North Richmond businesses struggle, even if they’re ‘Lucky’

This week, KALW News is taking you to unincorporated North Richmond, where the median household income is about $24,000. Yesterday, we met some locals like Tamika Cooper, who expressed her dismay at the status of her neighborhood.

TAMIKA COOPER: We don’t even have the bus stops out here like we used to. We don’t even have mailboxes anymore. We have one mailbox, in the whole North Richmond, one mailbox.

Unincorporated North Richmond is about the size of San Francisco’s Chinatown. But while the famous San Francisco enclave is bustling with hundreds of businesses, this neighborhood has only three. There’s no gas station. No grocery store. No restaurant. Not even a fast food joint.

That means Lucky Bramaih’s little corner store is the place residents rely on for basic needs, like bread and juice. But, as Robert Rogers reports, it’s also one of the few places people can find a sense of community.

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ROBERT ROGERS: A little boy is standing at the counter in Lucky Bramaih’s market. He wants to buy a pastry and a soda. But first, he has to do a little math.

BOY: I could buy a honey bun and a juice for a dollar.

LUCKY BRAMAIH: You better take one honey bun and a fifty-cent soda.

BOY: But I don’t have fifty cents.

BRAMAIH: You got a dollar in your hand, and you got fifty cents. And another fifty cents is one dollar.

Lucky smiles as he talks. He tries to chat with all the kids who come into his market. He says it’s not always easy, especially when they’re with their friends.

BRAMAIH: Mostly you can’t talk to them in a group, you can only talk to them one on one.  Whenever you see the kids and you want to get their attention, do not get their attention when there is more than one, because they not going to pay any attention. But one on one, they hear me when I talk to them.

He does a lot of that talking when school gets out. Lucky’s words are thick with the accent of his native Nigeria. The kids giggle and sometimes they’re rowdy, but Lucky doesn’t mind. He lets them hang out and doesn’t look at them like they’re going to steal anything.

BRAMAIH: They are my customers, they are my kids, and they grow up right in front of me.

They are growing up in a tough place. North Richmond has about 2,500 residents living in a virtual dead zone hidden within the sprawling metropolis that is the Bay Area. It’s dead in terms of development and investment – and some would say in terms of hope. Unemployment rates here hover over 30%. 

The dire stats are part of why Lucky says he set up shop here about seven years ago, opening his small store at the corner of Market and Fifth streets.

Lucky sees himself and his store as a small glimmer of hope in an economic wasteland.

BRAMAIH: And I always tell them money is not the issue. I am not here for the money. I make money being here. But my main purpose is for them to look at me as someone who looks like them and serves them on the other side, which doesn’t happen in many places all over the country.

When you talk with longtime residents, the common theme is that North Richmond wasn’t always so bleak. Tamika Cooper has lived in North Richmond for all of her 33 years, but she wanted to call her mother to get a fuller picture of the vibrant community this was in the 1950s and Sixties.

TAMIKA COOPER’S MOTHER (on the phone): We had two or three gas stations.

TAMIKA COOPER: Oh we did?

MOM: One on Sanford.

COOPER: That’s the only one I remember.

When Cooper’s mother was growing up here, she could just walk down the block for restaurants and groceries.

COOPER: Remember, how many stores we had? We had Mr. Nicks, we had Mr. Freeman, we had Don Stewart.

COOPER: Remember the man that didn’t take the pennies?

MOM: (Laughter)

But then things changed. The people got poorer, and those with money moved out. Violence went up. New businesses didn’t want to move in. Cooper, who works in the parks department, is one of the few residents who both lives and works in the neighborhood.

ROBERTS: Where do you do your shopping for your groceries?

COOPER: I vary. But I do not shop in North Richmond for groceries. You can’t. It’s not enough meat. It’s not enough produce. It’s not enough for vegetables. They don’t have broccoli out here. I love my community, but we’re at the bottom of the bottom.

Which makes Lucky’s Market all the more important. He doesn’t sell produce, but he does offer a place for people to eat. The neighborhood has no restaurants, and many people don’t have the transportation to get to the grocery stores in neighboring towns. So Lucky has taken to running a makeshift sandwich shop in his market, slapping together cold cuts and condiments. Cedric Kelley comes by Lucky’s Market daily.

CEDRIC KELLEY: Everybody know him, everybody like him, everybody respect him. I eat the roast beef sandwich, buy my t-shirts, just about everything. Household stuff. Chips, cereal, soda, water …”

At around noon on a weekday, Lucky is doing brisk business. Some customers linger inside or out front, chatting. Lucky lets people hang out as long as they want.

CHILD: I just like it cause it’s my favorite store.

But despite the sunshine and good vibes on the block this day, Lucky’s market has not always been able to ward off the effects of violence and poverty.

KID: There’s too much shooting. See all them bullet holes over there? And there’s too much gangbanging.

BRAMAIH: I’ve been through several drive-by shootings, that is worse than being robbed. People get killed … one person has been killed in front of my store. I would say more than six or seven people have been shot in front of my store.

But, to Lucky, all the problems – the crime, the poverty, the pollution – they motivate him to stay. He doesn’t sell alcohol even though he could make a lot more money that way. Lucky says an influential Imam at his mosque inspired his public service years ago.

BRAMAIH: And he said we black people should go back to the ghetto and establish a business. By we establishing that, we show the young ones that we can own a business, we can run a business, and that enough will have a good impact in our community.

Lucky goes back to his cutting board and preps another cold cut sandwich. Moments later, he lets the customer – a teen boy with his hat cocked sideways – slide when he comes in twenty cents short on his bill. He says that’s just part of doing business here in this part of town.

BRAMAIH: How much money does a man need to live with? Not much.

For Crosscurrents, in North Richmond, I’m Robert Rogers.

Robert Rogers is a reporter from the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Listen to Part 1, and tune in to 91.7 FM tomorrow at 5 p.m. for Part 3 of Rogers’s series on North Richmond. In the meantime, read up more on Lucky's market here.