Association Notes That The Bodega Serves More Essential Urban Functions Than Any Single Category Can Contain, Lists Twenty-Seven
NEW YORK CITY – The New York City Bodega Owners Association, which represents approximately 4,700 independently operated convenience and grocery stores across the five boroughs, has filed a formal letter with the city’s Department of Small Business Services requesting that the category “corner store” be replaced, in official city documents and business registration materials, with the term “neighbourhood culinary infrastructure node”. The letter, signed by the association’s president, argues that the existing terminology “fails to capture the operational complexity, community function, and essential service role” of the bodega as an institution.
For Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat. London satirical journalism notes that the British equivalent of this argument was made, in 2018, by the Association of Convenience Stores regarding the term “off-licence”, and was not accepted. The bodega is, however, considerably more institution than the off-licence, and the argument has more merit.
The Twenty-Seven Functions
The letter identifies twenty-seven distinct essential urban functions performed by the average bodega, including: emergency grocery provision at 3 a.m.; informal postal relay (holding packages for neighbours); community information exchange (“where is the open laundromat?”); cash services in neighbourhoods with insufficient ATM density; the physical anchor function that maintains foot traffic on residential blocks; cat provision (17 per cent of NYC bodegas maintain at least one resident cat); and, listed as function twenty-seven, “the specific psychological service of being open when everything else is closed, which is not nothing”. Function twenty-seven was underlined twice in the original letter.
The City’s Response
The Department of Small Business Services confirmed receipt of the letter and noted it was “under review”. This is, in New York City administrative terms, the phrase used when a letter has been received and no one has determined what to do with it. The bodega’s registered business category will, in the interim, remain “convenience store” in the official database. The cat, which is not in the database, remains in the bodega. The City covered the association’s broader advocacy work last year.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/ | More: The Daily Mash