What’s the Ultimate Symbol of Your Hometown?

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What’s the Ultimate Symbol of Your Hometown?

A Times article makes the case that bodegas may be the ultimate symbol of adaptability in an ever-changing New York.

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Bodega Comedy presents shows in corner stores around New York.

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Lanna Apisukh for The New York Times

By

Jeremy Engle

April 30, 2026,

5:04 a.m. ET

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A landmark bridge. A natural wonder. A local food, a sports team or a yearly tradition. What are the places, people or even things that define where you live — and what do they say about your hometown?

In “

Why the New York Bodega Is Here to Stay

,” Anna Kodé writes about how the iconic corner store may be the ultimate symbol of a city that is always changing and on the go:

It’s 2 a.m. in New York City. The streets are mostly empty, and the shops are mostly closed. But you’re awake, outside and desperately hungry. There’s only one place you want to go.

The familiar yellow awning of your favorite bodega beckons. You step under it, then into the glare of fluorescent lights. All you have to do is nod at the man behind the counter: He knows you want to order a chopped cheese. As you grab a lottery ticket and a pack of gum while you wait, an orange cat peeks out from between boxes of Froot Loops. She’s awake, too.

Bodegas, those small corner stores dotting blocks throughout the five boroughs, have been an essential part of city life for decades. The term, popularized by Puerto Ricans, loosely translates from Spanish to “warehouse.” They’re perhaps the ultimate symbol of a city constantly evolving and on the move.

“We’re a traveling city — people need things on the go and quick,” said Kel Murphy, 41, who grew up working in his father’s bodega in St. Albans, Queens. “Run in, run out. You don’t have to walk through a maze of aisles.”

Bodegas are beloved characters of the city, inextricable parts of the cultural zeitgeist. This year, the rapper Cardi B, who is from the Bronx, released a song called “Bodega Baddie.” New Yorkers have hosted raves, comedy shows and political events in the stores. And they’ve served as spaces for generations of immigrants to find community, work and a taste of home.

Elsewhere, Ms. Kodé details the bodega’s immigrant origins:

Jewish and Italian immigrants established delis in New York in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Some later sold their shops to a growing community of Spanish-speakers migrating from Cuba, Puerto Rico and Spain. Bodegas, as we know them, then began to take off around the 1920s.

They became “neighborhood anchors,” said Pedro A. Regalado, an assistant professor of American history at Stanford University and the author of the forthcoming book, “Nueva York: Making the Modern City.”

They sold nostalgia: rice, beans, plantains, chorizo and other foods that were reminders of home. This commercial pursuit helped create a “pan-Spanish speaking community,” said Mr. Regalado, adding that an ethnic identity began to form as bodega owners, called bodegueros, referred to their stores as being Latino or Hispano.

By the 1980s, many Puerto Ricans had sold their bodegas to Dominicans; by the 2000s and 2010s, many Yemeni immigrants owned them. The entire time, though, “the identity of the bodega doesn’t change that much,” said Mr. Regalado.

Now, the cultural diversity and fusion that defines New York is embodied in these spaces. On the Lower East Side, there is the Chinese Hispanic Grocery, where you can buy chicharrones and lychee juice. Near the border of East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Edimar Piña and José Herrera, who are from Venezuela, began serving arepas and tequeños after taking over a Mexican bodega to start Codigo 58. “We still have tacos, quesadillas, burritos because we wanted to keep the old customers,” said Mr. Herrera.

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