Dec 17, 2008

Something Different gift shop specializes in the unusualBy Fran HenryCleveland.com

Perhaps you’ve noticed that shopkeepers have different ways of treating customers. Some ignore us, some glance our way and smile, while others cheerfully chat us up.

Then there’s something different – a warm greeting with a cold beverage, either white wine or water served in a frosted glass.

Naturally, that’s what you get at Something Different, an Ohio City gift shop that prides itself on having “the most unusual art and gift selections in the world.” Hyperbolic, perhaps, but a leisurely stroll through the store, beverage in hand, revealed at the very least a new meaning to the word eclectic.

Owners Koula and George Lazar offer handmade greeting cards for $6.95 and fragrance-dispensing Lampe Berger vessels for $6,000, with a wealth of items in between – canvas picnic kits ($138), insulated wine carriers ($43), guitar watches packed in little guitar cases ($73), handblown glass vases ($1,750), fused glass plates with humorous cat illustrations ($88), and Christmas ornaments of various prices.

All 1,300 ornaments hang from the ceiling in a dazzling display.

George Lazar devoted the better part of a month to suspending them with fishing line from a network of chains crisscrossing the ceiling – shimmering Inge glass pine cones, ceramic cupcakes, enormous glass cat and dog heads, birds and such.

Just as he began to hang glass birds with peacock feathers, Koula Lazar said, a customer claimed them all.

She founded the store 25 years ago on Memphis Avenue in Old Brooklyn as an outlet for her handmade extruded-copper jewelry. And the shop’s devoted clientele, including Steve Kupiec, of Old Brooklyn, followed when the couple moved the store to Ohio City eight years ago.

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