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Enduring Places: The Corner Store
No matter how much a neighborhood changes, the corner store always exerts a pull.
By Martin C. Pedersen
January 2004
It was the first place you went to without your parents. It may be the only
store you shop at minutes before closing in your bedroom slippers. It is the
ultimate multipurpose center offering a range of goods and services--everything
from a carton of milk to a roll of toilet paper to baby-sitting referrals to
apartment sublets. In its purest incarnation it is family-owned, local,
neighbors serving neighbors. Due to its corner location, it attracts that
classic urban archetype: the Benign Loiterer. Think of gossiping retirees
handicapping horses and chronic illness; restless preteens scoping out new
territory; dominoes players battling it out on cardboard boxes (supplied by the
owner inside). A similar but somehow totally different store stands on a nearby
corner, but it's out of your immediate area and therefore not yours. Though it
is only five or ten years old, there is something almost prehistoric about your
store (and the one down the block too). Its purpose predates the franchise, the
supermarket, radio and television, even horse-drawn deliveries. It is a place
where closing time is fudged for regulars, where a familiar rap on the locked
door--at twelve-o-five--gains entry for one final sale. And regardless of how
the neighborhood changes, gentrifies, renews, the corner store exerts a pull
based on location (across from your apartment) and emotion (the owner knows the
names of your children and dog). But it is conditional. Move just six blocks
away, and a fresh batch of associations--and a new store--emerges. Fortunately
the cycle is as infinite as the city. |
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