What is with New Yorkers and bodegas? I don't get the obsession. I understand that it's nice to have a place you can get stuff you need around the corner, but if you transplant one of these stores to literally anywhere else it's a dingy overpriced shop with low selection. I get it as a need, but not as a thing to get weird about. What am I missing?
The NY Bodega is the US answer to the corner grocery store that exists in... most of the developed world, honestly.
In USAland, if you want groceries, you get in your crew cab pickup truck and take a highway 15-45 minutes (depending on traffic)to the local supercenter located behind the mile-wide city-mandated parking lot to buy a week's worth of supplies. In most of the world, you pop into your corner grocery that isn't 5 minutes out of your way on your way home from your local errands and grab food for the next day or two.
NYC, as possibly the only US city that can genuinely be called not auto-oriented, needed to fill that megamart niche with something. But it's still 'merica fuck yea-land so we replaced the beautiful and cheap local green grocer with a dingy, shady, overpriced bodega that makes most of its money on booze, cigarettes, and lottery tickets but maybe has some cabbage in the back.
You're 100% right. Drop bodegas throughout most US cities and they don't work. CAN'T work, because the bodega could never be able to make enough money to afford the huge lot of land minimum parking rules would require they have nearly anywhere.
There's an exception, though. Go to the old, poor part of town in nearly any American city and you'll still find the local bodegas -- at least in the places that various dollar stores haven't run them out of business and replaced them with a similar but much worse product (that parasitizes and exports wealth from those communities rather than being operated by members of them).
@admiralteal@ZachWeinersmith Yep. If you try to build a bodega in almost any city in the US the planners will ask you where are the mandatory minimum 20 parking spaces for the business?
@admiralteal@ZachWeinersmith Even beyond the stupid parking lots, how would most Americans get there? Our public transit sucks outside of a few major metro areas, and the vast majority of the US isn't walkable (partly by design, and partly because yeah, actually, it's vast).
@haley_exe Sweden has far lower pop density and robust public transit and bikeped. Switzerland has seemingly-impossible geography and still robust public transit and bikeped.
Acreage does not matter. Most people live in towns, and for the small number of people living outside of towns (that is, rural), cars are mostly fine.
Intercity mass transit is very cool and worth investing in. But it's not really that important in the grand scheme of things since vanishingly few trips are intercity.
City design is all that matters. And we design cities to be unnatural, unwalkable, inorganic, impossibly expensive-to-maintain things.
@admiralteal@ZachWeinersmith Oh I wholeheartedly agree! Mostly expressing frustration that as a country we've just refused to invest in anything but cars.
@admiralteal@ZachWeinersmith I live in a small town in the UK. It doesn't have a lot going for it but we take for granted that an old guy like me with dodgy knees and assorted other conditions can walk to some basic small shops in ten minutes, load up the back pack and eat quite well. USA has a lot to learn about urban planning.
@admiralteal@ZachWeinersmith woah woah woah. Bodegas are great. They are not just a store they are a cultural institution. They might not meet the needs you have, but they meet the needs of the community. Also given who runs and who uses them…I don’t think there’s a lot of ‘murica fuck yea going on there.
@ZachWeinersmith you are thinking about the store and not the people. Every area, state, region, country has a city where people move where they try to do something bigger, in some way, than the ambitions of the people they move away from. The bodega is that for many immigrants and they become a part of their neighborhood in a great way. Only two or three people are always working there, early in the morning and late at night, they know why the street is blocked and can help with a package. They’re neighbors.
@ZachWeinersmith Not only it's convenient, it's community, you usually know the names of the people working there, you chat with them about family or whatever, they know your favorite kind of greasy sandwich, you even recognize the local bodega cat. (Speaking as a non-NYer who lived in NY for a while).
@ZachWeinersmith Part of the reason is that it serves a different social function. Jane Jacobs noted in The Death And Life Of Great American Cities that the shop owner on her street knew her well. There was enough trust that when a friend came to visit while she was out of town or at work, she could leave a key down with the shopkeeper and he'd pass it on to the right person.
That's something a bit more integrated and important than the overpriced dusty cans of Tropical Fantasy.
@ZachWeinersmith Nothing, because the thing they won’t tell you about the bodega/corner store, at least in Europe, is that a)they run out of things you need and b)not everyone stocks the same things, so you might go looking for something basic and not find it. When I walk in to an American grocery store on a Tuesday, I know shelves will be stocked with the basic things I need with 100% confidence. In Europe, every trip to the shop is a gamble that you picked the right shop.
@ZachWeinersmith Locally owned neighborhood _______s are community spaces run by people in the community, who champion them to everybody even if they're at best pretty good but not unique
NYC: bodegas, pizzerias, delis, rudeness
PDX: coffee shops, microbreweries, food cart pods
CHI: Italian beef restaurants, baseball teams
AUS: taquieras, music venues
KC: BBQ restaurants, rivers
SEA: needles more than 600 feet tall with an observation deck
@ZachWeinersmith I'm sitting in Columbus Ohio reading the responses to you, and I get the impression that New Yorkers think the rest of the country has no nearby convenience stores or places that get to know their regulars.
As far as I can tell the biggest difference is that many of our convenience stores have gas pumps and parking.
@ZachWeinersmith the descriptions in your thread make them sound a lot Iike a "Späti" you can find in Berlin and cities around it. It's a "dingy overpriced shop with low selection" as well. I rarely use them myself, but often see people enjoying the nightlife gathering around them, as Späti are open late and sell drinks and snacks. It's even in the name! (Späti = Spätverkauf = LateSale)
@ZachWeinersmith
The "obsession" is that it's local, with all that entails: It stocks what the customers need/want, the owner knows a lot of those customers. IOW the "obsession" is that the bodega is part of the fabric of the community in a way that a corporate chain store hardly ever is.
The size of course is a function of real estate cost - so if you're looking at something larger, it's gotta have either higher margins, more volume, or both.
@ZachWeinersmith Other commenters are hitting on the community aspect, but walkability and convenience in a huge. The price variability isn’t an issue when you can reach the store in a few seconds. Going somewhere else for an item or two only makes sense on a very fixed budget or if you value your time at zero.
@timbray It’s also like Montreal and their dépanneurs.
As a lifelong New Yorker I can say it has something to do with our belief that our own city is the center of the world, an idea that is far from unique to NYC.
@ZachWeinersmith They're third places, a hub for gossip, neighbours get to know and trust each other, the shopkeeper knows what's going on, and the store acts like the "community fridge" so you don't have to buy a huge American walk-in refrigerator designed for McMansions in the 'burbs.
@ZachWeinersmith
They used to be a hangout spot for the neighbors to catch up. Now, I think it's more of a nostalgia passing into a regional tribalism thing.
For example: Philly cheesesteaks are all garbage but people will fistfight you for saying that in Philadelphia even though there are actually fantastic restaurants there that should be famous but aren't
@jcutting@ZachWeinersmith The #cheesesteak places that hype themselves to the tourists are garbage. You need to stray a bit farther from 9th and Passyunk.
Too far, though, and it’s garbage again. A clue is when they call themselves “#Philly#cheesesteaks.” Quality requires no qualifier.
I believe you, and I'll try it the next time I'm in Philly. On the other hand, I think it's fair to say that no regional food worth its proverbial salt should need a "goldilocks" playable zone.
I feel the same way about NYC bodegas.
@jcutting Well darn it, my wife came home from shopping and this post was on my mind, so off we went on a #cheesesteak run. At least I thought to take a photo halfway through.
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