In Search of the New York Candy Store

This week, Leonard Lopate is celebrating the 2oth anniversary of his talk show on WNYC, New York's National Public Radio outlet. Reminiscing about his boyhood while being interviewed by Tom Brokaw yesterday, he remarked that his parents used to own a candy store in Queens.

I mentioned this to Mary-Jo over dinner, and we got to talking about the corner candy stores we remember from our childhood in Brooklyn. She grew up in Bay Ridge, I lived in Brownsville and Clinton before moving to Bay Ridge, so we lived in three different neighborhoods, but the candy stores we recall all fit the same pattern. They weren't really candy stores at all, although they did indeed sell candy. But they also sold all kinds of others things: cigarettes, of course (probably their biggest single source of business); newspapers, magazines, and comic books; basic school supplies and stationery, like pencils, pads, notebooks, and envelopes; small toys, like tops, yo-yos, and jacks; baseball cards and other little collectibles like those long-haired gnomes that went in and out of fashion in the 1960s, and what not.

This kind of candy store usually had a counter with a few stools where you could sit and have a cup of coffee, a dish of ice cream, a soda, or an egg cream (which as New Yorkers know contains neither egg nor cream but is made with seltzer, chocolate syrup, and milk), and sometimes even a sandwich. It was above all a neighborhood hangout, both for kids and for idle adults--the easy and obvious place to meet after school and the first place you would go to look for someone you'd lost track of, since if he wasn't there he probably had been, and the proprietor could tell you where he'd gone ("He said he was going to play punchball in the schoolyard").

The candy store was the kind of institution that Jane Jacobs writes about in her classic Death and Life of Great American Cities, a de facto community center that puts eyes on the street, brings generations together, creates a sense of belonging, and subtly helps to discourage crime and other forms of antisocial behavior. Of course, it's also the kind of petty enterprise that tends to be obliterated by programs of "urban renewal" or gentrification.

What I wonder about is two things:

1. Was the kind of candy store I describe here solely a New York City phenomenon? Or do people who grew up in cities like Chicago, Dallas, or San Francisco recall similar places?

2. Do such stores still exist? Mary-Jo theorizes that in many New York neighborhoods the same role is now played by the bodega, which sounds right. But what about non-Latino neighborhoods? Are there "candy stores" today? If so, what are they called?

I'd love to hear your comments.