Story and photos by Robin Elisabeth Kilmer

Bodega shelves have everything.

One is named Usnavi.

The other, Ali Saleh.

There are phonetic similarities in their names, and in their occasional disposition towards the occupation they share.

“I hate it,” says Saleh. “When you get a bodega, you’re married to the business.”

And Usnavi de la Vega agrees.

“Yeah, I'm a streetlight

Choking on the heat

The world spins around

While I'm frozen to my seat

The people that I know

All keep rolling down the street.”

Ali Saleh works at a bodega on the corner of 207^th and Broadway, while Usnavi and his cousin and bodega assistant, Sonny, worked their corner store at 181^st Street in In the Heights.

Both toil long hours in family businesses, and come to know their customers as if they were part of the extended clan.

Saleh is at the bodega, owned by his father, day in and day out.

For the past three years, he has been working there full time.

Most of his daily activity happens within a few square feet behind the counter.

He landed the job, he explained, as a result of not pursuing school more avidly, although he did not have much time to elaborate.

A steady influx of customers comes in and out, at all hours, and Saleh tends to their needs for coffee, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and sandwiches. He does so fluidly, his arms in perpetual motion, nodding and greeting the regulars. Cash in, change out; coins and bills are exchanged all day long, a neat choreography of supply and demand.

Usnavi knows about that too.

You’ll never know what you’ll find at the bodega. Vendor John Matos stops by to show off his wares at the Deli Grocery on Broadway. 

“People come through for a few cold waters and a lottery ticket,

Just a part of the routine

Everybody's got a job

Everybody's got a dream

They gossip as I sip my coffee and smirk

The first stop as people hop to work

Bust it-I'm like-

1 dollar, 2 dollar, 1.50, 1.69

I got it

You want a box of condoms what kind?

That's two quarters

Two quarter waters. The New York Times

You need a bag for that? The tax is added

Once you get some practice at it

You do rapid mathematics

Automatically

Sellin maxipads and fuzzy dice for taxicabs and practically.”

Still, Saleh says life as a bodeguero here in Washington Heights is better than being back in Yemen.

“Back home we used to ride camels. Now I ride the MTA,” he noted.

He has even learned some Spanish.

“I picked it up from the streets,” he explained.

And when he has a spare moment, he looks out the window as the world passes by.

Further along Broadway, Stephen Bello and Ramón Rodríguez work behind a different bodega counter.

Just like in the neighborhood, the bodega in In the Heights is the center of action.
Photo: www.pbs.org

Salsa plays from deep within the store, with its shelves stacked to brimming with colorful wares.

“I love it here,” says Rodríguez. “I never get bored.”

Both workers are, like Usnavi, from “the single greatest little place in the Caribbean,” the

Dominican Republic.

And both Bello and Rodríguez, who work part-time, say they love talking to customers, stopping often to offer a special high-five to a regular.

“Sometimes people come in here because they’re bored and they just want to talk to me,” explained Bello.

Far from being a nuisance, it’s one of the things he loves most about his work.

“It’s bacanisimo [Dominican slang term for hanging out]. I could be here all day,” he says, grinning.

Others could be there all day too, apparently.

Two customers, who might have bought coffee hours ago, were still hanging around. There is a constant flow of people coming in and out, for beer and munchies.

A crab vendor even stops by with two live specimens.

Bello and Rodríguez don’t even bat an eye.

It is, after all, just another evening at the bodega.

“So I'm switchin up the beat

Cuz my parents came with nothing

They got a little more

And sure, we're poor, but yo,

At least we got the store

And it's all about the legacy

They left with me,

It's destiny.”

All lyrics from “In the Heights”.

Tickets for In the Heights: In Concert on Mon., Feb. 11^th at the United Palace Theater at 4140 Broadway are still available at www.telecharge.com.