An asterisk (*) at the end of the listing indicates that it's a good place to bring children (my children, anyway, what do I know?)

Butala Emporium
37-46 74th St, Queens, 718-899-5590
108 EastƯ28 Street, 212- 684-4447
When the urge to wax nostalgic for my travels in India grows as insistent as an elderly lady brandishing an umbrella in the narrow passageways of Varanasi's Old City, I hit Butala for some henna, some dhoop sticks, or a postcard of Hanuman, a monkey so hunky, I felt compelled to borrow his name to use in my boy's middle. Descend to the basement level on a mission from the maharaja (He's in the market for another enormous, intricately carved box bed that gives off a subtle whiff of sandalwood.)
*

CFG Boutique
129 Walker St, 917-237-0688
I have no events on the horizon to justify the purchase of a sequined Suzi Wong cheong sam featuring the Manhattan skyline, but perhaps you do. I would love it if someone I knew bought and wore such a garment.

Girl Props
153 Prince St, 212-505-7615
Inky's not a particularly girly girl - look who her role model is for god's sake - but a couple birthday girls of our acquaintance are gluttons for the feather boas, glam sunglasses, and dangly rhinestone earrings here. There's always some sort of drama going on at the cash register, enough to make me think, "You know what? Screw it. I don't really need to stand around listening to you screaming into the phone, or, for that matter, another pair of four dollar earrings." But then I come to my senses, largely because I'm a sucker for jewels that resemble a subway token, or the Statue of Liberty's torch hand.
*

Tiny Living
125 E 7th St, 212-228-2748
If you're living in a 340-square foot apartment, you're allowed to splash out on a more-expensive than usual dish rack that looks like it was designed by the U.S. space program, and might well double as a magnetic bulletin board or an i-Pod charging station. My favorite product here is a buttocks-shaped, portable rubber cushion, designed by a furniture-challenged art student who was fed up with sitting on the cold, hard floor.

Jane's Exchange
191 E. 3rd St, 212-677-0380
Like the mighty Phoenix, the world's best consignment store for kids' clothing and gear has resurrected itself from the ashes of a lost lease. Those who've been on the receiving end of a clerk's stink eye for such offenses as nursing in a commercial establishment, or asking if one's crotch-clutching, hopping toddler can use a store's bathroom will feel like they're sinking into a warm bath. If you forget about the financial transaction, it's almost like getting hand-me-downs from a really friendly, super cool European mom whose kids don't blow out the knees of their jeans the way my kids do! (Of course my kids' jeans were her kids' jeans to begin with...)
*

M & J Buttons
1000 6th Avenue, (at 37th St), 212-391-6200
You can wear those tattered rags forever if you tart them up with silk-covered buttons! Choose from hundreds of crowd-pleasing designs, from Boticelli's Venus to disturbing countenanced rabbits in vintage Easter bonnets.

Toho Shoji
990 6th Avenue (between 36th and 37th), 212-668-7465
Hot bead on bead action, guaranteed to win favor with barely legal crafty beavers of the female persuasion. Jump hoops, earring wires, how-to books and tubes upon tubes of those little seed beads that I spent untold hours of my childhood pouring out upon my bedroom's shag carpet, for the obsessive pleasure of picking them out again with tweezers.

Halloween Adventure
104 4th Ave., 212-673-4546
Beware the crowds of August and the ghoulier-than-thou staff, but as far as your dress-up needs go, Halloween Adventure's got you covered year round. For those too anemic to toddle the six or so blocks to Religious Sex on St Mark's Pl, Gothic Renaissance right next door has a goodly supply of velvet cloaks, lurid thigh highs and those bondage-y evening gowns favored by the undead.
*

JC Casey Design Rubber Stamps
322 E. 11th St, 917-669-4151
If you can't make it to Yogyakarta, where the card tables of enterprising rubber stamp makers line Jalan Malioboro, head to this East Village boite. Prepare to subject postal employees and cover-charge-paying bar patrons alike to rubberstamped impressions of your own design, liberally whomped all over your outgoing correspondence and/or the backs of their hands!

New York City Store
Manhattan Municipal Building, 1 Center St, 212-NEW-YORK
If you find yourself getting hitched at city hall, pop in downstairs for some truly inventive New York City souvenirs, including a fine selection of NYCentric children's books, a wide variety of Greek coffee cup/sushi/subway token kitsch, and those offbeat audio tour CDs of nifty neighborhoods like Chinatown, the Meatpacking District and the Lower East Side.

Artez'n
444 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn 718-596-2649
Booze it up with a Brooklyn Love martini shaker or a pint glass featuring such notable Borough of Kings landmarks as the House of Detention and the Williamsburg Saving Bank's clock tower. Then let's see how good you spell.

Main Squeeze
19 Essex St, 212-614-3109
For all your accordion needs.

Samurai
200 Grand St, 212-219-2010
In February, ought-four, when Greg and I were heading to Urinetown's Tokyo premiere, my friend Reiko had me in a lather over the 100 Yen stores. I got to return the favor when I read an article about Samurai, a Korean-owned Queens 99-cent store chain (now with a convenient Chinatown location!) modeled on its Japanese 100-Yen brethren. Having squandered Santa's stocking budget, Reiko and I could only browse at the imitator that's opened across the street. It looks even better than Samurai, a pretty tough act to beat.

BJ99
15 Pike St, 212-964-6869
... and yet ... there's BJ99, a cavernous ninety-nine cent store, which in addition to yielding many of the crown jewels of my Korean pencil case collection was recently discovered to be a trove of small sloppily printed notebooks featuring my nemesis, Barbie, over the words, I Ate You. (You're too late, pal, I bought them all for an as-yet-to-be-determined purpose.) A giant statue of Quan Yin, and the Fountainbleu style staircase bracket the ground level entry way. Leave time to poke around the origami papers and comparatively upscale school supply collection at Eastern Books, downstairs (take the staircase behind the dour cashier)

The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company
Hang on a cotton-picking minute here! This is a not-so-mild-mannered (store) front for 826NYC, a free writing center for kids (and teenagers ready to sign up to write their first novel — for real!) Seeing as how it's for a good cause, don't balk at paying above market rates for your cape and mask.
*

Toys In Babeland
94 Rivington St, 212-375-1701
also 43 Mercer Street, 212-966-2120
I've had a warm fuzzy for this little, black-windowed emporium ever since the owners made self-deprecating jokes as they cinched a black leather harness and a jumboscous rubber cockadoodledoo over my jeans. (I was the only Sex Toys 101 pupil who felt morally obligated to volunteer when the call went out for audience participants. Such is my fate as one who toiled for over a decade in the trenches of low budget theater.)
* I refrain from taking my seven-year-old, but if you've got no problem with little hands grasping the tickle-feathers and rubber schlongs, the staff doesn't either. I also want to give this store its propers for stocking a selection of books that give kids the lowdown on where babies come from and then some!

Barclay School Supplies
166 Livingston, Brooklyn, 718-875-2424
When I was little I enjoyed playing school and sometimes I still feel like gettin' Board of Eddy with it. Take the elevator in this ugly office building to a wonderland of felt boards, magnetic letters, cardboard Presidents Day decorations and Good Job stickers.

Pearl Paint
308 Canal, 212-431-7932
The trouble with this 5-story art supply emporium, other than the creaking wooden staircases that always make me break out in a huffing, puffing grandma sweat is the incredible selection seduces me into thinking I'll paint silk neckties, make mosaic table tops, silkscreen, and use expensive handmade paper in worthwhile ways. A whole floor of pens! Another of blank notebooks and sketchpads! Heaven! I like the way it smells too.

Mondo Kim's
6 St. Mark's Pl, 212-598--9985
Music lovers, please do not take advice from one whose ear is as dorky as mine. If music is your life, you already know about Other Music on 4th St between Lafayette and Broadway. For the slightly less cutting edge, there are plenty of used record stores lining St. Mark's Place, all with surly clerks and threatening imports sections. I singled out because it has great videos and appealing little toys.

Toy Tokyo
121 Second Ave, 212-673-5450
Every time I go in here (and I can only do it without the kids because it blows their minds and it's no fun to keep little hands off neat stuff), I regret not buying that Simpsons bathtub plug I saw in a Glasgow drugstore in 1998. Collectibles of everything from Nightmare Before Christmas and Wallace and Grommit to Astro Boy and assorted creatures less known on our shores. I want to play with them all. It's on the second floor.

Tokio 7
64 E 7th St, 212-353-8443
Glamorous Manhattanites got you feeling dumpy as all get out? Duck into this second hand shop and suck in your gut because most of the ultra cool designer threads seem to have been consigned by the dexedrine and lettuce crowd. Even if you don't find anything you like in a size that fits, there are equal opportunity kewpie dolls in a variety of colors and dimensions ranging from keychain to newborn.

Pearl River
477 Broadway, SOHO area between Grand St. and Broome St., 212-431-4770
Say, Ms. Halliday, wherever did you get that fabulous cherry-red cheong sam you wore the night your husband snared two Tony awards? Why, that old rag? Pearl River Mart of course! Sixty-eight bucks in the old location, upstairs on Canal Street, also my source for embroidered baby shoes, frog closures, black hardbound journals with red tips, cutting boards, Hell Bank notes, joss paper, stocking stuffers, incense, paper parasols, cheap sushi-print dishes and the Double Horse Brand wadded silk comforter I give thanks for nightly.

Atomic Passion
430 E 9th St, 212-533-0718
Tell the kids who run this vintage emporium that Inky sent you and ask them when the hell they're going to get another pair of Hee-Haw overalls big enough to cover my ample heiner! Tourists, bring your camera because their awning is East 9th Street's most popular photo op. If you wander further west on the block, you'll pass 406 East 9th Street, which is where Inky, Greg, Jambo and I (pregnant with Milo) lived in the 340-square-foot apartment familiar to longtime readers of The East Village Inky.

H&M
34th Street at Herald Square (also 558 Broadway and 5th Ave at 51st St), 212-489-0390
Trendy, inexpensive, poorly sewn garments that are indispensable if you arrive in New York only to discover that you're a dowdy hayseed. If, like me, you are resigned to dowdy hayseed status, you can splurge on some fabu accessories, underwired undies or kids' clothes.
*

The Chelsea Flea Market
6th Avenue around 26th St in various parking lots on the weekend
Spend a lovely Saturday leafing through the old photographs, cast off clothing and incongruous flour sacks and butter churns of second hand New York.

New York Cake and Baking Distributors
56 W 22nd, 212-675-2253
Despite my miniscule kitchen and sugar-mad bowl-licking assistants, I am attracted to the endless possibilities of crystallized violets, whimsically shaped mint molds, and IV bags of violently hued frosting.