Podlasie Meat Market
Podlasie Meat Market at the corner of 48th Street and 8th Avenue is one of few disruptions of the blocks of Asian restaurants and shops. Eighth Avenue has been the shopping center of Brooklyn’s Chinatown since the 1980s. This fact and the observation of the stores along 8th Avenue suggests that the store is a remnant of the neighborhood’s early European residents and that the present Polish community is small and concentrated in an area.
The store identifies with Poland through its name and color scheme of red and white—Poland’s flag colors—for the awning. The majority of the items in the store—canned goods, snacks, and magazines—had labels in Polish. I assumed that because they were written in a foreign language I would not recognize any of the items. I ended up buying orange juice so my assumption was not completely correct. I did recognize a lot of the canned foods by either a generic name or a specific name such as beans or strawberry jam. I was unfamiliar with the magazines and the snacks. My observation that most items were labeled in Polish should have indicated that the customers were not fluent in English but it did not. Another indicator that I failed to pick up on was the workers—who were extremely polite—were not fluent in English either. There were no other indicators before I overheard a conversation between the cashier and a customer in Polish.
I exaggerate when I imply that the customers only speak Polish. In fact I got a better understanding of the grocery’s importance to the Polish community from a brief conversation with a customer and a blog about Sunset Park. The customer told me that the commercial and residential area around 8th Avenue transitioned to Asian and Hispanic customers and residents over the last fifteen years. The store has survived a change in the neighborhood’s demographics so far but barely. According to the blog there were two Polish food stops in area until March 27 of this year. It is the last Polish not European food stop in the area.
