A midwestern transplant is the latest target of the city’s wrath for daring to criticize the beloved corner stores
. “The bodegas are like an extension of a community house or apartment,” he says. When people are bored, “they go to the corner store, they have a beer, they talk”. When customers come in, “you shake their hand, you give a hug, you give a kiss … It’s like a family relation that you build in your community.”Photograph: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Even at the height of the pandemic, the stores remained devoted to their neighborhoods. “When the city shut down, we stayed open, serving the community, especially the low income community,” says Marte, who took over his brother’s store after arriving at age 18 from the Dominican Republic. “A lot of the bodegueros [who run the stores], they got sick. Some of them died. And we still were giving service.
With at-risk family members at home, some bodegueros slept in their stores for fear of spreading Covid, he says. Meanwhile, they helped their neighborhoods in ways that went far beyond the call of duty. “When the customer comes and doesn’t have money, they still got the merchandise, they still got the food. If they have some problems, they come to talk to the bodega owner. When they are depressed, they come to the bodega owners.” Owners would even watch children when their parents weren’t home.
It wasn’t Marte’s first time facing significant risk. Early in his career, when crime was high, he says, he was shot three different times by would-be robbers. “But I always keep going; I always keep being a bodeguero,” he says. He has since launched a campaign for public safety. Frank Marte, leader of the Bodega and Small Business Group, says bodegas ‘are like an extension of a community house’.Other cities have similar corner stores, but in New York, the stores are “icons”, Marte says. They have helped struggling neighborhoods, providing jobs to local people. “When the supermarkets or the big box stores didn’t come to New York because it was too dangerous, we were there.
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