There's one exit, usually one person behind the counter. Small and cramped to some signifies intimacy to others. At J.F. Grocery, Spanish music plays constantly in the background and customers enter dancing, snapping their fingers or moving to the beat as they await hot and cold sandwiches. Vega greets several customers by name, bantering with them and switching easily from Spanish to English. The store has the flavor of a home away from home for residents of this Spanish Harlem neighborhood.
Visitors love the homey atmosphere, too.
Tony Rodriguez is part of a construction crew working on a building across the street from the bodega. He has been coming in every day for lunch since October. Josephine Haynesworth comes in looking for her granddaughter, who was supposed to meet her at the corner store. I go to Pathmark for certain things, but I come here for sandwiches, washing powders, bleaches, soda, cat food. Besides its neighbors who seek those specialty foods or the company in a bodega, J.F. Grocery has a few other regular customers.