Writer Joaquín Botero, who toiled in the pastry department at Chelsea’s Garden of Eden while penning “El Jardín en Chelsea,” now oversees the cheese section at another Manhattan market.
Ex-Garden of Eden worker gains accolades for his prose
By Barry Paddock
Chelsea Garden of Eden shoppers who have struggled to choose between the store’s 38 varieties of balsamic vinegar, or floundered before the 48 feet of shelf space given over exclusively to olive oils, may not have been shopping in anonymity after all.
In fact, thanks to an immigrant worker (and former working journalist) lurking behind the pastry counter, some now star in a piece of award-winning, Spanish-language narrative nonfiction.
“El Jardín en Chelsea,” a book of profiles, anecdotes and social observations of the store’s customers and diverse crew of workers, was penned by 35-year-old Joaquín Botero, a native of Colombia who launched his literary career after giving up a full-time job at the Spanish-language daily newspaper Hoy to work in the pastry and coffee department of Garden of Eden, at 162 W. 23rd St., from November 2004 to October 2005.
The book, out now in Colombia, may soon be marketed in other Spanish-speaking countries, as well as in New York City.
As a teenager in Medellin, Colombia’s second biggest city, Botero charged high school classmates 200 pesos to listen to his epic oral retellings, the night before exams, of assigned books like “Crime and Punishment”and “Don Quixote,” favorites of his that classmates had made only halfway through. When teachers finally caught wind of the money-making scheme, they assigned Botero different books than the rest of the class.
He went on to attend Medellin’s Universidad de Antioquia, where, initially denied entry to the university’s journalism school, he studied sociology for three years. “My ability to write simple things, a simple analysis of heavy books, helped me to survive,” he said of studying Karl Marx and other social theorists. “I would ask myself, how can I apply this to regular things?”
He uses the same concrete style in “El Jardín en Chelsea.” “I try to write the simplest way possible,” he said. “So my mother, my aunts, can understand. It may be a beautiful word, but if it’s not a common word, I don’t use it.”
Needed for the system
Botero expected to land a job as a writer when he graduated college in 1999, but with Colombia in the midst of an economic crisis, he could find no work. His thoughts turned to the United States, which he had visited twice. “I grew up watching the same shows you watch,” he said. “I remember the Osmond Brothers and ‘Little House on the Prairie,’ Madonna, Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain.”
Although he sat through some English classes growing up, he couldn’t understand a word anyone said when he arrived in New York City for good in 1999. Planning to overstay his visa, he knew there was no turning back. He studied the closed captioning on his TV, dictionary in hand, while staying with an aunt in Sunnyside, Queens, for six months before finding an apartment on the Lower East Side.
He concealed his undocumented status from employers, and today is critical of what he sees as the hypocrisy of U.S. policy. “They know there are millions of us,” he said, “and we are needed for the system to run.”
He was soon hired by Hoy, the Spanish-language daily newspaper, where he worked for three years as a staff reporter. He eventually forsook his journalistic ambitions to join the ranks of the city’s food-industry workers. “I got tired of working in Spanish media with Hispanic people on Hispanic issues,” he said. “I wanted to experience the city from a different point of view.”
Botero found work as a delivery boy for a midtown Manhattan kosher deli, where he made about $250 a week, half as much as he did at Hoy. But a few months into the new job, he was seized by a desire to document his experience journalistically, just as he’d documented fires and crime for Hoy.
“I woke up earlier,” he said. “I didn’t watch a movie or read. I wrote down a list of topics, characters, themes, names—the building, the bicycles, the street, the owners.”
His book about his days as a delivery boy remains unpublished. But not long after Garden of Eden hired him, Botero read online about a new, international Spanish-language nonfiction writing contest called Premio Crónicas Seix Barral.He felt a nonfiction contest was especially important for the Spanish-speaking world. “With all the hard reality, all this violence,” he said of Latin America, “the artists turn it into fiction. You have all the great works of fiction like ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude.’ But we don’t have an ‘In Cold Blood.’ This annoys me a lot. You don’t find great books of investigative journalism, or they don’t get the attention they deserve.”
He submitted to the contest a sample of his observations of life at Garden of Eden. He wrote about cultural identity as expressed through the many different kinds of bread the store carries, about the Korean manicurists who came in every day to order coffee, about a coworker whose parents are Hmongs, an Asian nomadic tribe. He profiled neighborhood eccentrics like Robert Baxter, who at 15 was hired as a carnival magician and went on to appear in 1949 on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Now suffering from osteoporosis, Baxter leans on the cart he wheels everywhere and entertains Garden of Eden employees with tales of competing as a boxer and entertaining troops in the Korean War. The old man flirts mercilessly with the store managers, saying things like, “I’m an old man and may get lost. I need a pretty girl to show me around the store.”
More than 400 writers submitted work to Premio Crónicas Seix Barral to be judged by The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson, Mexican journalist and novelist Juan Villoro, and Argentinean historian and journalist Martin Caparrós.
In an e-mail message to Chelsea Now, Anderson, whose books include the definitive biography of Che Guevara, said of Botero, “I have a hunch he is a young writer who is going to go far; I hope he does, because he deserves to. I was very, very impressed with his social observations, and his prose, in “El Jardín en Chelsea”; there was intellectual clarity, human empathy and a sense of humor there—an unusual combination, and I felt quite excited by the discovery.”
Sweet as Sugar
A pivotal chapter of the book, titled “Azucar,” profiles Gerard Darlington, an African-American occasional drag queen who has worked in the prepared foods section of Garden of Eden for over a decade, becoming a beloved fixture to many customers. Known to all as Sugar, he takes nine sugars in his coffee, Botero wrote in his book, except for the days he asks for “crazy sugar”—10 spoonfuls, which are patiently mixed into his drink. Not surprisingly, Sugar rarely eats salad or vegetables.
Botero wrote that Sugar performs his job’s mundane routines with the grace of a figure skater and that he never hurries to punch in, even if late, nor ever seems in a rush to leave. Sugar’s locker, Botero reported, is bedecked with pornographic images of black men, visible to the Bangladeshi cashiers and customers who venture to the back to use the store’s bathroom.
The book reveals that, while growing up, Sugar’s parents sent him to psychiatrists to be “treated” for his homosexuality, and that after his mother died of cancer, his strained relationship with his father improved.
“I didn’t know what to think at first,” Sugar, 43, said now of Botero’s writing. “He asked about me and my life and where I was from. I miss that he’s not here now.”
Botero went on to write that he had never in his life counted down the days to a party until being invited to a birthday celebration Sugar was throwing for himself in his Washington Heights apartment. But it turned out to be a boring affair, full of neighborhood teenagers who talked loud and didn’t dance, until finally something unexpected happened: Sugar and Botero’s coworker Leon, a small and very serious-minded punk rocker from Mexico, began dancing to the blaring hip-hop with 6-foot-plus Sugar. The sight made the party wholly worthwhile, Botero wrote.
He went on to state that Sugar does not subscribe to the business maxim that no employee is indispensable. After a manager chastised him for giving too generous a shrimp sample to a favorite customer, Sugar stormed out and didn’t show up for work the next day. A couple days passed, and the manager finally called and pleaded with Sugar to return.
“It’s like working with family, I’ve been here so long,” Sugar said recently while at work, wearing baggy jeans, silver studs in his chin and nose, and an elaborate silver earring with four molded, glimmering Gs that stand for Gerard. He was crowned with a sort of glorified hairnet, made of beautifully woven white lace.
“It’s my favorite guy behind the counter,” a customer commented.
“Don’t worry,” Sugar responded. “I’ll take care of you, honey.”
“Everything is ‘honey,’” Sugar explained later to Chelsea Now. “Everything is love.”
Making the big time
On April 28, 2006, Botero had plans to see a movie at Cinema Village off of Union Square after a long day in the pastry department of Todaro Brothers, where he found work after leaving Garden of Eden in 2005. He was surprised to see his girlfriend waiting outside the theater with flowers. His sister, who works for Colombia’s largest newspaper, had called with news that although his book had not won the grand prize of Premio Crónicas Seix Barral, which came with $20,000 and a book deal, he was the first of 10 honorable mentions. His name would soon appear in news accounts of the award throughout Latin America.
Botero went on to befriend other finalists in the contest, including grand-prize winner Hernán Iglesias Illa, who also lives in New York. Illa wrote about Argentinean bankers and bond traders working on Wall Street and their influence on Argentina’s economy.
Publicity surrounding Botero’s honorable mention brought a book deal, and publishing house Aguilar released “El Jardín en Chelsea” in Colombia last summer. Excerpts from the book have appeared in several Spanish-language magazines. Botero’s profile of Sugar was published in a Peruvian magazine, to Sugar’s great delight, though he does not read Spanish.
Senior management of Garden of Eden, which has five New York City stores, was unaware of the book’s existence when contacted by Chelsea Now. “Is that legal?” asked Chris Mulrenin, head of human resources. “No one told us. We had no idea of this.”
Father figure
In one of the final chapers of “El Jardín en Chelsea,” titled “Papa,” Botero wrote of John La Veglia, a Garden of Eden manager who became a father figure to him. La Veglia, who is in his 60s, has white hair that reminds Botero of his father, who was 55 when Botero was born, and died when Botero was 19.
“The way he treated everyone, I was always fascinated by,” Botero said of working for La Veglia. While the store’s owners were always giving orders, La Veglia had no problem moving heavy boxes and wiping down work spaces himself. What’s more, La Veglia, who was born in Brooklyn and is of Irish, Italian and German heritage, had read English translations of authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Fuentes.
“He always encouraged me to write,” Botero said of La Veglia. “Being an immigrant, you feel really lonely in the city. You connect with these people to get affection.”
La Veglia, who ran his own New York bookstore before entering the food industry, said he was intrigued by Botero’s project during their time together at Garden of Eden. “He’s coming from a different perspective. Would a bike messenger write something?” La Veglia said. “He engaged with everyone. He was curious and open with everyone.”
Botero and La Veglia recently reunited: Botero just landed a new job selling, cutting and wrapping cheese at another Manhattan gourmet store—where La Veglia is now a manager.
As Botero toils, he awaits his first royalty check for “El Jardín en Chelsea,” for which he received a $1,500 advance, and hopes the publisher will have the book translated into other languages. Meanwhile, he continues to spread the virtues of literary nonfiction to the Spanish-speaking world. Last year, for a Colombian magazine, he interviewed his hero, American writer Gay Talese, at Talese’s Upper East Side townhouse. Talese is a pioneer of the creative nonfiction Botero has devoted himself to.
Botero now lives in an apartment above a bike repair shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which he has painted brightly and filled with friends’ art. “He is a New Yorker,” La Veglia said of Botero. “You ask him if he wants to go back, he says, ‘Oh, no.’ He’s equally an American as if he was born here.”
Botero said he is in pursuit of his own version of the American dream. “I want to live in the city, with all its diversity,” he said. “I’m not dreaming to live in a house in the suburbs.”
