You probably use them without thinking.
Bodega ramps are all over the city. They’re not exclusive to delis, of course. Lots of small shops have them.
They’re anonymous creations, improvisational, typically concrete...
...roundish...
...frequently distressed...
...and occasionally featuring some flourish of color or scoring.
Supported by
The Strange Beauty of New York’s Bodega Ramps
Tom Wilson caught sight of a lumpy, makeshift concrete ramp in front of a bodega called Ultimate State Deli in Brooklyn one afternoon. Wilson is a photographer who teaches earth science in New York City public schools. He had passed Ultimate’s ramp a million times without registering its existence.
But that afternoon, in the slanting sun, the ramp’s grooves and contours reminded him of a photograph he’d seen in a textbook of a glacier.
Spilling from a doorway to bridge the height gap to the sidewalk for hand trucks, strollers and wheelchairs, the roundish ramps can bring to mind glaciers …
… or tongues or clamshells or lava …
… or ziggurats or thumbs or ladles of pancake batter spreading on a griddle. The ramp is a Rorschach test.