sloan/hall If you like your greeting cards dripping with hearts, flowers and sentimentality, you'll be just fine at the drugstore. But if you want something a little more subversive, there's no better card selection than the one at sloan/hall. In a strip mall that straddles the Montrose and River Oaks, sloan/hall somehow manages to cater to both the giddy hipness of the former and the blue-blood class of the latter. While most stores overwhelm you with quantity, sloan/hall has the quality market cornered: a great series of blank cards with tasteful black-and-white images; dryly witty MikWright cards with their pasted-on photos; and selections for even the most obscure holidays. Look for boxed cards around Christmas. Rest assured, you won't accidentally send the same cards as Grandma if you get them here.

Joshua's Native Plants Got crabgrass out back? Critters in your chrysanthemums? Then get your homegrowns some professional help at Joshua's in the Heights. The specialists at this nursery can tell you how to ward off molds and pests, but they also let you wander the aisles without pushing anything on you. If you're already a pro, delight in some of Houston's most hard-to-find and exotic varieties of vegetation: sweetly scented almond verbena, string bean-like stalks of sophora, thick dark blue-and-green Gold Dust ground cover and starfish cactus (a swampy-climate succulent that looks like the desert plant). There are also tall grasses, bamboo, evergreens, multiple varieties of hibiscus, jasmine and ivy. Your greens will be the envy of the neighborhood.

Montrose Clinic Let's face it: No one wants to take an HIV test. But the folks at Montrose Clinic make it as pleasant as possible. A friendly staff member leads you into a small room that somehow seems both warm and antiseptic at the same time. Once there, all of your options will be explained to you in easy-to-understand terms. Then a quick little prick and you're out the door. Sure, waiting for the results isn't anyone's favorite pastime either, but getting tested is the best way to demonstrate how much you love your loved one. And you know Montrose Clinic will be there to help you if you need it.

Issues In this Webby world, the idea of a store stocking nothing but magazines might seem quaint. But the recently opened Issues on Shepherd just north of Richmond proves beyond a doubt there's still life left in the dead-tree trade. More than 3,000 titles line the walls, and the owners are eager to stock any request you have. Where else in Houston can you find such sterling titles as Sport Rocketry, or the fishing mag Crappie World? Where else can a Marilyn Manson fan ogle the black-eyelidded honeys in Gothic Beauty just a few steps from a clean-cut studious type perusing Biblical Archeological Review? Not to mention everyone's ability to purchase Y'all -- The Magazine of Southern People, featuring Jeff Foxworthy on its glossy cover the month we saw it. Drop in to Issues and find a world of things you never knew had an entire magazine devoted to them. It's like a great random tour of the Web without all the annoying pop-up ads.

Retropolis From the sidewalk, Retropolis looks like a sliver among the boutiques and antique shops on the Heights' main drag -- a skinny little closet of a boutique worth a quick peek on your way to the nearby gelato parlor. But step inside, walk up the wood-plank stairs at the back, and the store's name starts to click. On the expansive second story you'll find enough retro fashion to outfit a whole city of James Deans, Jane Fondas and Burt Reynoldses. The selection outranks that of the Salvation Army, and it's ordered better than the driveways on the set of Leave It to Beaver. Check out the rad collection of '80s tennis shorts, a rack of '50s prom dresses with crinolines and the expansive cowboy boot section. An immaculate '30s dress with a lace collar looks like it came straight off Olive Oyl. Some prices are surprisingly forgiving: A fuzzy cloche sells for $20, and a red belt with a butterfly clasp goes for $7. So next time you go shopping, throw away your map, forget the mall, and head to Retropolis.

Texas Art Supply Longtime Houston staple Texas Art Supply wins by sheer volume. And since its only real competition -- Montrose's other locale for all things arty, Utrecht -- shut its doors earlier this year, Texas Art reigns supreme in anything an artist needs: rubber stamps, canvases, paints, stencils, clay, markers, easels and desks. Daily discount prices make Texas Art the place to go when inspiration strikes and you can't find a brush. Its affiliation with the Texas Arts League makes for constant art-class offerings in such areas as painting or resin-mold making. The place can turn a clueless novice into a budding Dalí.

Salon Essie It's been almost 20 years since Essie set off for a three-month vacation from Iran. She decided to stay here, and seven years ago, she opened her salon on Richmond. You'll still catch the enchanting lilt of Farsi fluttering through the store in between casual banter with her customers. Men's haircuts all too often become a painful exercise in forced pleasantries or chillingly apathetic silences. Salon Essie soars above all of that with gracious, swift service. We especially miss the departed Paul -- the gregarious Lebanese stylist who's quite possibly the nicest guy in Houston to snip, shave and shape our locks. Dudes might still balk at the prospect of getting trimmed up anyplace without a candy-cane barbershop pole outside; but let your inner metro open the door, and Essie will take care of the rest.

Note that this category is called Best Place by Buy Doughnuts, not Best Doughnuts. If we were picking the best doughnuts, we would have to give the nod to Krispy Kreme again. But our favorite place to buy doughnuts is Shipway Donuts, at Telephone Road near the South Loop, a tiny, poorly air-conditioned doughnut shop/loncheria that stands head and shoulders above Krispy Kreme as a total culinary experience. Why? Well, first of all, Shipway Donuts also sells egg-and-chorizo breakfast tacos. We don't know about you, but we like an egg taco appetizer before we dig into the doughnuts. And the egg tacos at Shipway come with homemade hot sauce on the side. (Ever seen any hot sauce at Krispy Kreme?) Second, Shipway has better horchata. Oops, we forgot, Krispy Kreme doesn't sell horchata. Last, and probably most important, on Friday and Saturday Shipway sells fresh homemade tamales. We got a dozen chicken tamales and sampled a couple after the egg-and-chorizo taco with a little of that homemade hot sauce. The tamales were spicy and melt-in-your-mouth creamy, with lots of chicken in each one. After the tacos and tamales, you might not have much room for doughnuts, but the doughnuts here are only average, so who cares?

Cactus Music and Video Regulars stop by Cactus to browse used vinyl and check out the magazines, clothing and rock-music action figurines. They also show up when local or touring musicians drop by to perform. Oh, yeah, and they go to Cactus to buy CDs. During the past 12 months, general manager Quinn Bishop has brought renewed focus to the CDs sold at the store, pursuing both independent artists and national acts whose CDs were previously for sale only on the artists' Web sites. Alejandro Escovedo's live Por Vida album and a live Marcia Ball CD recorded at Waterloo Records in Austin are just a couple of these new arrivals. Best of all, at Cactus you won't find snooty clerks like Jack Black's character in High Fidelity. But the staffers do know what's up -- five of them have more than ten years' experience at the store. "They just truly love music," says Bishop. Imagine that.

So you want to watch a good movie on your VCR, but your mind is a blank as to what to pick? Just tell St. Clair what you're in the mood for, and he'll rattle off a half-dozen or so suggestions. If that's not enough, he'll come up with more. St. Clair never fails to help us find something unusual and entertaining, and often it's something we've never heard of before. Why does he do it? Says St. Clair, "You work eight hours, you might as well help someone." Cactus rents videos for a buck a day, so long as you're not looking for a new release. And if you happen to stroll in on a Monday, it's two for the price of one.