GrantSanders YACK on: Brazil Mart

I’m a little ticked off this week. A tad hot under the collar. I recently got wind of this whole Brazil Mart fiasco, and I wish I had been upwind instead of down because the whole thing really, really stinks.

You may have seen the Brazil Mini Mart down on the corner of Easton Street and North Beach Street. They sell all kinds of things you’d find in a regular convenience store. Coffee. Newspapers. Snacks, Soda. Cigarettes. Prepaid Phone cards. They also sell things you’ll rarely find in your typical 7-11 or Cumberland Farms, like fuzzy lingerie, soft South American cheeses and several products with labeling in Portuguese or Spanish that, frankly, is a total mystery to me as to what’s inside.

The store is small. They could move to my kitchen and call it an expansion. And the place has a funky other-worldly air, as if you stepped off the street on Nantucket and were transported to someplace very, very different and very, very far away. The owner is a 25-year-old Nantucket high school grad who is originally from Brazil, and her business caters to the Hispanic population on Nantucket by offering international products unavailable anywhere else on the island, and by providing tri-lingual travel services and financial advice such as mortgage information.

I recently heard from a friend of mine that there are over 900 Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking residents on Nantucket (Enough for me to think about starting a Latino version of YACK, the Nantucket online community at www.yackon.com). And as you might imagine, word travels fast in this small place. “Go to Brazil Mart. They take care of you.” And that they have. One North Beach Street has become a busy corner year-round with people of varying nationalities stopping in to wire money to family abroad, to get some advice in a language they understand and to have a little taste of some food that reminds them of home. Brazil Mart is a success.

Not so fast there.

The neighbors have been complaining. And it looks like the landlord will be evicting the Brazil Mart in the very near future and replacing it with a variety store that sells many of the same things that Brazil Mart sells, except for the products that cater to the Hispanic community.

“Too many people coming and going,” they say. “Too many parking issues.” Funny thing is, though, no one seems to complain about all the people coming and going at the Juice Bar or the Hub or The Pacific National Bank. No one seems to single out a specific business when they can’t find a parking space on Main Street or Federal or Easy Street. And everyone appears to be overlooking the impact that boat trailers and the Nantucket Island Resorts dormitories have on the parking situation in that part of town. Brazil Mart is not the problem there. Just ask Former Fire Chief Bruce Watts. I drove down there this weekend and found a legal parking space with no problem at all.

Still, they say, “too many people coming and going.” Hold that thought. And then realize that if there is another variety store in that space, there will (hopefully for the new owner) still be plenty of people coming and going. But in the new store they just won’t be Brazilian, Jamaican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Chilean, Argentinean, Mexican, or anything but white folks.

I guess it’s okay if there are people coming and going to grab a cup of coffee, smokes or a newspaper as long as they’re wearing $200 loafers and driving a Porsche Cayenne.

And conversely, it's perfectly okay that our Jamaican and Latino community members are cutting our lawns and cleaning our homes and prepping our food, and ringing up our groceries, but god forbid they live their lives and drive into town to pick up a newspaper and wire some money home. God forbid they walk the same streets as white multi-millionaires. Now see what I mean about the stink?

So how can this happen? Especially in the year 2005? Because in this case discrimination is good business. The property owner wants to expand and therefore has to go before the Planning Board. Some Planning Board members have already let it slip in public meetings how they feel about “foreigners” who are “parking illegally to buy cigarettes and soda.” So the landlord has offered what appears to be an impromptu quid pro quo in last week’s Planning Board meeting: I’ll drop kick the Brazil Mart, if you approve my expansion plans. A simple transaction.

Money talks, as they say. And on Nantucket, it often talks rather rudely and loudly, driving others away in the process. That’s the idea.

So it appears, as of this writing, that the Brazil Mart will be out sometime soon. My hope is that it can find a new space somewhere that does not charge a fortune in rent (sorry, Brazil Mart, my kitchen is currently in use). Because if this stodgy, old, tight-sphinctered island needs anything, it needs at least one place where one can purchase fuzzy lingerie, soft South American cheeses and products labeled in Spanish or Portuguese that are a mystery to many of us as to what’s inside.

Maybe we’ll learn something about our neighbors in the process.

YACK on.

Grant Sanders is the host of YACK, The Nantucket Online Community at www.yackon.com which now receives over 200 visitors each day. Why not stop in and read all about it?