The chain of 99 Cents Only Stores went belly-up in 2024, filing bankruptcy and closing and selling off all of its stores.
But the famed location in the Miracle Mile community of Los Angeles has been reactivated—as a pop-up gallery lasting just one week.
The opening was last Saturday night when I was recovering from a cold, so I waited a couple of days and headed out on Tuesday afternoon when I was feeling much better.
This 99¢ store was really only on my radar because the owner also owned the building next door to it—the former Johnie's—reportedly so it could use the parking spots that came along with it.
Now, strategically timed alongside the annual Frieze Los Angeles exhibition as a kind of "Anti-Frieze" movement, the discount shop's defunct home is hosting 99CENT—a joint project of The Hole and Jeffrey Deitch Gallery.
A statement in anti-commercialism, it seems a fitting sequel to The Really Really Free 99—a free store operated by the Community Solidarity Project for over a year until earlier this month, when its agreement with the landlord ended abruptly.
This temporary exhibit that replaced it is so contrary to the commercialism of Frieze Los Angeles and the mainstream art world that it's not even clear what's for sale and what isn't (although some of it definitely is, and there are occasional signs that read "THESE ARE NOT FOR SALE").
Visiting it is like having a fever dream of a shopping experience, where relics of the 99 Cents Only store intermingle with found objects that have been brought in specifically for the show.
And, unlike Frieze, it's free to attend—and free for the artists to participate and be included. 
I love walking around stores and looking at stuff without buying anything, so I was delighted to see the deli case filled with objects other than jugs of milk, slabs of lunchmeat, and hunks of cheese.
Especially thrilling was the opportunity to walk inside the refrigerated case—because I always love going where I'm not supposed to be.
It felt like a jaunt along the lines of urban exploration...
...as though those telephones had been on the shelves the whole time, until everybody just walked out and up and left them behind.
Every surface is an artist's canvas...
...even the "NO TAGGING INSIDE" signs that are hung throughout.
While artist Barry McGee has covered the walls with his own work, as well as works from his personal collection, he's also invited a legion of his friends to join him in the endeavor...
...like Gary Baseman...
...who included his mother Naomi Baseman's plant in his area. (Naomi is a local fixture of the Fairfax District herself, having worked the bakery counter at Canter's Deli for over 30 years.)
A collection of KATSU's spray-painted smiley faces replaces a cashier at one check stand.
And a montage of Adam DARE's Brokenhearted Bunnies hangs over one of the aisles, alongside an upside-down shopping cart.
It's a bizarre bazaar of pop art, political art, street art, and everything in between—although it all has kind of a graffiti aesthetic (and titans of the medium were in attendance at the opening, including Kenny Scharf and Shepard Fairey).
It's hard to know what to make of some of it.
Mostly, it's just as weird and wonderful as Los Angeles itself—a counter to the mainstream cultural institutions just a block down Wilshire, like the Academy Museum and LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art).
If you'd like to see it for yourself, get there before its 6 p.m. closing time on Sunday, March 1. Until then, it's open every day at noon. (But it's not, as other outlets have reported, the 99 Cents Only store building at Fairfax and 6th Street. It's in the store building that faces Wilshire, with an entrance off Orange Street between Fairfax and Crescent Heights.)
What will happen after 99CENT cashes out for good? The entire site, consisting of multiple buildings, has a new owner who plans to develop it. Some work has already started.
I hope they screw some new light bulbs back into the roof of Johnie's, which has been dark for far too long.
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