There's generally something depressing about convenience stores. Maybe its the stale aroma of overheated coffee that seems to hang around them. Maybe it's all the junk food. I don't know. But by their very nature, they're not the sort of places where people hang out, talk, get to know one another. They're neither cozy nor imposing, just sort of sad. In big places like supermarkets and department stores, people browse. They see things they haven't seen before, comparison shop, plan their wardrobes or menus or whatever. In neighborhood corner stores, people hang out, sometimes all day, without even buying anything. But they socialize. Kids come in and out all day with their spare change and buy candy, comic books, the gallon of milk that their mom forgot to pick up at the supermarket. Convenience stores seem as though they only really exist for commuters in need of coffee, addicts in need of cigarettes, anybody in need of a lottery ticket, or drunks in need of a microwave burrito at 3:00 in the morning (as if that will somehow settle their alcohol-addled stomachs). They are one of the far-too-frequent signs that something is continuing to go wrong with society. Large testaments to the fact that people need crap, and they need it 24 hours a day. No one does his weekly shopping there. I’m convinced that most things one finds in a convenience store never actually get purchased, but are just props to cover up the fact that all of the store’s income comes from the sale of cigarettes, coffee and lottery tickets. There are items on some shelves that have sat on those shelves forever. Luckily, most of those items are non-perishable. A depressing place.