Gateway shopping center in Brooklyn was (relatively) packed.

Cars are still submerged on Wall Street, regular subway service may not resume for weeks and huge swaths of Lower Manhattan lie in darkness, but small signs suggest that New Yorkers are more than ready to return to normal—or at least feeling a little stir crazy.

As soon as the rains stopped Tuesday afternoon, the streets of Crown and Prospect Heights filled with joggers, apparently undeterred by the fact that all New York City parks remain closed and that the sidewalks are littered with tree branches. And not all of them looked like the fitness gurus who can be found running in any squall. We spotted at least one runner pausing gratefully at the stoplight (most of them were working, although a few flashed yellow).

Bodegas, restaurants and bakeries drew crowds of hungry Brooklynites, even in neighborhoods where no one had lost power. Scratch, on Bedford Avenue in Bed-Stuy, contended with a line stretching out the door and a dwindling supply of baked goods in the late morning. Apparently, even one day of home cooking was one day too many for some. Roman's in Fort Greene was also open for foodies with cabin fever, as was Marlowe & Sons in Williamsburg, which The Observer heard was also been packed with desperate gourmands before the storm struck on Sunday.

At Gateway Center in East New York, the Target and Home Depot were mobbed, although most of the other stores remained shuttered. Were shoppers worried about shortages in the East Coast supply chain or just looking to get out of the house? Even those who weren't busy stimulating the local economy were out surveying the damage, blinking into the overcast sky as they studied the uprooted trees and leaf-damp streets.

kvelsey@observer.com

ZOMG SEX.

Now, in keeping with the times, they are apparently adding one more item to the cornucopia of sexually-enabling wares they already offer:

Fifty Shades of Grey.

Yes, the bestselling novel ostensibly with some kind of plot but most significantly with characters engaging in bestselling BDSM sex within its pages that have enraptured and titillated so many Americans horny suburbanites and overwrought newspaper columnists already is, at least in one bodega, as crucial to their supply as a box of Mallowmars in December.

Writer and founding editor of Jezebel.com Anna Holmes Tweeted out "There are now bodegas in NYC selling 'Fifty Shades of Grey'" with the following photographic evidence:

To be fair, the top books are Fifty Shades Freed, one of the titles in the Fifty Shades series. And it's only one bodega! That said, the bodega industry operates much like the collective consciousness, which is to say: Once an idea's out there, they're all on it. Like selling K-2, or whatever the latest fake synthetic drug is. Which also goes without mentioning they all use a bunch of the same suppliers.

Seeing a bodega stock a popular book isn't uncommon: When the last few Harry Potter books came out, not a few bodegas snatched some copies and marked them up in exchange for the convenience of having them around for their neighborhood regulars. But copies of Fifty Shades, while selling well, aren't inducing bookstore-raiding pandemonium. But it apparently has enough of a draw to appear on a bodega register. And if there's one constant among all of New York City's bodegas and the unique, unlikely items they sometimes sell, it's that someone will always buy it.*

Regardless, for whatever the milestone "A Book Carried by New York City Bodegas" is worth, Fifty Shades of Grey has finally reached it. Duly noted.

[*Exception: The cat. Nobody ever pays for boedga cats. If you've ever paid for a bodega cat, you have been despicably hosed.]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek/

They weren't even close. The New York Post reports that since the cigarette levy was upped to the nation's highest in July, sales have nosedived 27 percent across the state. 

While the declining sales may spell trouble for your local bodega owner, it doesn't mean people are smoking less. There's an intriguing phenomenon where New York towns bordering Vermont and Pennsylvania have seen cigarette sales nearly vanish. Nictotine in the water over there? Well, not exactly. Residents are simply driving a few miles and buying their packs for $6.00 instead of $11.60. And though they're farther away, Manhattan-dwellers are making the same trip, the Post says.

Smokers may have found a way around the taxes, but the convenience store owners taking the hit aren't pleased. "Every tax increase drives more smokers to that dark, shadowy, unregulated, unlicensed, untaxed side of the street," James Calvin, of the New York Association of Convenience Stores, told the Post. "The whole policy is self-defeating."

So, support the bodega workers! Hand them your 14 bucks for a pack and don't think twice about it.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234