On Air

Behind the counter at Lucky Mart, between the lottery tickets and a shelf of phone chargers, there is a mixing desk. On Friday nights from ten until two, the store’s owner, a former club DJ who goes by Big Ray, broadcasts a radio show from it to anyone within range of a transmitter that is, strictly speaking, a little stronger than it should be.

The show has no name. Listeners call it “Ray’s” or “the Friday thing”. It plays whatever Ray feels like playing — soul, house, a lot of things from the island his parents came from — interrupted by dedications, phone calls and, inevitably, customers.

Requests at the register

The format is simple: you buy something, you get a request. A pack of gum gets you a song. A full basket gets you a dedication, read out on air, with feeling. On a busy night the queue goes out the door and the playlist turns into a portrait of the block.

“A club is a thousand strangers. This is forty people I see every day. I know what they need to hear.”

Taxi drivers listen on their last runs. Nurses coming off the late shift listen on the bus. A man who works nights at the bakery across the street has called in every Friday for three years to ask for the same song, and every Friday Ray pretends to be surprised.

At two Ray signs off with the same words every week — “Go home, be good, lock up” — and switches the transmitter off. The store stays open. The block stays awake a little longer. And somewhere a taxi driver turns the radio down and drives the last fare home in the quiet.