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Button Button

I spent one of my days of this long weekend downtown Vancouver.  More specifically in Gastown.  A car had to be delivered to friends disembarking from a cruise ship and since they had all their belongings in it ready to move into their West End apartment, I simply drove it to them.  They could then go directly to set up house and I'd be able to take the bus home.  But more specifically, I had time to spend downtown!

With time to browse, I took in the typical haunt of Dressew and then decided to spend more time in the specialty shop called Button Button.  The store claims to be the only button store west of Toronto devoted to buttons.  This shop sells only buttons and you'd wonder how they can make a go of it, its claim to fame is it carries an exceptional number of buttons.

If you believe the New York Times, Button Button carries over 1 million buttons.  In 2007 Marc Weingarten, from the NY Times, wrote about this rather small and unassuming store as one of the specialty shops to visit while visiting Gastown if you only had 36 hours to spend in Vancouver.  According to the shop's owner this mention in the Times increased her visitor foot traffic tremendously.

So how can a 20 foot by 20 foot store specializing in just buttons become such a great place to visit, you ask?  Because of the huge selection of buttons it carries.  There are leather, wood, ceramic, glass, horn, shell, mother of pearl and metal of all shapes and sizes.  There are also tons of specialty and antique buttons as well.  But what I found to be the most fun is the antique metal laundry tub full of 50,000 buttons (according to the owner) slightly hidden under a table on the floor.

Button Button's tub is painted but imagine one just like this full of buttons

It was early morning so there was hardly anyone else in the shop, so I pulled up a stool and spent about 45 minutes pawing through the tub to locate sets of buttons at $.15 each.  One could, of course, spend an entire day of this, but what can I say, my attention span for this type of endeavor is relatively short.  In the end I found 25 buttons (5 sets) that suited me and spent all of $4.20.  And I got 45 minutes of entertainment talking to another customer who joined me on the floor searching for buttons.

So if you need a button head down to Homer Street between W. Hastings and Cordova to Button Button.  Here's some photos of the place taken by others so you'll feel at home when you get there:

A close-up of how buttons are organized


A look of the east wall of the shop
  

How a purchase is packaged with all buttons in tissue




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