It’s a little after 1:30 on a bright, sunny midweek afternoon at Overland Food Mart & Liquor. A steady trickle of customers enters the shop along a busy stretch of Page Avenue in a working-class town in St. Louis County.

The store sits next to a doughnut shop with a broken front window, just a little west of St. Louis city limits and a little south of St. Louis Lambert International Airport.

One young man with sagging jeans buys a couple of mini-bar size José Cuervo bottles. A 70-something man in sunglasses and a navy cap purchases a bottle of Remy Martin and two 40-ounce cans of malt liquor.