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.
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