There are no pieces of real estate more mysterious, more disturbing, more alluring, more capable of mayhem and majesty, than the little old bar or corner grocery store tucked away in the corner of some urban jungle.

In a way that even churches or ethnic clubs can’t match, certain pubs and food stores exude an evangelical pull that is difficult to explain. Often without marketing, often in the absence of advertising or anything more than the underground word-of-mouth, these purveyors of that certain something exude a message that may say “come hither,” or may warn, “beware all you middle-class dorks who are attracted or repelled; do not enter here.”

As an intellectual abstraction, we all revel in the freedom we have to “associate,” to come together with few restrictions, with little oversight, with the sense of adventure that comes through unexpected coming together.

But some of those bars, some of those little convenience stories, aren’t meant for the likes of you. Nothing so unsubtle as a bouncer at the front door of a cool club saying you’re too uncool to cross the threshold. No, the neon-lit, often rundown little purveyors of booze and girls and bags of potato chips simply create an aura that tells us if we belong.

To be sure, some of the joints are “black” enough or “Hispanic” enough to give the Anglos pause, but more interesting are the establishments that are theoretically inviting — but not really.

Roxbury’s “Packy Connors” pub is one of those places. It’s “popular,” but it gives off a sense of unease that lets you know if you’re really welcome. The joint has been in the news of late, after four people were shot outside — not the first time unpleasantness has erupted there. And that’s just what makes places such as Packy Connors so fascinating, in an irritating, spooky sort of way.

Who Pays?

What do you do with a joint like that? The Licensing Board has, and probably will, get cranky and shut it down, at least for a while. There’s nothing terribly unusual in that, but the act of closing a purveyor of hooch usually leaves the mystery unanswered: What was it, exactly, that the pub did wrong? You can order it to “control” its customers, but, of course, by the very nature of the customers it attracts, the chances for domestic tranquility are slim.

Society is both fascinated and repulsed by the Packy Connors environment because it provides a laboratory for a murky sociological experiment. Does the gin joint create an environment in which the customers get stupid? Or, through the mystery of consumer affection, do the “wrong” kind of people simply show up and create mayhem?

The Boston City Council recently approved a zoning change that limits the amount of advertising signage the little food joints can plaster all over their windows. The theory is that the evangelical pull of the little grocers would transform the neighborhood population into a crazed cult of beer-drinking, cigarette-smoking fiends, if the stores were left unchecked to advertise at the behest of Satan.

Again, notice that the powers-that-be are not focused on the moral or psychological frailty of the local population. No, it is the store that should be tamed — just as it is the bar that should be closed.

It goes on all over. Even as we speak, the God-fearing community activists of midtown Atlanta are protesting the likelihood that a cool new bar would replace a formerly cool, naughty bar on Peachtree Street. The protestors’ website: ‘Keepmidtownsafe.com. Yes, the new bar, as if by black magic, will manufacture crime and brawling and alcoholic excess.

In New Haven, Conn., home to stuffy Yale University, the city fathers have banned 24-hour gas stations and convenience stores, as a crime fighting tool. Again, it is the businesses that are presumed to have magical powers of mayhem, not the unwashed masses. It is not police protection that New Haven needs, but protection from retail.

The mayor of Troy, N.Y. is attempting to shoot down convenience stores from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. — when Troy is routinely transformed into Hell on Earth.

The naughty little clubs. The tiny little grocers. I can’t resist them. Stop them, stop them, before they sin again.