http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/near-site-of-fatal-shooting-shaw-neighborhood-market-continues-to/article_d2638996-4a40-55cf-8333-f5fb4b75f0fd.html
Near site of fatal shooting, Shaw neighborhood market continues to reach out
October 30, 2014 12:15 am •
By Doug Moore dmoore_at_post-dispatch.com 314-340-8125
"The bread will taste a little sour," explains Shaw Market store manager
Berhe Beyene to first-time takeout customer Craig Hemphill on Wednesday,
Oct. 29, 2014.
Beyene and his wife, Genet (center), started offering Eritrean food every
Wednesday as part of the market's ongoing effort to reach out to a healthy,
diverse neighborhood just east of the Missouri Botanical Garden.
At the front counter of Shaw Market, manager Berhe Beyene greets customers
by name, reaching for their brand of cigarettes before they can ask for
them.
They come in to play the Lotto or to grab a deli sandwich. Seldom does the
makeshift memorial of stuffed animals, flowers and handwritten notes come
up in conversation. It sits across from the market, and Beyene watched it
grow quickly after 18-year-old VonDerrit Myers Jr. was fatally shot by an
off-duty St. Louis police officer three weeks ago.
The shooting was on a Wednesday evening, shortly before closing time.
Wednesday nights at Shaw Market are becoming a tradition for this
neighborhood just east of the Missouri Botanical Garden. That’s when a
steady crowd heads to the back of the store for a takeout plate of Eritrean
food, which includes a small bottle of Perrier with each order.
Orders are often called in days in advance. The $8 plates usually run out.
And once it’s gone, there is no more lentil soup, alicha (vegetable stew),
cucumber and tomato salad, or the spongy bread, known as injera, until the
next Wednesday.
The weekly offering of the vegan, gluten-free meals is part of the market’s
ongoing effort to reach out to a healthy, diverse neighborhood, Beyene
said. After two smelly men leave the store, he pulls out two cans of air
freshener and begins spraying robustly.
“I hate cigarette smoke,” he said.
Two years ago, the market began making plates of Eritrean food and
marketing it to those who were walking to the Whitaker Music Festival, held
at the botanical garden on Wednesday evenings during the summer.
Concertgoers are encouraged to bring a picnic dinner and dine on the lush
lawn.
The meals are part of the market’s ongoing transformation since Beyene
started work here 13 years ago, the last three as manager.
Bars covering cloudy, dirty front windows were removed, and part of a side
wall was taken down to put in another bank of windows. The market is
working with the city to move a trash bin near the front door so outdoor
seating can be added and a mural painted on a retaining wall. And the store
once known as Regal Foods changed its name to reflect the area it serves.
“It’s getting way better,” Beyene, 43, said of both the neighborhood and
the market, which is across Shaw Avenue from Mullanphy Investigative
Learning Center, a public elementary school. He looks out the new side
windows to the memorial, with its fading flowers, deflating balloons and
soggy teddy bears.
“The neighorhood doesn’t deserve this at all,” Beyene said. “It’s a
peaceful, integrated neighborhood.”
But the peace was pierced Oct. 8 when Myers, a black teenager who had been
in the market about 10 minutes earlier buying a turkey sandwich, was shot.
It happened two months after Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen, was
fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson. The protests and
violence that erupted in that St. Louis suburb were now in the heart of the
city.
The gathering place for protests and marches has been outside Shaw Market.
Beyene is fine with that. There have been no problems, and the crowds come
well after the store closes at 8 p.m., he said.
Beyene said he doesn’t think Myers, a regular at the store, had a gun.
Police, supported by gunshot residue tests and ballistics evidence, say
Myers shot at an officer working private security in the neighborhood.
Return fire from the unidentified officer killed Myers.
Posted just inside the front door is a popular passage by the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. from a letter he wrote while in a Birmingham, Ala.,
jail in 1963. The great stumbling block toward freedom of blacks, King
said, is not the white extremist but the white moderate “who constantly
says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your
methods of direct action.’”
Beyene moved to the U.S. from Eritrea 14 years ago, and lives about eight
blocks from the market with his wife, Genet, and four children. Everyone
who comes in for a takeout meal on Wednesdays receives a cup of Eritrean
coffee, known as bun. Serving the coffee to guests is a tradition in
Eritrea, a country in northeastern Africa, tucked between Sudan and
Ethiopia and bordered on the east by the Red Sea. Beyene considers those
who do business with him his guests. The same customs he practiced at home
in Africa should also apply in his American store, he said.
Beyene credits neighbor Cara Jensen, 8th Ward committeewoman, with getting
the Wednesday night meals off the ground. She saw the streets near the
market fill with cars when the botanical garden concerts were held.
“We sat a table out front and gave out samples, and came up with the idea
of picnic boxes that would bring people into the store,” Jensen said as she
waited Wednesday night with her daughter, Lily, for takeout orders. “And
when the music festival ended that first summer, there was still enough
interest to keep it going.”
Laurie Lakebrink and Daniel Romano are both vegetarians and appreciate that
the store offers a healthy dinner option for the neighborhood.
“And it’s bringing neighbors together, where we chit chat,” Romano said.
Adam Woehler said if not for the takeout food, he would probably not stop
in.
“It didn’t look like a place I’d want to come into,” said Woehler, who has
lived in the neighborhood since 2006.
David Mueth said the Wednesday night dinners were part of what makes the
neighborhood great.
“I really love the food. My wife and I will call and reserve plates and
have friends over.”
Beyene smiles at the praise, and apologizes that the coffee was not ready
this particular night.
“I was late,” Genet says apologetically. The customers did not care. They
are just glad the couple is here each Wednesday serving up food that many
of them had not tried before walking into their neighborhood store.
Follow Doug Moore on Twitter _at_dougwmoore
Received on Sat Nov 01 2014 - 21:19:53 EDT