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| courtesy of C. Starr |
If the 7-Eleven isn't even open yet, for whom is this sign intended? And is anyone actually going as a 7-Eleven for Halloween? Or does 7-11 now make custom costumes for customers?
I think we may have a Spell-Check problem here. Costumer is an actual word, and I know a couple accomplished costumers right here in the neighborhood.
And did you know that 7-Eleven was the originator of the convenience store concept? It says so right here:
7 comments:
I find this rather questionable given that grocery stores were closed because of blue laws.
You couldn't buy groceries on Sunday in NYC in 1927? Where did you hear that?
IIRC when I was a small child (late'40s, early '50s) most stores were closed on Sundays. My mother would occasionally prevail on the corner candy store to do her a favor and sell her a quart of milk (which they stocked for their own use) on a Sunday, if she ran out. It must have been even worse in the '20s.
Bob is right as usual. NY had pretty strict blue laws up through the 1970s. Growing up on LI in the sixties the only things open were the stationery store, which sold the Sunday papers (It was called the Sunday News back then, and the comics had Dick Tracy on the front and Dondi on the back) and the bakery, which sold milk.
So you are willing to concede to a certain Joe Thompson of Dallas, TX the creation of the "convenience store" concept? The Blue Laws as I understood were about selling certain things, meaning somewhere (the Lower East Side where there were tons of Jews?) someone was selling staples on Sunday.
I'm not ready to give up on NYC until Montrose Morris settles it for once and for all.
The LES would have been pretty far to go for a quart of milk :-)
FWIW, I lived in a largely Jewish (albeit non-orthodox) neighborhood (Forest Hills, Queens) but most stores were closed on Sunday.
From Wikipedia (so you know it's true): The first chain convenience store in the United States was opened in Dallas, Texas in 1927 by the Southland Ice Company, which eventually became 7-Eleven, the largest convenience store chain.[24] In 1939,[25] a dairy owner named J.J. Lawson started a store at his dairy plant near Akron, Ohio, to sell his milk. The Lawson's Milk Company grew to a chain of stores, primarily in Ohio.[25] Circle K, another large company-owned convenience store chain, was founded in 1951. Since that time many different convenience store brands have developed, and their stores may either be corporate-owned or franchises.
Note the word "chain" - we always had bodegas, or delis, as they used to be know, which were open on Sundays in NY (and now that I think about it we did have Mormon's Delicatessen on LI - delis were traditionally German or Jewish).
We still do. We don't need any franchise chain characterless purveyor of Slurpees and other unhealthy items here in NYC, thank you.
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