Park Presidio Liquors

Years ago when my corner store closed I had to walk all the way down to the next corner to Bazouzi’s when I needed something. After spending years just walking down the stairs walking down the street seemed a real pain. The owners were raising their kids in that market. They would hang out behind the counter and the mom would cook dinner in the back. When they were little they would ride their bikes out front. They had an extra storefront that they had unsuccessfully tried to turn into a café where I would see the kids doing their homework. Eventually one of them went off to high school and the other to college and the owners sold the store saying that the kids wanted to spend more time with them outside of the store.

As sweet as it was to see the kids in there I felt bad that they could rarely just be at home that they had to be subjected to familiar strangers asking what they were watching on the small television in the back behind the wall of liquor bottles. When people asked me whether I wanted to own my own store my main reason for not doing so is that I didn’t want to raise kids in a back room.

That said, since Victor was born it turned out to be best for us if he and Vida came with me to the store in the morning. Victor’s baby sitter could easily come get him most mornings and then I could take Vida to school avoiding the increasing morning care fees. Victor spent the first months sitting in his little car seat in the office sleeping and gradually became more wakeful and demanding. Soon he was crawling and as reluctant as I was to let him crawl around on the dirty floor there didn’t seem to be any other way—he would happily roam down the aisles while I did my orders. When he discovered the stairs separating the main grocery from the produce he knew a challenge when he saw one. He would crawl to the top and rock back and forth on his knees trying to figure out how to get down there. I would put him backwards on the stairs and he gradually figured out how to go down. His newfound mobility meant that we had to keep all the doors shut and locked. Vic would discover new things to do like knocking cans off the shelves. Once in a while I would hear a little squeal if one fell on him.

Around the time when Victor learned to walk he realized that the store was full of food beautiful food. He spent months trying to get caramels and eating chocolate packaging and all. His babysitter would always laugh when she picked him up and he smelled like chocolate. He spent a lot of time gnawing on bagels too. Later I directed him to the cheese sticks and strawberries and when he could feed himself he would stand at the front window with his yogurt and watch the cars and trucks travel by. Vida is always eating something interesting like chicken noodle soup or pot stickers and I have to make him his own little portion.

I could go on and on about how cute he is in the store, chatting with the produce workers and certain vendors he sees regularly, getting his own fruit and leaving it half eaten on the stairs, riding his bike down the ramp in the back yard. Sometimes Vida condescends to play with him and they take a basket and go “shopping” only to leave the basket for me to put away later. Vida likes to put him in a box and push him around the store. Rara spends a good few minutes everyday picking up after us while we schlep to school.

Victor has such free reign in the store that I am always surprised that he knows how to behave in a store where you pay for everything before you start eating it. This week I had a few minutes in between picking him up at preschool and getting Vida from Hebrew school. We stopped at Park Presidio Liquors on 6th and California. When a corner store has “liquors” in its name it is usually not a good sign. They are often seedy purveyors of malt liquor and small bottles of rotgut. But this store is near prime Lake Street properties and has upscale pretensions. Fancy wine store style displays take up at least half the store—a very inefficient display to my mind unless you do a large volume of expensive bottles of wine. The snack and grocery sections were small and not very interesting but very neat and clean. They guy at the counter didn’t seem very friendly until a regular customer came in and started chatting with him. When I asked Victor what he wanted to get he first picked out a very bright gold scrubby sponge but thought better of it on his own. He then picked out a granola bar that I thought he would be disappointed with. We ended up with a small package of Oreos that I thought he could share with Vida and her friend M. We also bought a lottery ticket. The cashier behind the counter wished us luck.

Victor’s Snack-Oreos -My Treat-Super Lotto Quick Pick—Beer of the Day Tecate 24 oz