There are few things more quintessentially New York than a bodega (yellow cabs maybe, or bagels). They’re a one stop shop for basic groceries, neighborhood gossip, an emergency roll of toilet paper at 2am, the perfect bacon-egg-n-cheese sandwiches, cheap beer to tuck surreptitiously into a brown paper bag, and new music that’s hot off the block. (It was in a Dominican bodega, after all, where I first heard the perico ripiao cover of OT Genasis’ “CoCo”).
It can be hard to explain the beauty that is your local bodega to people who don’t live in NYC. Taylor Swift tried, and it didn’t go too well. But our friends over at Latino USA nailed it last week in an hour-long episode recorded over 19 hours in a bodega in Washington Heights.
Hit play to hear New Yorkers – including the Kid Mero – wax poetic on this beloved institution and tackle the essential questions, like “Papi, why the cat always sittin’ on the bread?”