At around 2:47 in this video Big Bird mentions a package store (near the Count’s mansion). Around here, “package store” is a euphemism for liquor store (and is identified by a big red dot). So is that what Big Bird is talking about, or die6s he mean something less…slummy?
"die6s’, of course, means “does”, but I can’t edit hecause stupid Discourse.
Since the target audience for the show is little kids, I’m going to have to say it’s a store where you can post and receive packages or get your stuff packaged, i.e. a package store.
This is a street that has a Fix-It Shop, so I’m going to assume a Package Store is their name for the Post Office.
“Package store” only means “liquor store” in a few states. Sesame is filmed and takes place in New York, which isn’t one of them.
I’d assume a FedEx or UPS site, but were those really a thing at the time?
I just have to say I LOVE this question, and I’m imagining all the fun Dopers could have, speculating on which characters go there most, and what are the biggest selling items!
Bert’s probably there a lot (but if you caught him going in, he’d claim to be buying a lottery ticket).
Given how much white is in Mr. Rogers’s hair, I’d say the segment in the OP’s pic was filmed well after Fed-Ex was incorporated (1971), and even after Mailboxes Etc. began operations (1980).
Right, the companies themselves have been around for a while, but did they have directly customer-facing retail stores? When I was a kid, in Cleveland at least, only companies shipped anything via FedEx or UPS, and the site was a “depot”, not a “store”.
We definitely never called liquor stores “package stores” in NYC. I don’t even know what it would mean – maybe a bodega? Not a UPS store in 1981.
Kinko’s ,which became Fed Ex , has been around since the 70s and UPS stores were originally Mailboxes Etc ,which always had customer facing stores and has been around since 1980 - but I’ve lived in NYC my entire life and have never heard anything called a “package store”
Again, as a New Yorker, we just don’t refer to liquor stores as package stores.
Package store is pretty much only used in New England and the Carolinas. Sesame Street is set in NYC and Mr Rogers Neighborhood is in Latrobe PA, so they wouldn’t use the term there.
It sounds to me like the actor is ad-libbing at that point. Maybe he wasn’t a New York native. I don’t think it’s that strange to refer to a liquor store, even though it’s a kids’ show. He is talking about the shops you see in the neighbourhood, as landmarks. If there is a liquor store on their street, a kid will probably know what it is.
Another (lifetime) NY’er chiming in, I didn’t hear that term till my 30’s, and still find it strange when I do. In early childhood I think I would have taken it as a general store where one would carry out a package (the stuff one buys), perhaps a post office, but doubtful.
It is possible that the adults knew full well what it meant and snuck that in, but it went over my head if so. Also a grown up going to a liquor store wouldn’t seem to raise an eyebrown to my kid brain.
Caroll Spinney was born and raised in Massachusetts; he seems to have spent most of his life between there and Connecticut.
(edit: I’m not from anywhere around there (born in Maryland), and it’s not a term I know. But if it was not common in New York Doper experience by the 70s/80s, that may be a dating thing with it falling out of fashion, not being obscure. Searching their archives, the New York Times and the Daily News used the phrase extensively from the '30s through at least the '60s. So it would not have been uncommon everywhere—see also the Metropolitan Package Store Association, which claims to have been “Advocating for NYS Package Stores Since 1942”)
I’m from Maryland and the term we used was “package(d) goods store.”
And if Oscar the Grouch isn’t a black-out drunk, I’ll rescind my Orphan Annie Decoder Pin.
This handbook says
If you have an off-premises liquor license, commonly called a package store license, you can sell liquor, wine and cider “to go”. The license is identified with an “L” before the serial number.
Maybe that’s how the license is commonly referred to by those in the industry, or maybe that’s what the stores are commonly called in some other parts of NY, but “package store” is definitely not used in NYC and hasn’t been as far back as the 70s.