The humble convenience store.
When you think of these, you think of mini-marts and 7-Elevens. Places that you stop on road-trips for energy drinks and Funyuns. Hotspots for early-morning oddball encounters.
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a convenience as “a small often franchised market that is open long hours.”
However, to me, they are much more than this. Convenience stores are transactors of culture.
Your corner store might not be the same as my corner store. Why is that?
Convenience stores reflect worldly and diverse populations within communities across the U.S. and give us a glimpse into backgrounds different from our own, all for a few bucks.
Whether it’s spam musubis or tortas, check the warmers, freezers or fridges at any hole-in-the-wall grocery spot and you will find the surrounding populace staring back at you.
Here in South and East Los Angeles, convenience stores reflect a large body of Latinx consumers.
At some places (if you’re lucky enough to find them), raspados—shaved ice treats that are garnished with syrups, fruit juices, and sometimes chamoy or even Mexican candy—are made readily available. In others, one can find themselves picking up a quick assortment of freshly cut fruit.
I recall popping into a mini mart near USC’s campus with a friend one summer and being able to snag a criminally cheap Tajin and lime juice pineapple cup.
At the Meadow Maid Market off Alhambra near Cal State Los Angeles’s campus, I make my late-night runs for cheap watered-down beer and salty snacks. Helados De Sols line the freezers, while michelada mixes and de la Rosa candies make themselves readily available at the register.
Even at ampms and surrounding 7-Elevens, one would be hard pressed not to find some deliciously inauthentic sodium-bomb rolled tacos.
The point is, it does not matter if the food is cheap.
It does not matter if we think it’s junk food, or whether we think it’s authentic or not.
What matters is what these convenience stores represent—and that’s culture. An abundance of it, here in our backyards, our neighborhoods.
And I think we should celebrate every bit of that.
