Gold Ribbon Grocers

 is a store on Jury St, near Jury Street Metro Station, West of Megaton.

Armory/Base
This is a very good place to make up as a base. The bookshelf can hold 4 L1A1's or sniper rifles per segment and all the shelves make it a good place to stock weapons and armor. You can also mine the parking lot and streets with ease.

Unmarked quest: Rube's Gold Ribbon
The entire store appears to have been set up as a Rube Goldberg machine, using pressure plates, a long row of boxes, several traps and explosions. Your reward for setting off the Machine is a few missiles, a mini nuke, Nikola Tesla and You and Tumblers Today. For this reason it is suggested not to grab the many boxes of Sugar Bombs and Abraxo Cleaner until after the Machine has completed.

Setup
Follow the arrows to a...
 * Pressure plate triggering log-with-skull
 * ...triggering a long line of boxes
 * ...triggering a Pressure Plate
 * ...triggering a Pitching Machine
 * ...that eventually pushes down a fire extinguisher on a Bear Trap
 * ...which explosion makes a Grenade Bouquet fall down and explode
 * ...setting fire to the gas cloud, which will seek its way to the second floor
 * ...shaking a kid's slider (!) to drop its contents down the hole!

Activating the mechanism after "destroying" the setup

 * If you went ahead and disarmed all the traps before picking up your missile and reading material, you can simulate the explosion simply by shooting the gas cylinder lying next to the bear trap - you might want to stand back though. Following the ensuing explosion the books and missile will fall out of the hole in the roof on the other side of the room.
 * Another alternative is to shoot the end of the slide with a reasonably high-impact weapon, such as a hunting rifle. This seems to work in cases where the items -almost- make it down the slide.
 * Alternately, you can gain the reward by igniting the gas cloud (for instance by shooting the generator until it explodes) in the back.
 * The gas cloud may also be easily ignited using either a laser pistol or rifle (one shot into the gas cloud lights it up, make sure of where you're standing).
 * If all else fails, the slide can be activated with a Frag Grenade.
 * If you enter the store with a Shishkebab holster it, or you will ignite the gas in the room.

Light Step
Players with the "Light Step" perk can't set off the initial pressure plate. However, you can use the method above to get the reward - or if you want to see the whole machine in action, simply grab and release the skull log. Or you can pick up the paperweight (any item will do, i used pre war money to set it off) on the counter next to the cash register and just drop it on the pressure plate.

If you do not get the full show and you have Autosave on, try reloading the Autosave where you came in the front door. This has been seen to set off the chain reaction, for unknown reasons.

Activating the slide with only a grenade
You do not have to activate the machine to access the slide and its goodies. In fact you can get in to the second level of the grocery store in 3 simple steps. 1) stack FOUR milk crates, in any formation, on to the three broken refrigerators that are by the counter. It doesn't matter how you organize them up there yet, just put them there for step 3. 2) Jump up on the edge of the counter and position yourself so that you are facing the hole in the ceiling that is directly between the counters edge and the three broken refrigerators that have your crates on them. 3) Now jump from the counter to the top edge of the three broken refrigerators and simply stack all four crates on the corner of the left fridge so that they stack up to the whole in the ceiling. You should now be able to jump up on the crates and access the top floor. There are invisible walls around the slide that will keep you from walking directly up to it but you can throw a grenade under it and watch its contentments spill out to the floor below. Note: if you do not ignite the gas in the room your grenade will ignite it and you'll take a little fire damage. This method should only be used if you're either curious about getting up to the top floor or if the initial triggering of the machine failed to yield your skill books or all the rockets. Sometimes they'll get stuck on the bottom of the slide and require a little push from an explosive.

Reward

 * Nikola Tesla and You
 * Tumblers Today
 * 3 Missiles
 * Mini-Nuke

YouTube Videos
Demonstration: -gmMKjtCxAw

Bugs

 * This doesn't seem to work on PS3. The fireball never makes it to the SW corner, but if you exit the store and reenter the skeleton falls with all the goodies.  You may have to use some frag grenades to expose all of the items.
 * Loading from inside the store will often cause the all the boxes to instantly fall as soon as any are touched, requiring the player to step on the next pressure plate to continue.
 * After setting off the trap, bright lights have been seen flashing on the outside windows. It does not seem like a bug but is classified as so.
 * Some times the mini-nuke wont fall. Just reload and try again.
 * If you walk into the ram it will injure you and if you are low on health, kill you.
 * Occasionally one or both of the books will get stuck, if this happens look straight up the hole toward the end of the slide above you, you can usually jump and grab the books if they are partly hanging off the end. If you are going to toss a grenade, try and land it behind the slide (if the initial explosion wasn't set off) or on top of it if there are just one or two stuck items.