November 8, 2006

Pilsner's 5 & Dime to Close

Attention, Pilsner’s shoppers: Your source for party streamers, dish soap, squirt guns and plastic lawn ornaments is about to disappear.

OWU students are among the “core customers” of Pilsner’s 5 & Dime, Delaware’s downtown variety store, which will close at the end of the year.

Bob Pilsner, owner of the store that offers everything from greeting cards to clotheslines to toys to old restaurant dishes (at 25 cents a piece) is ending his nearly two-decade run. His 20th anniversary would have been February 1, 2007, Pilsner said. “So we got 19 years and ten-twelfths.”

Pilsner said students, particularly students without cars, are among his best customers.

“They’ve been good to me over the years and they certainly are one of my core customers,” he said. “When they go home for the summer I greatly miss them.”

For a Connect2OWU story last February, Pilsner said squirt guns are among his most popular student purchases, along with board games, bed sheets — not for beds so much as for the Greek festival — and laundry supplies.

“They load up on cleaning supplies the week before their parents come in,” Pilsner said then.

Window signs announcing his decision to close have caught students’ attention, Pilsner said.

“Very much so,” he said. “Their question is, ‘Where are we going to go?’” And his answer?

“They’ll just have to go and visit some of the other locations (downtown),” Pilsner said.

He admitted that his inventory isn’t duplicated anywhere else. Only in his store can customers find artificial flowers, men’s handkerchiefs, bobble-headed cats, mittens and hats, Christmas decorations, bath towels, jump ropes...

When Pilsner bought the former McLellan’s store at 30 North Sandusky Street, he expanded some departments, including stationery, office supplies and party goods. After the U.S. Store, a downtown grocery, closed, Pilsner stocked canned foods and increased his candy supply. In response to the departure of the downtown Revco drugstore, Pilsner began carrying first aid products and other drugstore items.

Senior citizens also have relied on Pilsner’s over the years, and they too have questions. Lots of questions. Pilsner laughed as he pointed to a button on his shirt.

“I’ve got a button right here they can push … I should have a recording,” he said.

As he spoke, a young man came striding briskly through the store’s aisles. He knew exactly what he needed: one of the packs of ping-pong balls that were hanging above Pilsner’s head as he sat at his desk.

Pilsner reached up to snag a package and the young man headed for the cash register with the air of someone in the middle of a game.

“Students have been great customers of mine,” Pilsner said.

He acknowledged that his decision to close has startled and saddened many people. But his mind is made up.

“Sure, you have second thoughts,” he said. “But at my age I don’t want to be hauled out of here in the little white bus with the red dome on the top.”

Pilsner, a longtime fisherman and hunter, plans to enjoy his retirement.

“Now when I get up if I want to go fishing I can hook the boat on and leave,” he said. “I can just go.”

Everything in the store is 10 percent off. Pilsner said he may offer a bigger discount later, but since a lot of his merchandise is already half off, customers already are getting 60 percent discount. And shoppers still have time to pick up good deals on envelopes, craft and cleaning supplies, costume jewelry and oh yes, those plastic lawn ornaments, including a rooster and at least one electric flamingo.

“I was the headquarters of pink flamingoes,” Pilsner said.

— Margo Bartlett