I didn’t get it until I lived in New York. In the middle of the country where I come from, the closest they have are gas stations. Which have a thing, but not the same thing.
I used to think the word “bodega” was a designer name. Boston’s Back Bay holds a store called Bodega that looks like an abandoned drug store; however, when you approach the vending machine inside, it slides open into a high-end shoe store where you may find Nike’s that haven’t been released yet. I used to live down that same block: where the corner bodega was a designer shoe store.
I moved to Astoria, Queens. The lights at the knock-off Seven Eleven down the block never went off. In a jones for sugar I wandered in to find a Mexican kitchen, seating in back, every juice, canned bean, candy, dry good to be desired. Coffee. Cigarettes. Toothbrushes. Flip flops. Homemade horchata. 24 hours a day. Cash only. All in one sliver of a room. It did not take me long to realize that this is what Seven Eleven is knocking off.
Then I moved to the East Village where all bodegas have at least one under-bathed cat lying around.
I could weasel us into a discussion about why a bag of licorice might cost a dollar less at one bodega from the next. Or we could stake claims on how many and which many are fronts for other activity. However, I feel compelled to talk about bodegas in the way only I feel versed, because they have become personal to me. Living downtown Manhattan, I walk most places that I go and I meander frequently. I’ve memorized the cleanest, friendliest, best breakfast offered bodegas and delis in every neighborhood I’ve loitered through.
I’m meandering. I enter the first corner store I see. I’m not hungry, but haven’t eaten and consider that I should. I look for a Rice Krispie or a bottle of coconut water. I leave empty handed because I know there’ll be another bodega on my path shortly. I’ll do this through 3 more bodegas before I realize just how long I’ve spent under the fluorescent lights opening and closing freezer doors, reading packages, retracting to isles to put chosen snacks back. Sometimes I end up at home empty handed. A bodega is a place I can be simply human and harmlessly OCD.
Bodega culture is that there is an inexpensive, delicious meal waiting for you at the corner of your block 24 hours a day. It is Miguel behind the counter of Zaragoza on Avenue A who will trade you the 3rd-to-best tacos you’ve had in your life for your CD, or for the extra coffee you bought and don’t need. It is the cat with two different colored eyes who has no shame for how dirty he is and expects your affection anyway. It is light when the streets are dark.