"spa" = 'neighborhood grocery store', aka 'convenience store'?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/1/2011 10:08 AM, Baker, John wrote:
>        I lived in eastern Massachusetts for most of the 1980s and 1990s
>and had no idea that "spa" meant a grocery.  I was somewhat familiar
>with the Montrose Spa but supposed the name to be idiosyncratic.

It was clear that the Oxford Spa (Oxford St., at the corner of either
Sacramento or Garfield, Cambridge) was only a grocery in the 1950s
and 1960s, when I sometimes bought sundries there -- but never on
Sundays could I buy certain items, as I was told by the
proprietors.  Because of its wares and Sunday restrictions, and
because the Montrose Spa was also nearby, I did associate "spa" with
grocery, not Belgium.

And I now see that there is a successor "Oxford Spa"!  A cafe, at 102
Oxford St., not far from the former  establishment but from the
picture not the exact old location.  I'll have to drop in.  And
revisit the "Love Story" laundromat and laundry, which I used at the
time but was ignorant of its fame.

Joel

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