"package store"

[Your Name]

Responding to Frank Abate's observation that "package store" is a New
Englandism:

I grew up in Albany, NY, but I never heard this term until I went to grad school
in Ann Arbor, MI.

Maybe the word passed us by in the Hudson Valley.  New York lets you buy beer
and wine (except I think on Sunday mornings) in grocery stores/supermarkets, so
the stores that carry the hard stuff require a special license and are called
"liquor stores."
You can also go to a "Beverage Center," where prices are cheap and volume is
big, at least for beer and soda.

Ann Arbor also had the "Beer Depot," which claimed to be the first drive-through
beer store in the country (having no car, I almost always walked through). As I
recall, a similar store in adjacent Ypsilanti made the same claim.  Sort of like
claiming to be the "(fruit or vegetable)-capital" of the world. There's often
more than one!

I never heard "packy" in Ann Arbor, so maybe that is restricted, as Frank says.


Joe Pickett