Bodegas are literally just gas stations without the gas, IDK why NYC thinks they're the only city in America where you can go to a convenience store at 2 a.m
Also the thing where they'll talk about how "diverse" the staff at Bodegas are and how that makes them special, as if every 7/11 outside the North East is exclusively staffed by white coal miners.
Brooklyn delenda est
New Yorkers are constantly yelling about how their city is the greatest city in the world while refusing to learn about anything that happens anywhere else. Worse than Parisians.
It's not only native New Yorkers.
I grew up in a city of around 1 million, and what I've experienced is plenty of people I know who moved to New York (or Toronto, the Canadian equivalent) will claim that New York is vastly superior in every way to their hometown.
But, I know for a fact that when they lived here they barely left the Suburbs, and only drove downtown to go to malls, while refusing to walk around in urban neighborhoods in fear of 'scary' homeless people on the sidewalk. Lot's of transplants to NYC will defensively portray where they came from as worse than it is, or they simply never experienced more than a small window of it.
In fact, IMO transplants have the worst superiority complex
Transplants are unquestionably worse than natives, it doesn't even come close. It's because transplants need to justify to themselves all the many things wrong with the city somehow and those who are native just kinda take the bullshit as is but love it because of the history your family has there (most natives have been there a few generations, or at least as far back as it was for them to immigrate to the country at all).
I'm a native going back 4 generations depending on how you look at things, and honestly, while no other city will ever be home in the same way, the quality of life there is just so much lower with the same salaries than it was when I was a kid so it's hard to justify it. Additionally, a lot of "fuck nyc" shit is seeped in racism and anti-semitism when it comes from Chuds, so I'll always still defend the place haha.
All of those things have been true forever re: rats and trash. If anything these problems have gotten better not worse. The only thing that's changed in a negative way is the cost of living has gone up substantially so it's become impossible for people to move out of their parents houses and still stay nearby, also the subway tends to fluctuate in quality over the years and it currently is a lower point but far from as bad as it once was.
NYers know about other cities, they just know they suck /s. But real talk, if you're from one of the various ethnic groups that dominate NYC cultural life, no other city in the country will ever feel remotely as homey.
you can't even buy fresh produce at a bodega :haram: (european corner shops have fruit, veg, eggs, bread etc)
7-Eleven near me has Pizza sauce which is a vegetable according to the USDA (or whatever body decides school nutrition standards)
Depending on sugar content pizza sauce is basically just cooked tomatoes
You can get fresh mangoes and some veggies at the one near me. But they don't sell sandwiches. :(
(I am not in NYC)
This isn't exactly true, it depends on the particular location, but the quality will probably be trash anyways.
Also, like we have bodengas in [city redacted], they're not exclusively a New York thing.
Thanks for being the only person on this thread who spells it correctly
It's my understanding that they have cats, which does make them better. Of course, like everything else that was once cool about NYC, they keep trying to make them get rid of the cats.
As someone who lived on the west coast and now lives in the NYC metro area i guess it has less to do with the products and more with the aesthetics of bodegas and how they're such a NY specific institution. I wish I could give you a better answer than "the vibes are just different man" but that's just how it be.
Also you typically need to drive to those places whereas here almost everywhere you just walk out your apartment down the block to the bodega. The OP is wrong though of course, on the west coast my apartment was next to a 24 hour circle K and i could get that stuff whenever.
Lol stop trying to mystify a corner store, every city on earth has them.
Maybe it's a personal thing, I've never lived in NYC, but I have traveled there a lot and been to Bodegas, and honestly didn't feel they had that different of a "vibe" from the convenience stores I've shopped at in Central Canada.
if I lived in NYC that might change though.
People who don't live in New York just WOULDN'T GET what it's like to buy things from a convenience store, because those only exist in New York and no where else on earth.
...where do you go to buy two Diet Cokes, a roll of paper towels, and oh also lemme get some peanut butter m&ms since I’m here, why not
Has this person never heard of grocery stores?
At my last apartment in Bmore there was a place owned by immigrants where you could buy toilet paper, cigarettes, a broom, chicken wings in one of like 12 flavors, a fried fish sandwich, a lottery ticket and a bong. I will admit it closed at 2am though. The 24 hr place was smaller and one block further in a different direction.
It's really just the transplants who obsessively justify to themselves that the 2500 a month studio apartment in chelsea that might not even have a stove let alone a dishwasher or laundry is all worth it.
When it's essentially the closest thing you have to an ancestral home like it is for me, it's really just that nowhere else ever truly sits right. Not enough mania haha.
That list isn't even special, like you can get those at gas stations, grocery stores, your local CVS, whatever
A convenience store. Dollar general. Dollar tree. Walmart. Any gas station on a major highway/interstate with trucker parking.
It's the same phenomenon as "western cuisine" where they make up 230489203948 different names for the same combination of meat/thyme/butter in order to feel special about themselves and provide an illusion of uniqueness and diversity where there is none.
