New York City A-Z

Yup, couldn't think of anything other than Monosodium Glutamate. Though why it was associated with New York was beyond me. Doh.

It's not, I have lived in NY for 39 years and have never once heard a convenience store referred to anything other than a convenience store.

It's a locally owned corner shop. Most only have a few aisles with grocery store staples like toilet paper, cereal, snacks, drinks, etc or maybe simple, OTC medicines like tylenol. You can also pick up cigarettes and beer if those are your vices Some sell coffee in the morning and some might have a little deli where you can have a sandwich made to order. Most bodegas fit in pretty well with the neighborhood they're in with fancier, nicer ones having more upmarket products in affluent neighborhoods and sketchy ones with more bargain brands in poorer ones. Everything is just a little bit more expensive than at a traditional grocery or drug store.

^ Tell me about it. I recently went through Harlem after a ten year absence and experienced severe culture shock! Black faces were few and far between and Frederick Douglass Blvd. (8th Avenue) has been transformed into a bistro/restaurant mecca. I remember riding the subway and experiencing the mass exodus of whites by the 96th Street subway stop. Now, you can ride as far north as 168th Street (maybe farther, I have never gone farther) and still have whites as fellow riders. And beautiful Brownstones which were virtually abandoned to drug dealers and squatters in the '70s and '80s, are now being bought, renovated and sold for between $1,000,000 and $2.300,000. Wow!

I second that. I’d be willing to bet that 95% of Harlem residents have never been to Africa. Even in the 70’s