Housing
When D.C. Punks Take on a Drugstore Giant
Community members in the city's Mount Pleasant neighborhood organized a punk-rock benefit to support a local grocer and stop a rumored CVS takeover.
BestWorld can be easy to overlook among Washington, D.C.’s grocers. The modest neighborhood supermarket doesn’t sell craft beer on draft like Glen’s Garden Market or dozens of made-in-D.C. wares like Union Kitchen Grocery. It’s an unpretentious landmark in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, one of the city’s least bougie locales. But when shoppers need a ride home with their groceries, BestWorld owner In Suk Pak will drive them himself.
Old-fashioned service helps to explain the fierce loyalty that many residents in the neighborhood feel toward their local supermarket. Even folks who don’t shop there take some comfort in its presence, as a kind of totem of their values: local, independent, and immigrant-operated.