Counter Culture, a little vintage store that started out in Deep Ellum, also wins the award for Best Expansion. This spring, CC opened a second shop at Mockingbird Station--this one's a little more upscale, with a boutique-y feel--and we couldn't be happier. Not that we don't like the Deep Ellum version; we do, really. But sometimes MockSta is more convenient. And sometimes, what takes us so high can also bring us way down. The thrift-store vibe at the original store gets us 43 kinds of excited--the possibilities of the search, the joy of the unknown--but there are times when that same euphoria turns dark. The racks and racks of color-coded T-shirts, the trinkets, the jeans?sometimes it's just too overwhelming. There's good stuff there; we just know it. But what if someone else gets it first? What if we're not fast enough? What if they don't have our size? Clutch the pearls, we need a sarsaparilla.