If you’re running late on holiday shopping, here’s one spot where you won’t have to fight the crowds. Gus’s Bait & Tackle is a long, narrow space filled with odd trash-or-treasure stuff like ceramic kitty soap dishes, novelty pencils, off-brand sweatpants, potholders, coloring books, stuffed animals, and more. Cheap. It’s a great place to buy kitsch or to find stocking-stuffers for your toddler, who doesn’t realize yet that there’s a difference between Pokemon and Pookeyman, or between Calvin Klein and Kelvin Cline.

Last items I bought there:
*fishing line to hang big framed pics ($1.99 for more yards of heavy-duty stuff than I could use without opening a museum).
*a 12-compartment tackle box for the odds-and-ends drawer in my kitchen ($2.99)

Where: Balboa, between 38th & 39th
How to spot it: off-scale drawing of a sea lion on the door
Why you’ll love it: the cheerful woman behind the counter, who’ll be as friendly to you as she is to the half-dozen fishermen lining up to buy stuff for their morning runs out to Ocean Beach–popular with the guys who supply fish to the Chinese restaurants along Balboa and Clement
Look for: framed photos of Gus with his grandkid, plus pics of dozens of regulars proudly displaying their catches

For more stuff to do in San Francisco’s Richmond District, see my other Richmond in the Richmond posts.