I went shopping.

The hangers are in different aisles at different grocery stores, and at several they aren't in regular aisles at all but in big "sale" boxes out by themselves to attract more attention. When they're in aisles, they're usually near stuff like dishwashing gloves, sewing kits and that kind of thing.

[ex-infidel.livejournal.com]

just steal your parents' matches!