THERE’S A LITTLE NEWSPAPER STORE in my neighborhood my family and I have grown very fond of. It’s the kind of place that brings memories of your own youth — filled from floor to ceiling with comic books, miniature cars, whiffle balls, all the impossibly desirable amulets of childhood.
The owner is a Korean immigrant named Jim. He gives our kids so much candy I sometimes hesitate to take them in there. Still, nothing excites them as much as a trip to the place they call “Jimmy’s store.”
Jim is my age. Over a decade we’ve exchanged enough tales about politics, schools, and homework assignments that we’ve become friends. Like many immigrants, he is quietly appalled at America’s social chaos and amazed that the elites seem to take little or no notice. “How come the New York Times never says anything good about President Reagan?” he once asked me confidentially. “How come they catch criminals and let them go again?” he still asks. I rarely have satisfactory answers.
Running a candy store in Brooklyn is a daunting task. Within five blocks of my house, two small-business owners have been murdered in the last five years. Only last May, the Indian newsdealer three blocks away was shot when he hesitated in handing over the day’s receipts to an armed robber. The next day, along with several dozen other people, I stuffed fresh flowers into his shuttered security gate. The family couldn’t afford a funeral and the place still hasn’t reopened. A few years earlier another young Indian storekeeper was killed in a street robbery. And one morning I walked into the Palestinian grocery and found them all sobbing over a brother who had just been killed behind the counter at his own store a few dozen blocks away.
According to a July report from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, murder is now the principal cause of death on the job for women and third among men, behind auto and machinery accidents. Retail clerks of all stripes rank behind only cab drivers and police officers as likely victims. The NIOSH report identified “exchange of money with the public, working alone or in small numbers, working late at night or early morning hours, [and] working in community settings” as risk factors to be minimized. In other words, every shop owner is a sitting duck.
The most common confrontation in my polyglot neighborhood is between the immigrant storeowners and the young black males who are constantly harassing and robbing them. Just a few weeks ago an Israeli shoemaker was hit over the head with a two-by-four by a group of young hoods walking home from John Jay High School. This is the trade school, used to film The Blackboard Jungle in the 1950s, which now attracts 3,000 minority kids from all over the city. They lounge on everyone’s front stoop, smoking pot and getting a good start on teen pregnancy. Police cars seem to arrive at the school every other day. Still, these are the good kids, I tell my neighbors, since the bad ones aren’t even going to school at this age.
Jimmy’s store is twelve blocks away, and he doesn’t get the John Jay traffic. His neighborhood is less upscale and much meaner. I walked in one afternoon and found him pale as a ghost. He couldn’t speak for a few minutes but finally told me he had been robbed at gunpoint only seconds earlier. It’s happened a few times. The worst was when thieves armed with freon gas broke through his security gate at 1 a.m. and cleaned out his weekend receipts. Jim slept on the floor the rest of the night to ward off looters. He hurt his back and couldn’t get out of bed for six weeks.
On an ordinary day, Jim arrives at 5:30 a.m. from his apartment around the corner to guard his newspapers. One of the favorite pastimes of petty thieves in New York is stealing bundles of papers and selling them on the street. The truck drivers care little and refuse to take precautions. Jim finally got a lock-box for the papers but it was broken into as well. “Easiest thing to do is be here when the trucks arrive,” he says.
In fact, one main theme of Jim’s business is an ongoing war with his suppliers. You may wonder why every newspaper dealer carries copies of the Irish Times, the Polish Times, New York Echo, and hundreds of other publications that never seem to move off the shelves. The truth is they are forced to buy them by the distributors. Jim must pre-pay for hundreds of unwanted publications, then spend hours clipping the mastheads for return credit. There are constant hassles. “I’ve got copies going back to 1995,” he says. Sometimes a little publication will fold, leaving him with the bill, The paper that gives him the most difficulty is the moralizing New York Times. Its distributor has a monopoly and until recently owed him five months’ back refunds. (Other news dealers have confirmed to me that the Times is by far the worst paper for gypping its vendors.)
Then there’s the matter of his building. Jim rented for fourteen years, but when his lease expired three years ago the landlord said he was packing it in. With two rent-controlled tenants upstairs he could no longer carry the expenses. The landlord wanted Jim to buy the building. “You think I should buy?” he asked. Knowing what I do about New York rent control, I told him in no uncertain terms not to take it. But nothing is easy in New York. The landlord finally told Jim if he didn’t buy it he’d be out on the street. Now he’s carrying a mortgage plus two rent-controlled tenants. One pays $ 92 a month and has him in court all the time, the other pays $ 196 a month and sublets his extra bedrooms to homeless people for $ 50 a week.
Altogether, Jim and his wife put in fifteen hours a day, 365 days a year, which nets them less than $ 45,000 per annum. With a subway stop next door, they’re open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., although they do close in the afternoon Sundays and holidays. A year ago I tried to persuade them to allow me and my wife to run the store for a week while they went on vacation. Jim brushed us off but his wife seemed interested. We finally whittled it down to Labor Day weekend, and with a few days to go I was still pushing. Then one afternoon Jim threw down his books in front of me. “You see this?” he said. “Nobody can do this but me. My wife doesn’t know how, nobody knows how. I have to be here every day. If I don’t keep track of these returns I lose two thousand dollars in one weekend.” They didn’t go anywhere on Labor Day.
His wife is a bit different. Like many immigrant wives, she’s a little more at home with English. While more casual about the store, she has apparently channeled her drive into their daughters’ education. Once a singer herself, she has classical music playing whenever she’s behind the counter.
Both daughters have gone to music camps since childhood, although Jim has always been skeptical. “No way to make money,” he says. “Study math and science, at least you can be an accountant.” But for now his wife has prevailed. Last year the elder daughter was first violinist at LaGuardia High School, near Lincoln Center. “She’s the one person at LaGuardia you know is headed for something big,” another LaGuardia student told me. Last fall she performed a concerto with the LaGuardia orchestra. Jim’s wife sat in the front row but he didn’t arrive until the concert was half over. Somebody had to watch the store.
Now that our kids are growing up, they are beginning to appreciate Jim as more than just a generous candy-store owner. “He works so hard,” they say. ” He deserves everything good he gets.” Frankly, I’m hoping some of his immigrant’s determination will rub off on them.
And so we go back every chance we get, to stock up on water pistols, baseball cards, and copies of Mad magazine, Still, I hardly ever leave without thinking the next time we visit I could be stuffing flowers into his already rusting security gate.
William Tucker writes frequently from New York for THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
