I admit I had begun to get a little suspicious. Barely a month ago, I was lamenting that our nearest Bed Bath & Beyond was almost ten miles away in Santa Clara. Then last week, I was looking through the mail and came across an ad from Bed Bath & Beyond telling us to shop in new their Mountain View location. Yesterday, I was thinking it would be nice if there was a good place to buy a Nintendo DS Lite in the area. Today in the mail came a coupon from PetSmart telling us to visit their new store. Now, I’m quite certain that PetSmart has no store closer than Sunnyvale, but the little map on the flyer said it was right there next to the Best Buy and the REI. Two stores which also have no location in Mountain View.

So I drove out there, and sure enough, Mountain View has a new shopping center. Charleston Plaza is across Charleston from Rengstorff Center (aka Costco), right next to 101. It’s got a Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond and PetSmart that are open now (well, they’re closed now, but they were open half an hour ago), and an REI “coming soon”. There’s also another building still under construction that looks like it will house smaller shops or restaurants.

It’s weird; I’m used to “new car smell” and “new electronics smell”, but I didn’t realize until today that there’s a “new store smell.” Best Buy and Bed Bath & Beyond certainly had it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to dedicate the rest of my evening to my new Nintendo DS Lite.

Update: Corrected the name of the shopping center.