i moved to my current place in brooklyn (at 4th & 21st) almost two years ago & when i first moved here, i made a point to make the rounds & check out all the closest 4th ave bodegas. there's the one between 19th & 20th that is frequently properly stocked with utz red hot chips that was my clear favorite for a while. there's one across the street on the corner of 22nd, but that one often is often slim pickens & has more unfamiliar spanish brands than it does familiar american brands, so i get all xenophobic (seriously, how did bally midway get away with the xenophobe video game? "exterminate the aliens?" what? can you even say that on a video game poster?) there's a bodega down at 26th, just past the train stop that tends to have a lot of my favorite snacks, but it's all the way down there, five blocks away, a full block-and-a-half past the dunkin donuts/baskin robbins & at that point it's like, "no item at that stupid 26th st bodega will have as satisfying an amount of glaze or sprinkles as anything in this joint right here before my eyes."
there's also one on the corner of 23rd that i originally boycotted because there was a woman working there who always did the thing where even if you'd handed her your money & extended your hand out to receive your change, she'd drop your change on the counter so you had to pick it up. i hate that, so after a few times of getting the friendly change heisman from that lady, i swore the place off. shawn likes friendly.
then a few months back, the place got all torn up inside & renovated & it has new people working there & whatnot & has become my go to bodega. under new management rules! the place is now run by a group of friendly dudes who call me boss & buddy. when i'm in a state of lazy peckishness, they make me sandwiches & often add a banana in with it & then the banana goes bad on my counter because i hate bananas. i left my wallet there one night & it was there behind the counter waiting for me the next morning. there are all kinds of hip, fancy snacks on the shelves. chocolate-covered sunflower seeds!
#57 - bodega redux.
snack: hostess sno balls
drink: dogfish head raison d'être
tonight i stopped by the bodega in the mood for something slightly chocolaty & hostess sno balls contain some chocolate or facsimile of said chocolate, so i brought a pack of the lil tribble-snacks home with me. one summer evening in boston, just after college, i was working at the allston videosmith video store (R.I.P.) & my co-workers and i were bored & i was hungry & my roommate/co-worker & i had probably been drinking on our back porch earlier that afternoon & as a result, we made a deal...they would give me the money to go next door & buy two packages of sno balls, but i had to eat all of them right there. i took their sucker money, went next door & bought two packages of pink sno balls and ate all four. approx 30 minutes later i felt it. if my stomach could talk, he would probably have a better word to describe the feeling, so i will just have to settle for calling it "gator belly snappin' awful." do not try this at home. anyway, i still enjoy sno balls & yes i feel guilty about their contents, but if you can come up with a healthy, natural version of them that combines seasonally-diversely-colored coconut with chocolate cake, cream & marshmallow in the same pleasant manner, i'll give up my precious sno balls & eat your "nature puff" or "koala coconut cream dream" or whatever the crap you decide to call it.
this hip new bodega has perpetuated my love of dogfish beers, as they usually have three or four different kinds in the cooler, which means i usually end up picking up a couple different singles a week there. a few weeks back, they got in some of the dogfish 120-minute i.p.a. it was the first time i'd ever seen the 120-minute, so i grabbed one, plunked down three & some change and enjoyed the hell out of it. next time i went to get one, i discovered that the beers are actually supposed to cost $10 a piece. they had mispriced it & were in the process of sending it back to the distributor. i felt bad. not "let me give you that $7" bad though.
tonight i'm drinking the dogfish head raison d'être with my marshmallowy hostess treats. it's a mahogany ale & has friggin beet sugar & green raisins in it. i know! can you beweeve it? i bet your beer doesn't even have beet sugar & green raisins. i bet you don't even want beet sugar & green raisins in your beer. the raison d'être is probably like my 2nd dogfish BFF right now, behind the 90-minute ale. as you undoubtedly know, raison d'être means "reason for being." tonight, my reason for being is to pretend that i'm actually watching the season premiere of frontline when i'm actually only retaining the word "uighur" (pronounced: wee-gur). uighur. uighur. uighur.