My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [13]
“Teal and yellow—what does that mean?” I ask Gab. The color of a deli’s awning often tells you what kind of store lies within. In Manhattan, an evergreen awning tends to signify a Korean deli offering fresh produce, cut flowers and upscale products—the Starbucks of the deli world. Red and yellow, on the other hand, usually means a bodega run by Dominicans, where the groceries tend to come in cans and jars and the prices tend to be more affordable—the Dunkin’ Donuts of New York’s convenience stores. In poorer neighborhoods, where supermarket chains usually decline to set up stores, bodegas are the traditional place where families shop for groceries. Bodegas also often tend to be neighborhood hangouts; in front of Salim’s store I notice that there are milk crates and a wooden bench, where undoubtedly in the summertime old men sit around and do stuff that old men do on city corners.
“Salim is Arab, if that’s what you mean, but I think he bought it from the building’s owner, who’s Puerto Rican or Dominican and ran it as a bodega. It’s kind of a mixed-up place—a little of this, a little of that. Why don’t you go inside and get me something to drink. I’ll wait in the car.”
I exit Kay’s Honda and wait for the light. While crossing I take stock of the apartment building housing Salim’s deli, a brick walkup that appears to be in dire condition, slumping sideways and spalling bits of facade. Like all of the attached row houses, it is a couple times as tall as it is wide, the shape of a cigarette pack. Its level roof sits four stories off the ground, exactly the same height as most of the buildings in this historically landmarked neighborhood. There are similar buildings in every direction, most of which appear to be in flawless physical condition, but Salim’s seems to have been left over from a different era. On the exposed side of the building facing leafy, pleasant Hoyt Street, everything sags, everything is crooked—the black fire escape entangled in cable TV wires, the graffiti-covered garage, the peeling windowsills framing bedsheet curtains and flags from countries I can’t identify. The whole building seems to be leaning in a separate direction, as if it no longer wishes to be part of the block.
Opening the front door, which features one of those annoying brass knobs that require a special sequence of jiggles only the regular customers know how to perform, I find the interior worse than I had imagined. The space is as claustrophobic as the inside of a damp shoe box. The ceilings are too low, the aisles too narrow. If the North Korean deli was dismal, at least it had the potential to be fixed up; the space was reasonably large, and the building itself didn’t seem structurally unsound. Salim’s deli isn’t just hopelessly tiny—I count seventeen paces from front to back and less than seven across—but it appears to be rapidly falling apart, as if a passing truck could make the whole thing crumble. There’s even—and now of course I know why the lease is so cheap—a hole in the ceiling the size of a volleyball, as if an elephant’s leg had come through, and that hole is currently dripping little bits of plaster. Other parts of the ceiling appear to have caved as well—over by the checkout counter, back by the stockroom—but unlike the one over the deli counter, these have been covered with sheets of aluminum, then painted, and now support little stalactites of dust that wave back and forth in unison