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Amidst cleaning products and laundry detergent, they gather every afternoon to smoke cigars and cigarettes, drink beer and soda, swap stories and gossip.

For a group of elderly men in East Harlem, the back of Juan Vega's small bodega has been converted into a hangout. Soloman Kamara is their self-appointed ringleader. At 12:30, the unofficial daily meeting time, he begins shooing them to the back of the store.

"C'mon. Let's go. Move out. Move on back to the back. Let's clear the front," says Kamara. On cue, half a dozen men begin shuffling down the narrow aisles, past the beer cases and into the depths of store.

At the J.F. Grocery store at 121st Street and Lexington Avenue, they talk about the day's Lottery numbers, women, sports, the good ol' days. Grocery crates become tables and chairs as they pass the hours together until the bodega closes at 11 p.m. They purchase little but beer, soda, chips, maybe the occasional sandwich. "This is our senior citizen center," says George Wilson, a retired clerk. "We've been meeting here for years."

Usually, between six and 10 men gather, but sometimes — to the owner's annoyance — they bring friends. "Sometimes I do mind," Vega says. "But you know, if people in the neighborhood, maybe they try to rob you, they see people back there." In the four years that Vega has owned the store, he never has had a robbery.

Enter this New York City bodega and you'll find a place where convenience and community meet. Thousands of bodegas — or Hispanic-owned and Hispanic-run grocery stores — line the city's neighborhoods. They serve as more than a place to pick up milk, eggs or produce reminiscent of their native land. Many New Yorkers say they drop by their bodegas to pick up ethnic newspapers, converse in their native tongue and gossip about their neighborhoods, old and new.