Hm, I just read the article, and it says “variety store” is the Toronto term. A lot of the older shops will have a (weathered) sign saying “variety”, but I’ve never heard anyone say they’re going to the variety store. “There’s a variety on the corner. Do you mind grabbing some orange juice from the variety on the way over?” – those scan.
Usually they’re called convenience stores, corner shops, or else Beck’s or Mac’s Milk, no matter the actual name. This confuses out-of-towners, since there haven’t been any Beck’s in a very long time, although Mac’s are still around.
I was also surprised at how much article space was used up calling them an urban phenomena. It has to be a very small town indeed in Ontario to not have one. Often a small town will have a convenience store and a farmers market and/or butcher and/or bakery, but no supermarket. You have to drive to the next largest town for that.
Except that the meaning of “faggot” as a bundle of firewood existed long before American use of the term to describe gay men, and there’s an obvious association between cigs and firewood. Whereas I never heard anyone refer to corner shops in Britain as “Paki shops” until well after a proportion of them ended up being run by Pakistanis, and never as “package shops”.
I can’t speak for American use, but over here the association is inarguably a racist one.
Yeah, and the word “package” existed long before the British came up with a racist term for Pakistanis. Sorry, but your association of our use of “packie” with “paki” is, to put it bluntly, completely wrong.
I’m not sure he’s talking about the apparent US usage of packie or package store to mean corner store, just stating that in the UK “paki store” is undeniably a racist term for corner stores.
Maybe it’s just an older person’s phrase, but I still hear it.
I haven’t heard Beck’s before. Presumably short for Becker’s, the actual name of the (extinct) chain. They are apparently now owned by Couche-Tard (roughly Night Owl).
& @gadgetgirl02 - I’m with tek here. Its “variety store” not just “variety”. If someone said they were going to the variety I’d probably blurt out “store or show?” at them because variety by itself is incomplete!
And we never called Macs or Beckers by those names, they were always just variety stores. I only know Macs because some kids families got the plastic jugs of milk there. Whereas we got the regular bags of milk at the grocery store.
Maybe it’s a groups-within-a region thing? I’m from the sticks originally (and let’s see how that scans ), not Toronto proper. I can mostly pass now, but every once in a while something comes up.
I could list the names of people I know who cheerfully call it a Becker’s or a Mac’s even when we’re standing right beside the shop and it’s clearly been an independent since at least the 1960s.
I’d actually argue that a bodega is different from a corner store. The former has more of a concentration of alcohol, the latter more of a grocery and might even contain a deli.
Both definitely sell lottery tickets, but the former is where you go to get some chips and a drink, the latter is where you go if you’re looking for a sandwich.
I’d totally forgotten about ‘tuck shops’! That usually described the canteens we had at primary and high schools, though, rather than corner/convenience stores.
“In much of New England, especially Massachusetts… A packie can refer to a liquor store, but can also refer to a convenience store…”
Very rarely do I hear anyone in the Boston area call a liquor-free convenience store a ‘packie’. A packie is a package store, a place to get alcohol. If it’s just a corner store, it’s just called a corner store, unless it’s been there for a long time, in which case it’s a “spa”. I don’t know why old convenience stores around here are called spas. But if you’re over 50 and a local, going down to the spa to get some tonic is a legit way to say you’re going to buy some Pepsi.
In Cincinnati, convenience stores with alcohol are very often called “pony kegs”.
I was once berated at a party for using the term “paddywagon” to refer to the van-type-thing cops put people into. I was told I was being racist towards Irish people.
), not Toronto proper. I can mostly pass now, but every once in a while something comes up.