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

[Victor Steinbok]

Getting outside of Cambridge, I just confirmed my recollection that
there is a Winship Spa at the corner of Washington Street and Winship in
Brighton.

http://goo.gl/g4rLK

Again, I had a clear visual memory of it, but it never occurred to me to
connect it until now. It's a convenience store AND sub shop.

     VS-)

On 3/1/2011 10:47 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> 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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