Want to Meet Charles Barkley? Go to the City Avenue Target

Apparently the easiest way to see a celebrity in Philadelphia is to shop there.

Charles Barkley in a Target

Cory Goldman with his son, Eli, and Charles Barkley at the City Ave. Target.

Cory Goldman was shopping at the City Avenue Target with his wife, Jen, and their 5-month-old son, Eli, when he saw someone he knew in the pharmacy department: Charles Barkley.

He didn’t want to approach the Hall of Fame basketball player, but when they ended up directly behind Barkley in the checkout line, Jen decided she wanted a photo of her son with Barkley. Sir Charles said he’d take a photo, and Cory ended up jumping into the picture, too.

“He was the nicest!” says Jen Rosenstock Goldman, a Philadelphia public school teacher when she’s not chatting up Sixers legends. “He was talking to an older woman in front of him about her grandson playing ball. He was just a normal guy buying toothpaste and Diet Coke.”

And the Goldmans weren’t the only ones to see Barkley in the City Avenue Target. A scan of social media shows that if you want to meet Charles Barkley, you might as well just camp out there.

#barkley

A post shared by Babyd Oliver (@msbabyd3) on

Yes, that’s 6 ABC anchor Tamala Edwards with Sir Charles in the City Avenue Target. People don’t always stop him for photos, but they do see him in the Target all the time.

https://twitter.com/Gabby_Argo/status/370536165054881792

And these are just the ones where Barkley was sighted at the City Avenue Target! Barkley has also been spotted at multiple Target locations around the United States, in places like Alabama (he went to college at Auburn), Arizona (he played for the Suns) and New Jersey (um, it’s close to Philadelphia).

But does he tire of it? According to Rosenstock Goldman, he couldn’t have treated his fellow customers any better. “He was so friendly and really, really gracious toward all of the people that approached him,” she says. “He had to have been stopped at least 10 times on the way out of the store, and he didn’t appear annoyed once.”

The only question that remains, then: Why hasn’t Target picked up Barkley as a spokesperson? He walks the walk — surely he could talk the talk, too. Target’s ads are fine, I guess, but imagine how much better they’d be with Charles Barkley in them.