If you are in St. Louis . . .

groovethang · #1 (**permalink**) 09-09-2004, 11:02 AM

All,

For those of you who are in/around St. Louis, or will be visiting my fair city, there is a place you should visit.

Johnnie Brock's is a regional chain of stores for party supplies, costumes, rentals, and more. This year, they opened a Warehouse type store similar to Spirit Halloween. However, the difference is that JB's Warehouse store contains some of their used/damaged, but well-made, rental costumes at very inexpensive prices. In general, the damage is minimal or virtually invisible. The costumes are perfect for use on props. For example, they had a beautiful, well-made, long grim reaper cloak, complete with the long sleeve piece that hangs down from the wrists and the loooong hood that comes to a tip in the back. I have been looking for something like this to dress my grim reaper greeter in for the longest time and none of the costumes I had found so far really fit the bill. This, however, is perfect. The only fault with this item is that there are three cigarette burn holes near the tip of the hood. Since this is going to be worn by a prop, and that piece is in the back anyway, I went ahead and got it. For the quality of material and construction, you would easily pay $50 for this item. I got that, and one other black velour cloak with hood for a total of $25 (talked them down from $30).

This place is located at the intersection of I-44 and Jefferson Ave. Here is their web site: www.johnniebrocks.com/ Once you get off I-44 at Jefferson, you can't really miss the warehouse -- it is on the northeast corner of the intersection and has a GIANT DUNGEON sign on it (Johnnie Brock's refers to its stores that offer costumes as "dungeons").

The warehouse also contained a lot more stuff in the costumes area, including TONS of Star Trek uniforms that were VERY well made. Also, I spotted Matrix-esque cloaks and capes, as well as a lot of Count Dracula style capes with red satin lining and black exterior. There were lots more costumes than just those, but those were the ones that caught my attention. Generally, the prices were around $15 for each.

In addition to the costumes, there were tons of decorations and props. Some of them were sale priced and some of them were regularly priced. Any way you slice it, there was tons of fun. I definitely will be going back because I just popped in after work and they were getting ready to close.

Beth Ryan
bethofdeath@hotmail.com
Yahoo ID: bethofdeathstl
MSN Messenger ID: bethofdeath@hotmail.com