Bunghole Liquors

Bunghole Liquors has been selling beer, wine and spirits at 204 Derby Street since 1933, and its sign has been stopping visitors mid-sidewalk for about as long. A bunghole, for the record, is simply the hole in a barrel. The store's own account of the name is better: the building was a funeral home, its basement ran as a speakeasy during Prohibition, and regulars would "meet at the bunghole" in the same cellar where bodies were embalmed. When repeal came, a Polish priest in the owner's family suggested making it official. Nobody has turned up the paperwork, and nobody in Salem has stopped telling it. Beyond the bottles, the shop sells the name itself: Bunghole t-shirts, hats, glasses, keychains and corkscrews. A sister store opened in Peabody in 1995.