“I want to belong in this city I didn’t grow up in; I want to call a bodega mine and have the guy behind the counter know what kind I smoke, even if he won’t talk to me. Even better! That’s so New York!”
I enjoyed reading Diane Kale’s Dépanneurs vs. Bodegas: What Corner Stores Say About a City, though I disagree with her on the nature of belonging in New York—in many ways, the city belongs to those of us who’ve made our way here and have chosen to stay more than it does to those who were lucky enough to be born here and’ve never been anywhere else. In a city that’s been built on the backs of immigrants from day one, there will always be a particular beauty to dreaming a dream and then choosing to make it real for yourself.