Background: One of Diann's classmates is getting married soon, and they're having a lingerie party for her. Now, if you knew this classmate, you would also know that she wouldn't be shocked by your average tacky gift — you have to go way overboard to shock her. We're trying our damnedest.
Diann & I had some Christmas shopping to do for the family in Norway, so we figured we'd combine these two shopping needs into one goliath day of shopping. We'd hit up the Woodlands and maybe a few other non-local places. So, Saturday morning at 10:30am we hop in the car and make the drive to the Woodlands, 80 miles away from home. Places like Victoria's Secret probably just won't do searching for tacky lingerie, but we make a go at it anyway. Nothing there. Off to Spencer's because they've always got terrible stuff. No luck there either. So, we do some Christmas shopping at Foley's and the like, and we pile back into the car and head to the Galleria, 40 miles away.
Now, if you've never been to the Galleria in Houston, it's in the ritzy part of town. Likely if there's something tacky here we probably can't afford it, but what the heck. We hit up the VS here with less luck than we had in the Woodlands and at home (which is really disappointing), then we find some Italian store that I don't recall the name of. It, too, was pretty disappointing.
Back out into Houston we go, and we head over to “Condom Sense”. It's a pretty tacky gag-gift supply store, but we're disappointed yet again. Then I recall that there was a Frederick's of Hollywood opening in Katy Mills Mall — 30 miles later, we arrive. Frederick's of all places should have something to fit the bill, but I can say honestly that this store is smaller than my living room. You guessed it, nothing there either.
So, back to the south side of Houston we go to our first of two really seedy places — Eros 1207 (45 more miles). We saw this place on a billboard while driving into Houston. It can't be that bad, right? I mean, it's got a website, a couple of billboards, etc. Well, we got ID'd going into the store. They had their share of tacky stuff (chain mail bra anyone?), but most “items” were packaged in plastic blister packaging. That was slightly disturbing. Back onto the road.
A few exits down was a place called “Fun Wear”. The short of it: this, too, was pretty disappointing. We made the 2 hour drive back home (140 more miles) and got home at 9:30pm at night.
11 hours of shopping for tacky lingerie, and we bought NOTHING! The state of brick-and-mortar tacky lingerie stores is very, very, sad.