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.
Anyone who's truly worried about their impact on "the hood" just shouldn't be moving there in the first place! Conducting yourself in some special way doesn't make the rent go down, and it's just undignified for everyone involved.
You can bypass things by "knowing someone" literally everywhere if you have social relationships. Giving "Papi" the "nod" just makes you look like some asshole who talks about "Dis thing of ow-uz" to a pizza waiter.
The only thing that a gentrifier can do to stop gentrification is refuse to pay more than the normal rent for an apartment. If they do move to the neighborhood, then acting like themselves and being a respectful member of the community is part of the gig. "Chopping it up with a cafecito" and trying to haggle and shit is something that you learn over time, as in a process that develops naturally, not that you do on day one.
Acting like some shitty caricature because you moved to "the hood" is Gentrifier 101.
What does this have to do with "carrying yourself" so that a Bodega will give you free/discounted shit?
Where does where you live factor in? All the things you mentioned are good no matter where that person lives.
What "impact" do gentrifiers have if they don't pay more for rent than their neighbors? You're starting to sound like my grandparents who complain about black people "ruining" their old neighborhood.
is done by outsiders to the community moving into a community that is not theres,
Is it gentrification when some dago says "eh, da fuckin' m*lies moved in and ruined da COMMUNITY and da property values with that "music" and how dey act!"?
(in my neighborhood as a child, i didnt start getting harassed by cops until gentrifier types moved in, and it was very clear that we were super policed to make gentrifiers feel safe, so the process of gentrification could continue.)
"When I was coming up, you neva had to lock ya doors or worry about nothin'. No mugging, no drugs, no music at all hours of da night. Not til those fuckin types moved in!"
Gentrification is an economic issue around housing. When you start talking about "outsiders" moving to a community that "is not there's", you are making the exact same argument as people who are against immigration. Communities aren't "not yours" unless you're a nasty racist/bigot. You don't get to say that your community is special and gets to arbitrarily exclude outsiders who "aren't like us" or "just don't fit into our culture"
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?
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.
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.
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.
