That explains it. You probably have no idea how fortunate you are.

I'll be the first to admit to being fortunate, but I don't think that makes me a rarity here.

Fair enough. For some reason Wierd Al's old movie UHF comes to mind, where he has a fake ad for a store that specializes in just spatulas. I bet San Fran and New York have one of these, too. ;-)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2XbCWmY0eqY

Meanwhile, the rest of us have to buy spatulas from non-specialty stores like an idiot. Maybe it's time for someone to bring Spatula City into the internet age.

You cannot cook anything decent that way. At bare minimum, buy a decent spatula from your local spatula store.

A benefit of larger cities is more specialized stores, for sure.

Locally to me in London, are The Spice Shop (just spices and spice mixes) and Clerkenwell Screws (comprehensive stock of nuts and bolts in all thread pitches, people behind the counter with 50+ years of experience recognizing and sourcing screws).