What do you call a convenience store?

One of the weird effects of chemo are the vivid dreams and meandering thoughts. Recently, I was thinking about a place about a block from my childhood house which was then an Open Pantry (it later became a restaurant and then a fraternal organization), where we would run for my dad's cigarettes, some extra milk, or, very rarely, candy or Tiger Beat for me. I don't know why I was remembering the Open Pantry. It was just a little convenience store. Then, today, Boing Boing is talking about what people call the store on the corner and I wondered what I called them. I know when I was still living in Sheboygan I called them mini-marts. Jumping forward to living in MN, I've noticed that they don't often exist without being attached to a gas station. What are they called here? Gas stations? SA? Super Americas? Holidays? We have a little store in my neighborhood, which is more like a grocery store because it includes a butcher and large foreign cheese selection and doesn't include a slurpee machine, lots of periodicals, or burritos and a microwave oven. We refer to it as the corner store. Calling these generic little shops, "the corner store", has served us well in other places, even outside the US, as people seem to know what we're talking about. So, I guess, that's what I call them now. Of course, nothing compares to a good NY bodega, which, to me, cannot be called a "corner store", because they often have an okay, cheap, quick, restaurant and seating area in addition to the grocery items.

Comments

[Tim]

You're right, all the stores you are talking about are connected to gas stations. I always just call them whatever the name of the gas station is.

[Shan]

Growing up we, too, called them by name (Stop 'n' Go, Holiday, SA). I still do. Or I'd call them a convenience store, more generically. In south Minneapolis we had s small store or two (not gas stations) on nearby corners and I did call those corner stores. But in Chicago we had bodegas, too.

[Christopher]

I've always just called them by the store name - Holiday, SA, White Hen, 7-11 - except those stores Shannon's referring to, which were "the corner stores" or "the stores" or - in my head - "the kinda dirty joint that might be selling drugs under the counter."