You walk in and the bell rings and the man behind the counter knows your name. The corner store was not a store. It was an embassy. It represented the block to the block. You could buy a loose cigarette. You could buy a single egg. You could buy a stamp. You could buy a can of beer at eleven at night when everything else was closed and the man would put it in a brown bag and you would carry it home like a secret that everybody knew.

The corner store kept a tab. Your name in a notebook behind the register. You owed three dollars and forty cents and you would pay it Friday. Nobody signed anything. Nobody ran your credit. The man trusted you because you lived on the block and living on the block was your credit score. If you moved away without paying your tab the whole block knew and the whole block judged you and that was worse than any collection agency.

Every corner store had a cat. The cat lived in the store and the store lived around the cat. The cat sat on the counter next to the register and the man petted the cat while he made change. The health department said you cannot have a cat in a food establishment. The corner store said the cat is not in the food. The cat is on the counter. The counter is not the food. This is the kind of logic that built New York.

The corner store sold everything and nothing. It sold batteries and candles and shoelaces and aspirin and birthday cards and wrapping paper and lighter fluid and mousetraps and rolling papers and the Daily News and a sandwich that the man's wife made in the back. You could furnish an apartment from a corner store if you were patient and not particular. I furnished my first apartment from three corner stores and a fire escape.

The corner store is a wine bar now. Or a juice shop. Or a boutique that sells candles that smell like somebody's idea of what the neighborhood used to smell like. The bell is gone. The cat is gone. The man who knew your name is gone. The notebook with your tab is gone. You cannot buy a loose cigarette or a single egg or a can of beer in a brown bag. You can buy a twelve dollar candle that smells like cedar and bergamot. The corner store did not smell like cedar and bergamot. It smelled like a neighborhood. Nobody bottles that.