Convenience Stores you have known and loved.

from other thread.

And seriously, tell us why you're so in love with these places. "Favorite Convenience Store" to me sounds like "Favorite Gas Station". I mean, how much more lovable can one store be over the next?

because of the name

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3121/2482338446_cc29529208.jpg

(nb i have never actually BEEN to this place b/c it's in a part of town i loathe, but seriously, BOOTY WINE)

Dale Market, Stanton, 1970-1975 -- candy, candy and more candy, only one street to cross, parents would let this 6-year-old walk to it alone

Wilson's Grocery, Aberdeen, 1975-1981 - comics

Jr. Food Mart aka Jr. Mood Fart, Amory, 1980-1984 - late night video games & junk food

Just to expand a bit on my Store 24 post:

Prior to the Store 24 opening in Charlestown, most of my experience with convenience stores centered around the little corner store at the end of my block that was owned by some townies.

So going to that Store 24 for the first time was like entering into some futuristic universe that I never knew existed.

the little bodega three blocks away that has this old PR dude working mornings who's always singing — they also sold really good beer until recently, I think they lost their license.

Store 24 is one of the defining locations of my freshman year of college. I think we spent about $500 in there on Pop Tarts alone.

A Street Market in Hull was a big one for me. Now it is a Tedeschi Food Shop. Glad to see that A Street Liquors is still there!

cumbies was always good as well as Xtra MArt and their 99 2 hot dog special at 3am.

Wawa is my favorite why because it sell subs.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=kum+%26+go

I was going to bring up Lawson's convenience stores, which were a northeast Ohio staple throughout my junior high, high school and early college years. In junior high I worked summers at a local nursery, and after hours of difficult outdoor nursery work my friends and I would go to Lawson's and spend countless $$$ on candy, chips, deli sandwiches and soft drinks. In college, they were the place nearest the campus that sold cheap beer. (12-packs of shit like Schaffer's and Red, White and Blue were less than $8 at the time.)

Halfway through my freshman year of college, Lawson's stores all became Dairy Marts as the result of a sale the year before. I was Googling to find an old Lawson logo only to discover that, not only does the Lawson brand actually still exist, it is the second-largest convenience store chain in Japan.

my parents have these everywhere where they are in upstate new york and i like them a lot:

http://longlakeny.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/2010-february-stewarts-challenge-and-indian-lake-long-lake-001.jpg

i do always like cumberland farms though. and, like i said, been going to them for decades. there was one in my town growing up, there was one on marthas vineyard and there is one right down the street from me now. in philly i spent a whole lot of time at wawa. and i worked in a corner coffee/food place off of rittenhouse square that was right across the street from a wawa for years. got to know the wawa people pretty well. they didn't like that we were there! competitive folks.

there was a store called the village market which has been in my hometown for as long as i can remember and has never changed. last time i went in there, the woman working the checkout counter was this girl who was in my grade in elementary and jr high school and into high school. freshman year she attained the honor of being the first student in our class to have a kid and then bailed on high school as soon as she hit 16. she lived in a house with her family literally two doors behind the market and from what i've heard she still lives there. what i remember about her most is this foggy memory of my first grade teacher kind of getting into it with this girl's mom, i think it had something to do with the mother basically being kind of an awful influence. anyway, decent soda selection.

My mom once owned a convenience store though it wasn't really a neighborhood shop. Just a small grocery with gas pumps out front. We had three aisles of canned food, vegetable oil, laundry detergent, bread, Cokes. There was a cooler with ice cream sandwiches at the front and in the back, we had the milk and juice. Near the register, we sold candy (going rate for a package of M&Ms was 35¢. Now I see them on sale at Kroger for a 89¢.)

We had a big meat counter, standing about five feet high, and I learned how to read the newspaper up on top of it. I'd sit there with my chin on my hands, facing down the Coke aisle and move out of the way when someone wanted some sliced ham. It's where I studied Bloom County, the Far Side and Peanuts as well as those weird strips like Benchley that came and went.

We also had a little magazine rack where I studied Hit Parader and Circus magazines. Creem was even still in business at the time. There was one magazine that had popular song lyrics in the back, and it was always a big deal when the copyrights switched to the new year in March or April, like finally, 1984 has its own legs.

I still don't get it, but Mom sold porn like Playboy and Penthouse under the counter. I think Hustler was down there too, next to the paper brown bags. How we didn't get picketed in rural smalltown Arkansas, I have no idea. I never looked, believe it or not, but I do remember the excitement when the Vanessa Williams issue came out with her and George Burns on the cover.

The gas was sold out of those old pumps with the rotary numbers. We pretty much took everyone's word on how much they pumped though every once in awhile, someone would arouse enough suspicion for Mom to get the binoculars out and see for herself.

We sold cigarettes for 90¢ a pack. Mom and this mute guy once went through this elaborate kubuki with him pointing at the shelving rack, and Mom going "this one? this one?" before he finally just came around the corner and picked it out himself. Mom hated smoking and eventually took down all the advertising, 15 years ahead of her time.

The store's name was ___'s Corner, with her name. We sold Texaco gasoline. One summer, my best friend and I ran a firework stand off to the side. I used to take styrofoam plates from the meat counter and make sailboats for the big puddle out by the highway. We stored boats in the back for all the Little Rock and Memphis tourists. Some days I'd go out there and pilot each one.

Old retired men used to come in and sit down on this little bench chair squeezed between the register and the meat counter. They'd talk with Mom all day and sometimes help bag the groceries. One guy who always wore a hat like Jed Clampit gave us a hound dog who we named Copper. Another guy from up north secretly told my mom he had donated his body to science. (She in turn secretly told me. I don't know why it's a big secret.)

The store's phone number was the same as our home number, so even at night watching TV, if the phone rang, we'd answer "___'s Corner." Most of the time it was one of those boat owners coming off the lake too late and trying to get his boat back into its shed.

One spring, a tornado took out one of the two bridges that crossed the lake and the tourism season that summer pretty much died. No one wanted to drive all the way up to the lake just make a 60-mile roundtrip to get two miles. A lot of other things happened too and we lost the store.

No hard feelings though. I still stop in every once in awhile on those rare times I go up there. It's all the same, but different. The candy area is all different, they don't sell Texaco anymore. I think instead of a meat cooler, they sell cheap pizzas. I can't confirm it, but I'm pretty sure they don't sell Penthouse anymore.

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/9704/screenshot20101214at122.png

I used to climb to the top of those pine trees on the left and then spend all my time wondering how I was going to get down.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3313/3587612629_9ea0431333.jpg

the best

http://bobbyrozzell.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/quiktrip.png

i liked that story, PP

Circle K is alright because they're scattered all over Maine since Irving bought them, the coffee isn't too bad. I prefer going to gas stations that serve Green Mountain Coffee because I'm obsessed with Keurig one cup coffee makers so everything else tastes inferior and weak to me now.

We grew up with a corner shop (milk bar) across the street from our house (similar to a convenience store except that they didn't sell alcohol.) The owners for a long time was this weird couple, a grouchy old man and his wife and their 30-something year old son, who everyone said was a pedophile.

There was a better milk bar up the lane, they had a way better mix of lollies so if that's all we wanted then we got on our bikes and rode up the lane. But if you had to get milk or bread or something for Mum, you had to go across the street

All the local kids only went into the store in groups, if we went in there at all. It was creepy. They sold videos as well as some groceries and they had a back room for pornos. That's where everyone said the pedophile son hung out.

I remember one time my sister and I went over there to buy some milk or something and the son was behind the counter and the Mum & Dad were nowhere to be seen and so we just turned around and left. He was SO creepy.

Thankfully they ended up selling the shop and my Dad's league bowling buddy bought it. He was a big smiley man and whenever we went in there he would greet us in this big booming voice and tell joeks and he was a really nice man, I liked him.

really stoked that my childhood convenience store is still standing:
http://i55.tinypic.com/238u3a.jpg

i had a nice little streak in the 6th grade where i bought a pack of bubble-yum for $0.50, then re-sold each of the 5 pieces to kids around school and on the bus for $0.25 each. i started out with one pack and then took that $1.25 and bought 2 more packs that i turned into $2.50 the next day and on and on until i was biking up to the convenience store with $30 and cleaning them out almost every day after school.

then iirc i got called into the principal's office and got told to cut it out. still probably the most profitable thing ive ever spent time on in my entire life.

also: the sold slush puppies

great post, PP

When I lived in Jersey I remember having arguments about the relative merits of WaWa vs. Quik-Chek, which seems silly to me now because neither have any relative merits and I lived in Jersey.

I went to 7-11 about a half hour ago tbh!!

My elementary school was kiddie corner from the Broad Branch Market, which I think has been revamped because I don't remember it looking anywhere near this quaint:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3497/3897976987_c581174318.jpg

Remember buying nerds, atomic warheads, jolly ranchers, etc.

wonderful!

When I lived in Jersey I remember having arguments about the relative merits of WaWa vs. Quik-Chek, which seems silly to me now because neither have any relative merits and I lived in Jersey.

― mandatorily joined parties (Hurting 2), Tuesday, December 14, 2010 11:35 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wawa has tons of merits--no-fee atms! also iirc they treat their employees pretty well comparatively

I haven't been to a convenience store in a long while. I pay at the pump when I buy gas, get beer at the liquor or grocery store, and candy or batteries from Walgreens.

Reading this thread makes me want to go down the hill to get an oil can of Stag, some Sex incense and maybe a lighter with a waterfall on it. Do they still sell mini-thins? Cuz Walgreens only has that 5-hour stuff.

When I was in college I used to pronounce "Store 24" as "Store Two Four" to be cool.

My dad's: Dell's Milk, at the corner of College and Dovercourt in Toronto, from approximately early '60s to early '70s. He'd let me work the till now and again. Don't have a picture handy that I can post.

wawa coffee and hoagies are the franchise's merits.

http://www.wawa.com/wawastore/data/default/images/catalog/large/Web_Wawa%20Yellow%20Towel.jpg

Krauszer's is kinda old school/hardcore Jersey ... not too many of them left (got squeezed out by Wawa, QuikChek and countless Apu-type convenience stores), but there are a few left in central/north NJ (i am told that the one off-campus for Rutgers is still around, and there's another across the street from Hudson County Superior Court in Jersey City [though it's pretty nasty]):

http://pics3.city-data.com/businesses/p/5/6/3/9/8415639.JPG

Yes, what every convenience store needs: brick walls, wooden fences and shady trees. You could have three private parties going on around there at once!

is that an actual foot locker or just some place where they keep feet in a locker?