ED-Blowdryer 37 2ND AVE GROCERY 89 2ND AVE. (BETW. 5TH & 6TH ...
2ND AVE GROCERY
89 2ND AVE. (BETW. 5TH & 6TH STS.), 212-253-0848
WOODHULL
SANTIAGO'S
3415 B'WAY (139TH ST.), 212-491-0668
IT MAKES SENSE that Greg, founder of MyBodegaMan.com, which features one-on-one interviews between people and their neighborhood bodega personnel, is from Chicago. In that town, people really do live in their neighborhoods. They are more likely to deal with the same store owner/manager/cashier, often all wrapped in one, for years, than to fly off to L.A. to pursue comfort and an acting career.
To live comfortably in New York City, one must humanize daily interactions. I once had my day bracketed by a Polish diner where the woman knew I wanted an egg sandwich and regular coffee for breakfast, and a man at Just Delicious who knew I needed a regular with sweet and low at 1 a.m. I began every transaction with a "Hi!" but what if I'd said just a little bit more?
Greg makes a point of it. "I think people don't have a lot of time to sit down and talk to people. I wanted people to do an oral history of their bodega men without adding their own voice to it-just [them] talking. It's a much more powerful tool when you're listening to someone speak. I think about that for most everyone I have regular contact with-by spending 20 minutes with everybody in my bodega, I make a valuable contact. They have amazing stories-what did he go through before he was here, serving me?"
He was fortunate, because his guy, Mohender Tulsiani, is friendly and outgoing, as you can tell from his 14-page Bodegaman.com interview. He explains why he chose a life in bodegas; he now owns three, including 2nd Ave. Grocery, where he can usually be found 12 hours a day, seven days a week:
"Nothing else I like about it, just money coming in. Because people always need food and this is the business you rarely have seen not surviving. No? Any other business, you see you can become a top or a zero. This is the kind of business where you never become a zero and you never become a top? It's always in between."
I found this refreshing. Americans so often act like you're failing if you don't harbor some kind of unrealistic dream.
Mohender's gotten to know most everybody who lives nearby. One woman even stores a pack of Marlboro Light 100s there:
"One time she said she doesn't want to carry a pack of cigarettes all the time because then she smokes a lot. She only would smoke if she's around walking the dog, she walking by the store, [so] she'll grab a cigarette. This way she wouldn't smoke that much, that's the reason we keep a pack of cigarettes here."
I'd heard about a deli in Williamsburg, Woodhole, which had especially good sandwiches, so we headed there on the L train and then a bus. It turned out to be called Woodhull, and on the border of Bushwick. I got a large pastrami sandwich for $4.50 and talked to Fidel, who's from Yemen. I couldn't try the NYC bodega trademark-an egg sandwich-because of their noon breakfast sandwich cut-off. Like a lot of our new expatriates, Fidel's separated from his family, and works 14 to 15 hours a day. This chronic fatigue may explain the monosyllabic answers I got, or maybe it is better to just stick with your own bodega man for this experiment. It was one mean sandwich to eat on the train, though.
Lately I've also been hearing about Santiago's on Broadway near 139th St., right near a branch of the chain sandwich shop, Subway. When it opened, Santiago made a bunch of Santiago Way t-shirts and busted out the specials. Why, for $7 worth of cold cuts, according to one sign, you can get a 2-liter Pepsi or Coke. I don't think Jarod'll be going there anytime soon, since even their "Fat-Free Santiago Sandwich" includes bacon and melted cheese.
I asked a customer who'd like to be known as "Otis" why he liked Santiago's, and one of the reasons was that you could get a bacon and egg sandwich at 5 p.m.
"Two dollars for an egg sandwich on a roll, 24 hours, where do you see that?!" he raved. I shared his enthusiasm, since my neighborhood bodega, Rogers Garden, won't serve a bacon-egg sandwich after 1:30 pm (the cut-off at Sam's is noon!). Santiago's was the only place with no breakfast-sandwich curfew, and I was an eager convert. Santiago, a handsome Yemenite in his prime, has an empire of other stores, including another one called Santiago's on 152nd St.
I was looking at the other specialties when Milton Katz strolled in, just as Gerber, in a big hurry, was picking up a six-pack.
"I wouldn't get a blazing buffalo chicken, or a Philly cheese steak," he counseled. "I'd get something basic, like a BLT or a variety of the turkey sandwich."
I ordered the Santiago Melt, a kind of diet revolution special at the price of $3.50. With American cheese, turkey, bacon and mayonnaise laid on with a trowel, it did not disappoint. Sometimes it's the only thing my friend Jeff eats in a day: "It's kind of like breakfast, lunch and dinner. That place has saved my ass time and time again!"
Coffee is 50 cents, and it's the only place I ever heard of where the neighborhood Starbucks, on 138th, was shut down, even though the company formed a committee to try and save it. Subways, with sandwiches that are twice the price, are still hanging on, despite the widespread popularity of Santiago's.
MyBodegaMan.com is now up and accepting submissions-you can start by asking them what the deal is with the egg-sandwich curfews.