Actually, the Dainty Dairy has been no more since late last year, but it was only last week that I found out.
The Dainty Dairy was my local.
For 31 years we lived two blocks further up Stuart St, and my shop was one block below.
I was always in there.
The Dainty Dairy was a quintessential Dunedin corner dairy, except it wasn't quite on the corner.
It was a colossus of commerce when I first went there in the '60s, fed by five schools, though we were told the pupils of the so-called most posh (Otago Girls' High) were banned from walking down Stuart St in case they toilet-seat-caught something from the so-called least posh (King Edward Tech).
Lunch time was chaos, you fought for position, tempers were lost.
A couple were in charge then, the woman a most memorable human, tough but fair.
Great stories, great life philosophies.
She knew more about schoolkids than most teachers, but then again, when they are effectively trying to steal from your pocket, you get to know them pretty well.
I can't remember her name but her husband was called Jim.
They used to give each other Christmas presents they wanted themselves.
The trade-offs were hilarious.
She got binoculars one year, so she gave him a radiogram.
The next owners were brothers, physically similar, but with quite different personalities.
One was a Real Kiwi Joker, the other Dainty.
It was early marriage days then and I was still at that pesky stage of having to impress.
One morning, my wife announced she was tamponless and wondered how she could possibly get to the dairy for replenishment.
It was the mid-1970s, and the page in Encyclopaedia Britannica on men buying tampons for women was bare.
But impressing was paramount, so I scampered off to the Dainty Dairy like an eager little rabbit, found the pink packet, and advanced on the counter.
But the sociological enormity of what I was carrying bowed my back with every step until by the time I reached the counter, only my tiny wobbling hand clutching Carefree's finest was visible.
Real Kiwi Joker brother leaned over the counter and looked down at me on the floor with a grinning leer.
"Who'd be born a woman!" he said.
So I became a man at the Dainty Dairy, I owe them that.
Then came a slow decline, common to all Dunedin dairies in the '80s.
I stopped buying instant noodles for $1.22 on my way home knowing I could buy them for 39c at New World.
The Dainty Dairy began to resemble one of those little stores you find in Rarotonga, just the bare essentials; how do the owners survive?
A man called Leslie, who now runs dog kennels, put in a bench outside.
The council ordered it taken down and put up a different way.
He did.
Dunedin is a fine city for benches.
Then there was a woman who greeted you like family when you went in and always ordered what you asked for if she didn't have it in stock.
Lovely.
Near the end, the Dainty Dairy was surely surviving only through cigarette sales, and then final owners, Moreen and Pandaram, banned the sale of tobacco altogether.
They won a national health award for that, the first retailer to be so honoured.
They also brought in Indian takeaways.
Bravo.
The best of our beaten mayoral candidates at the last election announced on the Facebook blog site Someone Re-Open The Dainty Dairy that he had particularly enjoyed the Not For Retail Sale ice cream.
The Dainty Dairy is empty and desolate now.
Inside there is only one tiny sign left on the walls, for stamps.
It looks like absolutely nothing, all the colours have gone.
I doubt if anyone will resurrect it in the Settlers Museum next to the Century Theatre Ticket Box, but the city's decision-makers have done a lot worse.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
