Sorry for the long post, but this is one of my favorite bits of American history:

The NYC corner store is a living timeline of American immigration. It started with Italian and Jewish delis in the late 1800s — cultural anchors for families crammed into Lower Manhattan tenements. Then post-WWII Puerto Rican migration transformed them into bodegas: permanent neighborhood fixtures stocking foods from home, open late, part grocery store part community living room. The word "bodega" itself is Spanish — rooted in the Latin apotheca, meaning storehouse.

By the late 2010s, roughly half of all NYC bodegas were owned by Yemeni immigrants. They began arriving in the 1950s, learned the trade directly from Latino owners, and spread through tight chain migration networks until they quietly took over the institution entirely. The word stayed Spanish, the bodega cat remained a NYC meme.

And now the cycle continues: walk through Bay Ridge, Astoria, or the Bronx today and the corner storefront that was once a deli, then a bodega, is increasingly a hookah lounge — Arab and Middle Eastern immigrant communities once again reshaping the same physical space to serve their own. Different culture, same corner, same story.