The Shop On The Corner

Before our enlightened liberal condition of buying our cannabis at the modern corner apothecary completely fogs over the memories of the soul-crushing dark ages – “The Time Before,” as our children will refer to it – I thought it important to take a moment for the glorification of that stalwart bastion of pre-reform convenient drug distribution: the bodega.

The public acceptance of cannabis as common, excellent for mild pain relief and general relaxation, and in no way associated with demonic conspiracy will drive a constantly regenerating stream of brisk new business to the dispensaries. These dispensaries, provided we can sort out what boils down to zoning and finance details, will soon be as plentiful and irritating as Starbucks and catering to the same kinds of crowds. Nothing is the same kind of satisfying as watching a hippie stereotype change into a capitalist stereotype overnight. Phillip Morris is, at this moment, poised and ready to dominate the legal cannabis market with their monolithic agricultural and distribution network, and that's the pot the trendy kids and the newcomers will be buying at the chain corner shops. This slightly bothers me, in an inconsequential though chronic way, as I think teenagers are missing out on a rite of passage by buying their first bag off Camel's narcotics rack. Until very recently, the only two options for someone like me to purchase pot have been the friendly neighborhood dealer or the bodega, the latter of which I will now describe for those who haven't had the pleasure.

And it was a pleasure, chum.

Bodegas have existed in one form or another in every successful civilization. They are a staple of commerce, filling a need created by the population shift from dispersed agrarian to concentrated industrial. The customer base is the blue-collar community, with the errant white-collar cat slumming it, and the student/pensioner shopper who buys only enough white bread and Pop-Tarts to live on for 24-hour periods. Bigger than the walking vendor's fruit cart, smaller than the proper grocery store, the bodega progressed from the miniscule corner shop to an international force. Asian cities, particularly Taiwan, have landscapes virtually dominated by shops like 7-11.

It looks like Michael Bay directed a remake of Blade Runner.

My bodega was downtown, in a stupidly scenic location surrounded by lush trees and century-old buildings. Just walking among the stunning architecture Oregon produced during the years its fledgling towns became proper cities is sometimes breathtaking, and having beautiful structures mindfully nestled into the pre-existing majesty of the area as a backdrop for a minor drug transaction is certainly one of the most pleasant ways I expect one can engage in such behavior. The bodega was on 13^th street, one of the main east/west drags, a one-way shot that was part of my late night aimless driving loop. It sat in the University's shadow and took up a third of the block, sitting wall-to-wall with one of the finest bars ever to exist on its eastern side, a bar which supplied the bodega with a stream of cigarette and hot case food purchases until three AM every morning. The buildings were recognized as historic places, but out of longevity alone instead of being any kind of thematic examples. They looked like art deco buildings from 1920's Los Angeles, but in the proper light they could have been the city hall/bank/post office in a barely-developed Tombstone. They were visually striking as specific in a non-specific way, timeless and geographically indeterminate. Walls textured like an adobe fort, with window and door frames simply designed but more than functional. In three small alcoves high on the wall and facing the street, virtually unnoticed unless pointed out, were small Roman statuaries of women in different poses.

Two sets of double doors, the majority of which were glass framed very thinly by wood painted a dark forest green holding brass fixtures burnished by a hundred thousand hands, opened onto 13^th street. One set of these doors was recessed in each end of the building, directly next to the cashier and as far opposite as possible. The owners had lined the walls with drink coolers, but had made the rather poor decision to stock the beer and Boone's Farm in the coolers closest to the second set of doors, and therefore farthest from the cashier's control. This product location decision had the foreseeably adverse effect of inspiring alcoholic thieves to get their cardiovascular exercise for the day by entering through the cashier's door, picking up a handful of items as they walked the aisles to lower suspicions, then dropping everything to run out the second set of doors with a case or armful of forties. I eventually learned to spot the differences between the angle someone holds their head at when they're genuinely figuring out what they want versus the angle used when they're waiting for you to look away. In response to this unremitting rise in skullduggery, the owners applied more of their wisdom and began locking the second set of doors at six every night, which did little to stem overall theft but made the beer coolers seem like less of a problem.

Nahasapeemapetilans they were not.

Since I never personally had the occasion to require the bodega's services when I was on foot, I would drive past the double doors, turning right off thirteenth and right again into the kind of back alley one would find severed ears in. I would then ease the delicately hideous curves of my Ford Maverick (and later that goddamn Jetta) into one of the city parking spaces that were painted by people who had either never seen a picture of an American car or generally despised the concept of internal combustion, and walk past the bar's rear smoking porch to enter the bodega through the back door.

It was unmarked, save for a tattered and sun-bleached “Employees Only” sign held on by what used to be two screws. Slightly larger than one would expect for a service entrance, it was set underneath a Reagan-era air conditioning unit shoved into a rough-cut hole in the gnarled exterior wall. This Cooling Unit of Damocles was supported in afterthought by good intentions and what appeared to be two repurposed metal plant hangers secured with an admirable amount of flashing tape. Enveloping Schrodinger’s Alcove was what could be legally referred to as a shelter, an eight-foot structure supported with pressure-treated 4x4's and wrapped in trailer park-style plastic corrugated roofing on all sides. The plastic was probably blue to begin with, but time makes fools of us all, and the corrugate had become a brittle thing with a color halfway between beige and sad. It was in that odd space among empty banana boxes and spent fountain soda syrup bags that my connection and I would stand together, bathed in that strangely-tinted light, and share a smoke when I was the only business. During one of our safety meetings on a crushing summer afternoon in August our conversation was abruptly silenced by a stunning flash. The bolt, though I never saw it directly, licked close enough to us for me to listen to the innocent and unsuspecting air become scorched and make a sound not unlike a pit viper maliciously ripping a piece of paper. Before I had time to recognize that high wail keening in my skull, the thunder upended over us and rolled through town like someone owed it money. Seconds later hail began falling, timidly at first and then with vigor, and it did nothing to cool the air. Blocks over we heard the first car alarm start, and more joined, all backed by the cruel percussion of the hail. We stood and took all that beauty in, him and I.

Imagine this, but made of electricity and fire.

But I digress. The transaction was conducted thusly: By the time I had crossed the threshold my end of the deal was already folded and concealed in the palm of my hand, as illustrated best by Mr. Steve Martin in the Academy Award-adjacent movie My Blue Heaven. Walking straight would have exited me out one of the front double-doors, the cashier's counter was at one o'clock, and next to my end of that counter was a small card table which always supported an open soda and a book. I would go to the table and grab the book, dropping the money next to where it had been and commenting on the author or some nonsense, then walk away to grab something from the cooler that would punish my treacherous kidneys. My connection would know how much I wanted from the amount I had left, and the money would vanish. I would bring my purchases up, and when he reached under the counter for a paper bag, that bag would come up with my supplies already ensconced within. I would exit through the same back door, and once in the car would immediately open the bag to fill the air with the rich and comforting smell of a relaxing afternoon. No tax stamp, no one else's business, no more complicated than buying a sandwich. Sounds weird as hell, I know, but that's how we did things in The Time Before.

You kids come see Grandpa any time, now.