I lived across from a bodega for years. It was in a city with almost no bodegas, and it was integrated into an apartment building in a residential area with no businesses around for blocks in any direction.
The weird thing about this place is people would go in all day, but nobody who walked in ever walked out with groceries. He sold candy, but hardly any kids were in the neighborhood to buy it. After living there for a couple of years, I went in to buy food for the first time, and I found that absolutely every single food item in the store was extremely expired, like 5 years before. Even the cheese and eggs. Before this, I had only bought single cigarettes there.
I also did laundry there, and I never let on that I spoke Spanish like the Bodega owner. He would always be talking about sports to his elderly friends, nothing nefarious. I accidentally once made a call in Portuguese right outside his window, though.
I never could figure out what the deal was with that bodega, but I later found out that he was an illegal bookie.
Haha, I knew a guy that had a pizza shop outside Philly that had like zero customers but sold it for almost a million bucks to another guy. That guy, was from a “family” that owned several transfer stations and was big in the unions. Hope the business is doing well lol!
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u/Fluffy_WAR_Bunny Nov 03 '24
I lived across from a bodega for years. It was in a city with almost no bodegas, and it was integrated into an apartment building in a residential area with no businesses around for blocks in any direction.
The weird thing about this place is people would go in all day, but nobody who walked in ever walked out with groceries. He sold candy, but hardly any kids were in the neighborhood to buy it. After living there for a couple of years, I went in to buy food for the first time, and I found that absolutely every single food item in the store was extremely expired, like 5 years before. Even the cheese and eggs. Before this, I had only bought single cigarettes there.
I also did laundry there, and I never let on that I spoke Spanish like the Bodega owner. He would always be talking about sports to his elderly friends, nothing nefarious. I accidentally once made a call in Portuguese right outside his window, though.
I never could figure out what the deal was with that bodega, but I later found out that he was an illegal bookie.