New documentary on Plaza's Five & Dime offers snapshot of an older Santa Fe

Nov. 27—Many longtime Santa Fe residents might say the Five & Dime General Store on the Plaza is one of the last downtown businesses that hearkens back to the old days, when you could wander into that spot on San Francisco Street and buy anything you wanted or needed — and things you didn't need.

A scaled-down version of the sprawling Woolworth's store located there for decades, the Five & Dime is celebrating 25 years of business with a screening of a new documentary.

The Santa Fe retailer spawned a small empire of eight more stores around the country.

The 65-minute film spotlighting its history, A Five and Dime Story, screens at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Center for Contemporary Arts' Cinematheque. Some of the filmmakers, as well as Santa Feans Earl and Deborah Potter, who spearheaded the store's opening, will hold a question-and-answer session with the audience.

The film includes archival footage and photos, as well as interviews with the Potters and others involved with the store. It details efforts to ensure downtown Santa Fe didn't entirely lose a retail treasure.

Woolworth's opened in a much larger space in the building in 1935 and closed by the end of 1997. The Potters and others worked to scale the store down to a sixth of its original 30,000 square feet and focus on carrying items that sold well.

Since then, it has become known as the go-to place for travel toiletries, paper products, trinkets, magnets, blankets, snacks, toys and candy items you don't find just anywhere anymore — like paddle balls, slingshots and Pez.

And, of course, its famous Frito pies.

"People feel at home in the store because there's something there that they can relate to, something they've seen before or read about or recall from their past, or maybe something their parents told them about," Earl Potter said in an interview.

The longtime lawyer moved to Santa Fe in 1970.

His wife, Deborah Potter, a retired teacher who moved to Santa Fe in the late '70s, said people still like the idea of small-town five-and-dime stores, remembering back "when we were little kids and our parents gave us a dollar; we could go in there and spend an hour and a half and buy stuff."

The film, directed by Sarah Kanafani of Rio Rancho, looks at the history of five-and-dime stores, including Woolworth's, and how they served the public's need for affordable everyday items and novelties.

When Woolworth's announced it was closing its Santa Fe store, the Potters began imagining ways to save it. They built a coalition of supporters, arranged to buy a third of the property and hired a longtime Woolworth's employee, Mike Collins, to take over as manager.

Collins says in the film the smaller space would help make the store profitable; he figured about 25% of everything sold at Woolworth's in Santa Fe generated 80% of its revenues.

According to the film, the new store generated more profit in its first year than Woolworth's had in the past.

The store's success led the Potters and other members of their business — known as UTBW, which stands for Used To Be Woolworth's — to open eight other stores around the U.S. with similar styles, themes and offerings, including shops in San Diego; San Antonio, Texas; and Savannah, Ga.

Each store stocks and sells items that speak to its community.

Earl Potter, who is the documentary's executive producer, said UTBW is looking at a few other cities around New Mexico where it could open more stores.

Kanafani is known for her 2019 documentary On This Hallowed Ground: Vietnam Memorial Born From Tragedy, about the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Angel Fire. She said in an interview the five-and-dime stores remind us of our best childhood times.

"It brings us back to those happy memories, to road trips across the country with family, where you go in [to these stores] with your grandparents, and they start telling you a story about this toy or that or what they used to buy and use there," Kanafani said.

The five-and-dime stores, she added, provide "a piece of history you can continue to hold on to."