The Candy Shop

“NY ain’t the same, it’s OT playa/ You can go and cop coke from the corner bodega …” –50 Cent, “Corner Bodega”

Lately, New York City has become the new Mall of America. I originally moved to Manhattan to escape the suburbs and now it’s dejà vu all over again. Our town is becoming sterile and boring, thanks to astronomical prices driving away the artists and dreamers. One central example of this is the disappearance of the bodega, a New York institution. Years ago, there were bodegas every few blocks, often run by Puerto Ricans, and intermingled with Greek delis and Korean vegetable stands. In fact, many of the stores, restaurants, bars and clubs that made the city special are leaving due to insanely high rents, expenses which have doubled or because the wrecking crew has knocked down the whole block to build a huge chain store. Wal-Mart is coming—despite a recently formed local coalition to stop them.

I’m not a Latina, I’m an Italian-Irish chick who’s been around the block and moved to the Upper West Side during the 1970s when the city was much grittier. I had never seen a bodega–in the United States they’re unique to New York. The characterless convenience stores elsewhere don’t have the bodega’s flavor, garishly colored signs, or bullet-proof glass walk-in windows out front for late-night purchases. What is a bodega? For one thing, it’s the opposite of Whole Foods. Many are open 24 hours-a-day, the merchandise—some of which looks like it hasn’t been touched in years—is crammed into the crowded aisles, and they’re not selling Fiji water, Cape Cod potato chips or the New York Times. Beyond the food, shopping at a bodega provides social connections and access to all kinds of services for people who don’t have much money and who depend on their neighbors for support, advice and solace in a perpetually over-crowed city.

The average bodega sells junk food, beer, malt liquor, wine coolers, candy, ice cream (sometimes freezer-burned), sandwiches, cold cuts, coffee, plantain chips, cleaning supplies to spiff up your place in the middle of the night, “her pleasure” mint-flavored condoms, homemade chicharrones (pork rinds) deep fried with outlawed trans fats and mucho, mucho Goya. Healthier bodegas sell more vegetables and fruits like sour oranges, casaba and yucca. The prices range from over-priced to outrageous—customers often pay with food stamps and WIC checks (a federal food program for Women, Infants and Children).

Some of the products aren’t legal, ranging from benign to addictive. Most of the illegal merchandise and services are only available to customers the owner knows, usually Latinos and African Americans. Often some gringo walking in off the street will get the cold shoulder or the guy at the cash register will pretend he doesn’t speak English.

At some bodegas a person might find prescription drugs, including valium, Adderall, antibiotics and heavy duty painkillers like Percocet—without a prescription. Sometimes a bodega owner might give medical advice or referral to a botanica (a sort of local herbal specialist). Alex Lopez, an Argentinian immigrant from Corona, lauded the non-prescription drug of choice he buys at his bodega—La Rapidita, a mix of over-the-counter drugs that serve as a hangover helper. “Boy, does it work wonders,” he said. “Within two hours, whatever ails you goes away.”

Other illegal items include untaxed smokes called “loosies,” which are single cigarettes costing 50 cents each, handy when you’re too broke to buy a pack. Gambling is one of the biggest money-makers. The Latino lottery, called La Bolita, helps subsidize high rents. Some bodegas will also give you a tab (or a flat-out loan), cash your welfare check, or wire money back home (illegally) to your family overseas.

Many bodegas today are run by Dominicans who took over from Puerto Rican proprietors, many of whom have moved their families out to the suburbs. Indians, Pakistanis and Arabs—Jordanians, Yemenites, Afghani and Palestinians—are now opening their own bodegas specializing in profitable items like cigarettes, beer, Lotto, condoms, phone cards and other extras.

As for more potent elixirs, I’ve spoken to bodega owners and customers who sell and buy illegal drugs including coke, pot, crack, Ecstasy and LSD. Although nowadays most dealers sell drugs by delivery, if you talk the talk and walk the walk, it’s easy to replenish your supply and get a quick fix in bodegas, bars, restaurants and hair and nail salons—many of which are open late or all night. Smart dealers are discreet and friendly to neighbors—if they want to stay in business. To avoid getting busted for possession, they’ll stash their wares inside a bodega, giving the owner a daily pay off. Today, drug dealing on the open streets of New York is as rare as street hookers—which is where stores, bars and restaurants come in. Not all bodegas carry the stuff, especially family-oriented ones which are militantly anti-drug. Some bodega owners will even turn in family members if need be.

I first thought about bodegas and drugs because the one near my apartment seemed suspicious. It’s filthy and has little edible food for sale, yet they have customers from the projects coming in and out all night long for quick purchases. I mentioned my observations about bodegas to some student friends at an Ivy League college. They like to “ski” and buy their party supplies at bodegas they jokingly refer to as “crack dens” conveniently located near campus. The dealers, often friends of the owner, hang out in the store or in front, sometimes running off to make a delivery. One student recalled how one of the dealers just went behind the cash register. “He got me a receipt to jot down his cell phone number, in case I needed a delivery.” Their cocaine is $70 a gram, the smaller quantity is $40; expensive but doable when you’re on an allowance.

Another friend, who lives down the block from the bodega, says the food selection is quite good and the sandwiches tasty—especially the egg, cheese, and bacon—but regretfully concedes that something is going on there. When I visited the place one night last week to check it out, the bodega had transformed into a disco. Three guys loitered inside, one of them dancing to the blaring salsa music, checking me out at the ATM. I didn’t buy anything, though. When I left to join my friends in their SUV, two of the guys followed me out to the sidewalk, barking into their cell phones.

I asked Pablo, one of my more street-wise friends who lives and socializes uptown, if he knew the inside story about bodegas. He confirmed they often sell drugs. “Yeah, there’s a place on First Avenue in Spanish Harlem that sells coke, pot, you name it.” Asked if he’s a customer, he said, “Hell, yeah. I buy from him. He’s a friend of mine.” He introduced me to the bodega owner over vodka and orange juice at his house one night. Felix is 25 years old, a mixture of Puerto Rican and Cuban, broadly built and personable. He readily answered all my questions, though occasionally he and Pablo exchanged glances, as though he might be treading on dangerous territory with every new anecdote. His place specializes in chopped cheeseburgers. Selling for $2 a piece, they sell about 300 a day. Other big sellers are cigars, cigarettes and energy drinks. They have the corner, the prime spot on the block, but the other two bodegas have their own specialties: the Cuban one makes great coffee and the Dominican one sells a lot of ham and cheese sandwiches.

He said his father invested $80,000 to buy the store two years ago and their monthly rent is $15,000. Trading shifts with his dad, Felix runs the store, sometimes working all day long, even a few days in a row. A snort of coke helps him stay awake for the long shifts. Long hours are a given for many bodega owners, who prefer to employ family members and friends if possible. “We had to fire an Indian guy working for us last week. He stole about $5,000 from the cash register,” he said.

According to Felix, most of the bodegas in his neighborhood, including his, sell coke, pot and crack. He didn’t say who was dealing in his store. The projects on First and Second Avenues loom overhead and provide most of their client base. He took me to a few nearby bodegas and introduced me to some of the young men standing outside. It was a cold night, but there were groups of teenagers all over the sidewalks, especially near the stores. One of the guys wore all white, shades (though it was nighttime) and a huge silver belt buckle. “Hey, how are you?” he said, shaking my hand. He was friendly, but didn’t want to talk about the business.

Eventually, Felix persuaded him to speak. “Some of the bodegas are just fronts,” he said. “They sell sandwiches for $20 or their milk is spoiled and they don’t care. One Upper East Side bodega sells valium in a pack of 12 hidden in a pack of gum.” According to Felix, big time drug suppliers never visit the bodegas themselves, instead dealing directly with the small-time dealers. “The dealers pay the owner $500 to $1,000 a day to use their store.”

Apart from the struggle to pay the bills and deal with illegal elements, bodega owners, or los bodegueros, face other challenges. Crime has always been problem, including armed holdups and other violence in front of the store. In 2005, Senator Chuck Schumer secured $375,000 in federal funds to provide surveillance cameras to protect bodega owners, who are often the victims of crime themselves. Angelica Aquino, an immigration attorney and long-time Washington Heights resident (a stronghold of New York’s Dominican community) used to man the cashier at her father’s bodega back in the early 1980s, when the crime rate was at an all-time high. Shortly after they purchased the store, her dad was gunned down by thieves and spent six months recuperating in the hospital. They sold the bodega when he was released. Now, she does her shopping at the bodegas that line Broadway between 159th and 163rd Streets, where she said the owners are anti-drug and the food selection includes organic food and high-quality produce. “If the fruits and vegetables aren’t fresh, everyone would go to the bodega down the street, and they’d go out of business,” she said.

There’s a long history of bodegas getting raided by the police for selling drugs every few years, especially when neighbors in the community complain. I spoke to Joe Occhipinti, a former INS agent who back in the late 1980s was in charge of Operation Bodega. He pursued and arrested a Dominican drug lord and 40 others, seizing $1 million in cash. The crime syndicate bought and funded bodegas in order to launder money, run gambling rings, conduct food stamp fraud, sell drugs and guns, illegal wire transfers and other activities. Occhipinti is now the Executive Director of the National Police Defense Foundation housed in New Jersey and maintains that nowadays, several ethnic crime syndicates, funded by loan sharks, are still in business, which is how the bodegas and small-time dealers survive.

“Most bodega owners are hard-working honest people, and most bodegas are totally clean,” he told me. “They’re victims who get caught up in crime because they need to take out a loan to open the bodega and their only recourse is to borrow money from loan sharks.”

Occhipinti disagreed with Felix’s assertion regarding the start-up costs of a bodega. “No way! They cost at least $300,000 to half a million,” he said. The problem, he maintains, are the loan sharks. “The bodega owner can get trapped by the high rate of the loans, which can go up to 50 percent,” he said. According to Occhipinti, if certain bodegas don’t go along with some of the criminal activities, they are forced to go out of business, to be replaced by others indebted to the same loan sharks who set them up in the first place.

Although running a bodega isn’t easy, it’s still a business where lower-income entrepreneurs can rise up the ladder. Jake Espinal, owner of Don Pedro’s, a Latino-Caribbean restaurant on the Upper East Side, himself a Dominican, said many bodega owners aspire to open mini-marts and supermarkets, often out in the ‘burbs. Meanwhile, local residents prefer to shop at bodegas since the owners are friends who understand their needs. Socializing at a bodega is part of the life Uptown. It used to be the same on the Lower East Side, the Upper West Side, Midtown and the Upper East Side, until many of the stores were forced to leave.

After spending some time lately in bodegas and out on the sidewalk, it’s clear that most bodegas cater to the needs of their neighborhoods. Most people Uptown live the 9-to-5 life, but many locals are up all night, hanging out on the street, taking their drug of choice or selling it. Some dealers rationalize that it’s just for the short-term. People without money, college educations and health insurance sometimes resort to making quick money out of desperation. Felix himself told me he’d sold drugs on the streets for a while, until he decided it was too risky. Even though it’s arduous work, he prefers to run the bodega.