Philly Pretzels
It’s surprising to me how rarely you see soft pretzels around here. Growing up in the suburbs of Philly, most stores usually had soft pretzels readily available. My dad would frequently buy us one at Bound’s beer distributor. Wawa had them all the time.
The newsstand at city line had them, lottery tickets and I think cigarettes and obviously newspapers. When I went to the eye hospital, we got the bus from there and I often bought a pretzel from him. I feel like the guy’s name that worked there was Jack. The newsstand was right at the stop for the 66 bus, which we took down to the El to get into center city. My Nan went with me when I was a kid to Will’s Eye Hospital, and she never drove in her life, so it was walk and public transportation. She shopped in the five and dimes in the city too.
By the time you got into center city Philly, you could find pretzels any place. There was almost always someone selling them on the street. Hell, I remember my dad driving to the zoo or something, along the busy roads there would be someone selling them at red lights in the road. People selling food on the street probably wouldn’t fly these days.
It just surprises me that Turkey Hill here in Mount Joy only has them half of the time I go in there. It seems to me like something that would have little overhead and take up little space, but an impulse buy. I guess people up here have different tastes.