Love letter to Building 19

I have a secret, and secrets are lots of fun. So I hope that you appreciate that, in a sudden and uncharacteristic fit of generosity, I've decided to share it with you. There's a store called Building 19 that sells ordinary stuff at extraordinarily low prices. It's dirty, it's cheap, and it's one of the stranger places you'll find in Somerville. If you haven't been there, get together some friends and organize a field trip. Really.

I don't expect you to be convinced by that quick pitch, though, so I'm going to have to explain to you bit by bit just why Building 19 is so inspired. You won't understand it until you go there yourself, but if I get you to take that first step, I'll feel like I've made a difference.

Why the gushing support? Do I get kickbacks from the Building? No. I'm just so impressed by it that I want to see it thrive and grow. It's like having a favorite neighborhood restaurant that you tell all your friends about because you want it to stay in business. I'm really just being selfish.

But hey! Shopping there can save you money, and it's never short of entertaining. You win, I win.

I love digging through thrift stores for clothes, and I love buying household supplies at dollar stores. Building 19 is like a combination of the two _ it has clothes and books in addition to the food, tools, and trinkets you'd expect from a dollar store. It also has a wider price range _ you'd never find furniture above one-tenth scale in a dollar store.

The variety of consumable and durable goods defies any traditional classification. Building 19 isn't a department store or a grocery store or a furniture store or a bookstore or a hardware store. It's a wonderful, magical place.

Getting there is something of a laugh. Building 19 is in Assembly Square past the K-Mart. And I mean way past. You drive by some empty commercial spaces, and all the way at the far end of the parking lot there's a sad little entrance with a sad little sign.

And it's a pretty sad store. It's a large warehouse, partitioned off into rough sections with bins and racks of partially-sorted goods. People who look like they might do all of their shopping there shuffle up and down the aisles without making eye contact or talking to anyone. The shopping carts don't match because they've all been stolen from other stores.

I'll admit that some of the food is legitimately scary. Who buys an open box of pasta or chocolate fortune cookies? Maybe I don't understand the technology behind miniature boxed pies, but considering that everything at Building 19 seems, well, vintage, I can't imagine that there'd be anything left in those pies that I'd want to eat. Cheap is good, but edible is better.

Then there's the weird stuff. Bear in mind that discontinued and expired items find their way to Building 19 _ you can find phased-out varieties of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, unpopular applesauce blends, boxes of ancient cereal. Making a meal out of Building 19 ingredients can be a fun game by itself. Take one family-size box of SpongeBob SquarePants Macaroni and Cheese (with ocean-blue cheese sauce!), a box of Stoned Wheat Thins, a dented can of fruit cocktail, and a bag of slightly dry chocolate-covered pretzels, and you've got a classy extravaganza for two (or one, if you're in the mood to get really ill). See how long you can live only with Building 19 food. My bet is less than a week _ not because you'd get bored and have to eat something else but for basic reasons of health and nutrition.

But if you aren't going for shock or comedy value, there's also some perfectly good food. Get basics like jelly or beef broth or teriyaki sauce for a third of the usual price, or dig through a bin to find discontinued Emeril spices on the cheap. Dented cans are perfectly fine (botulism is in bulging cans, not dented ones), and it's not as though canned fruit goes bad.

The candy selection is remarkable, ranging from the aforementioned chocolate-covered pretzels to the one-pound bags of bizarrely flavored sour gummies. And there are things you can't find anywhere else, too, like gummy cell phones, gummy spiders, gummy penguins, and pretty much anything else gummy that you might want. The sour gummies are the most intriguing, though. Normally, everyone wants red gummy bears _ cherry and strawberry being the best flavors of everything. Not this time, though. I don't know what flavor the red ones are supposed to have here, but it's nasty. Whoever set up the flavor-and-dye combinations at the factory didn't follow standard candy conventions at all.

But don't think this is some low-end answer to wholesale clubs. No, Building 19 is so much more. The hardware section is full of good deals on things you want and things no one should want. Some of it's pretty useless, like steering-wheel covers and heart-shaped trashcans (perfect only for belated Valentine's), but there are sets of tools, boxes of candles, toaster ovens, extension cords, car equipment...it isn't worth listing everything. It's enough to say that Building 19 has everything a college student really needs from a hardware or department store, only cheaper.

There's furniture, but it's mostly real furniture. Getting one of these couches for $300 is a pretty good deal, but I don't see many college students getting themselves in that deep. You want furniture, drive around Somerville the night before trash collection.

But the housewares! The cooking supplies are as good as those you can find elsewhere, and the nonstick baking pans are seriously cheap. Pillows, sheets, and blankets (some slightly irregular) are all bargain-priced. There are cheap rugs and expensive rugs and rugs shaped like tigers. I could go on, but you're probably starting to get the idea.

I can't recommend this place enough. It's worth the trip for sheer entertainment value. Go there with $10, and you'll find plenty of things that grab your interest. At best, you could walk out with some amazing furniture. At worst, you'll have some sour gummies and a calendar with pictures of pigs. Either way, I can't imagine you being bored.