The wildflowers lining the front walk nod against a slight breeze as Mona Fontes strings a banner sign between two fenceposts that divide the sprawling lawn from the narrow sidewalk. The wide front stoop behind her is empty, save a few plastic lawn chairs stacked to one side of the bright red door.
Nestled between a mixed-use vacant lot and deceptively lazy Fifth Street, Bodega 420’s inviting lawn is as welcoming as the community it serves. The converted residence is Roosevelt Row’s only locally-owned grocery, but feels more like a home than a market.
“We … had talked to a lot of the people over at Jobot—different people who came in and lived in the neighborhood—about what they felt like the neighborhood needed, and this was the one thing that kept coming up over and over again,” said Mona, who along with husband Adrian Fontes opened Bodega 420 last May.
At the time, the back rooms were home to Adrian Fontes’s law offices, but the front rooms were unused. Adrian and Mona added a couple of shelving units and declared Bodega 420 open for business just days before the Phoenix Public Market, the neighborhood’s only other local grocery, closed its doors.
Now the shelving has been banished to the next room to make way for a pegboard laden with hand tools and a shiny glass counter showcasing name-brand candy bars and tobacco paper. On the other side of the tiny front room, a two-foot tall mini library crammed with worn paperbacks and children’s titles is dwarfed by a refrigerated case offering locally-produced milk, butter and cheese.
Across the creaking wooden floorboards and through the doorway into the next room is a mountain of shiny local produce across an aisle from pizza cutters, which dangle above zip ties and sponges for paint rollers. A row of potted baby tomato plants next to a shelf of tampons lines the sill between this room and the adjacent one, which holds cleaning products and bulk dried chili peppers.
Adrian’s law offices have moved to a building with more space. The very back of the store is now an art gallery and a children’s clothing consignment shop, and the front lawn serves as an open-air venue to a host of local musicians and bands on First and Third Fridays.
“It’s just kind of evolving,” Mona said, surveying the front room’s display of bulk dried beans, quinoa, lentils and rice, her hands on her hips and her head cocked to the left side. “But basically our biggest thing is to make sure we do what the community wants.”
And there’s never any doubt about what the outspoken community wants, thanks to the chalkboard wall behind the cash register. “Bulk nuts” and “Paint” are just a few of the scribbled words in the dusty rainbow of suggestions to augment Bodega 420’s stock. The store already carries a little bit of nearly everything except spray paint and meat, and getting those is an issue of logistics, Mona said.
“Our plan is not really to be a prep area because we’d have to revamp a whole lot of kitchen space if we were going to do that,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of space anyway, so we would have to get meats and things that were prepackaged.”
Carrying cans of spray paint for local artists would also be a hassle, she said—the paint cabinet would need to stay locked to prevent vandalism, especially by the ever-growing First Friday Art Walk crowds that spill from the sidewalks and into the store.
Kevin Flanagan, a local actor who volunteers at Bodega on Monday nights, said the fresh produce is usually a best-seller.
“Where else do you go to get a fresh pear within fourteen blocks of here?” he said. “The alternatives are Circle K. You can’t really get a fresh selection of fruits and vegetables there.”
The sticker price on most of Bodega’s items is slightly higher than at a typical grocery, but the handwritten sign on the front of the cash register assures customers that tax has already been factored in. Mona regularly compares prices with the Safeway at Seventh Street and McDowell Road to make sure she is still pricing things competitively, she explained.
Adrian’s uncle owned a similar store in Nogales, and Mona has fond memories of her grandmother’s small grocery in Indiana, she said. A rope-and-plank swing dangles from the branches of a tree on Bodega’s front lawn for Fontes’s three daughters, ages 8, 5 and 3, who are often at the store after school and on weekends. In many ways, the store is family tradition, but at Bodega 420, “family” means anyone who cares to join.
“It’s really rare that there’s no one on the porch,” Mona said, eyeing the chairs that emptily face the street on this quiet Sunday morning.
Ian Newcomb, a Bodega 420 employee and Fontes family friend, said Adrian can often be found on that porch talking with community members or playing the guitar.
But the family atmosphere takes a backseat to the service it provides the Roosevelt community. Customers enter the store and are immediately confronted by a glass case of condoms and pregnancy tests, which rest alongside tobacco, rolling papers and other smoking paraphernalia. Mona’s daughters are still young and haven’t questioned the contraceptives, she said, but the cigarette case has already sparked some discussions between the parents and their children, especially the oldest daughter.
“She had a friend that brought a book into school that showed lungs after they had been smoking so she is very opinionated that cigarettes are bad,” Mona said. “I guess I’m lucky in a way because she’s not so focused on (pregnancy tests). They’re here together and they’re running around and so they’re not so focused on necessarily those things.
“Of course I have to get onto the three-year-old because she would love nothing more than help me organize (the cigarette) cabinet and I’m like, ‘You can’t do that.’ So that’s kind of a challenge but I suppose in old times even a long, long time ago when they had general stores there were things that people carried that they didn’t want their family members to help with.”
The store’s clientele is as eclectic as the community it serves, Newcomb said.
“I saw this one guy, he had bloodshot eyes and kind of smelled like weed, and he was standing there debating with himself, like, ‘Do I want this snack or this snack?’” Newcomb said. “And then five minutes later a guy in a business suit walks in and buys an energy bar and a can of Monster. It flips. It 180s in a matter of minutes.”
Contact the reporter at chloe.brooks@asu.edu
