Buy low, live high

It’s easy to understand why people on fixed incomes and tight budgets would hunt for bargains at the 99-cent stores that dot the city. But what’s with all those well-dressed types who pull up in pricey cars and can be seen scouring the well-stocked aisles like archeologists on a dig -- scooping up jars of white asparagus and artichoke hearts, hand-painted china, leopard-print thong undies, bottles of wine and Pellegrino water -- each priced at under $1?

“It’s amazing. It’s fun. I love to go there,” says Dorothy Goodman, a law firm administrator who drives a Mercedes, owns a hillside house overlooking L.A.’s Westside and for years fulfilled her household shopping needs at upscale supermarkets in her neighborhood.

Then she discovered the 99-cent lifestyle -- the thrill of the hunt, the allure of super-bargains, the idea of getting something for almost nothing, something she knows would cost much more elsewhere.

For Goodman and millions like her around the country, extreme value shopping, also known as deep-discount retailing, has become a recreational romp, a new frontier of basics and incidentals at rock-bottom prices. Call it the new frugality of the rich. Each trip to these stores is a treasure hunt, a serendipitous adventure in which one can never predict what exotic booty -- from kites and candy to pet products and pottery -- will be bagged.

Newly unhinged from the aura of tackiness that used to be attached to dusty potluck bargain stores, the new breed of dollar-or-less stores has much more in common with its true ancestors -- those clean, neatly stocked, well-lighted Woolworth’s and Kresge chains of the 1940s that charged 5 or 10 cents for merchandise in the days when a nickel or dime carried more weight.

The Los Angeles-based chain called 99 Cents Only Stores is the gem of the genre. The chain has become such a pop-culture icon, such a signature of contemporary life that filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson sent Adam Sandler gliding down the store’s gleaming aisles in the movie “Punch-Drunk Love,” and a 7-by-11-foot panoramic photo of the 99 Cents Only Store on Sunset Boulevard, by German artist Andreas Gursky, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Goodman describes with true rapture the artichoke hearts, brand-name detergent capsules, the “huge cans of litchi nuts” she has found in her local 99 Cents Only Store, not to mention the decorative dish inside a wicker basket that is now the centerpiece on her kitchen table.

“We are talking here about good stuff, nothing outdated or unusable,” she says with zeal reminiscent of the Crocodile Hunter.

Goodman’s daughter, music producer Michelle Hart, says the 99-cent habit has rubbed off on her. “At Christmas we ran out of paper to wrap gifts. I didn’t go to the drugstore nearest us. I went to the 99-cent store because they have amazing gift bags at two for 99 cents that would have cost about $2.50 each elsewhere, and huge rolls of gift-wrap paper.

“It’s comforting to shop these stores,” Hart says, because “you feel in control. In other places, the paper you fall in love with can be $4.99. The mouthwash you choose can set you back a small fortune. Here, it’s a disciplined form of recreation.”

For a long time, 99-cent shopping sprees were not recreational for Melanie Diamond. After quitting a six-figure job to start her own public relations business, the 37-year-old experienced an extreme dip in income.

She started shopping at Target instead of Barneys New York for clothes and discovered the huge 99 Cents Only Store in her Hollywood neighborhood. Now her life -- and her income -- are back on track. But Diamond says she’ll be a lifetime believer in the 99-cent way of life.

“The stores offer cheap stuff that is basic,” she says. “I go there for all my cleaning supplies: everything from detergent to brooms. I buy big brand-name ketchup, gift bags. I’ve even found some decent wines. Just because something’s cheap doesn’t mean it can’t be good. I always feel virtuous when I leave there. I may have spent $20, but I have 20 items to show for it.”

Dozens, perhaps hundreds of regional dollar-or-less chains have sprung up across the country over the past few years. New York landscape architect Ken Smith, who recently finished work on proposals for the new World Trade Center design, says he frequently trolls the 99-cent store near his Chambers Street office, where he searches out items that are garden-related.

His office walls are hung with 6-foot plastic vines from the store, and he collects imported glass flowers, which are “pretty and fragile -- and a great bargain. I also bought a bunch of huge plastic platters with fruits and vegetables on them because they look so cool. And sunflower nightlights. You plug them in and they glow. I bought dozens of those because I know I’ll use them in some future project.”

Not all dollar-store shoppers have come out of the closet. A woman declined to be interviewed at the Encino 99 Cents Only Store, where she purchased four place settings of white Melamine dishes strewn with red roses -- an obvious plastic knockoff of an old English china pattern. She left in a black BMW.

Adrian Stone, founder of the Total Woman gym and day spa chain, bought $90 worth of holiday ornaments for her gyms at the same store that day. “These are exactly what I’d buy elsewhere for more money. Wouldn’t it be silly to spend more than I have to?” Does she shop the 99-cent store for her personal use? “Never,” she said. “It just wouldn’t occur to me.”

Dave Gold, founder of the 99 Cents Only Store chain, has just added a “gourmet and fancy food” section to his stores, which, so far, seems to mean fancy grade jams, jellies, cookies and crackers, in addition to recently adding milk and other refrigerated specialties. Many of these things are permanently stocked, so customers can count on finding them on each visit.

Most other items are one-time-only manufacturers’ overstocks, close-outs or special buying opportunities, all the same quality as is sold in regular stores, Gold says. “For example, we buy overruns from Gibson, a major ceramics manufacturer. And Sterilite and Shapeware, two major plastics producers. When Hunt’s downsized their ketchup bottles, they had millions of old-size bottles they suddenly couldn’t put in stores. We purchased them, and sold for 99 cents a bigger size at a lower price than the local markets.”

Do they ever buy rejects or outdated products? “We can’t afford to,” he says. “If a person buys something from, say Nordstrom or Ralphs, and it’s bad, they’ll return it to the store and keep shopping there. If they were to buy something bad from us, they wouldn’t shop with us again. Because we’re low-price, they’d assume everything we sell is bad. So we have to make very sure everything is very good. “