It was a publicly accessible store, and the main entrance was from the street. There was a back entrance you could get to from within the building, but the norm, even for building residents, was to use the front door. I’m not sure the back (interior) door was always open, although i did use it during major snow storms.
No parking, of course. This was in Manhattan.
Goodness, I’m learning a lot from this thread, more than I’d expected.
The elevator from the basement to the sidewalk seems to be a standard feature in Manhattan, where space was limited and I presume storerooms for ground floor retail would be in the basement. Also where (if no alley for a dumpster) they keep the bags of trash until garbage day - I cannot imagine what it’s like to store a week’s worth of dumpster contents in the basement, but they do. Same for some apartment buildings.
Then it’s garbage day and there’s a 6-foot wall of trash bags along the curb.
I just Googled that alley. Indeed, I’ve shot in there more than once. One summer we shot an overnight commercial ( for, I believe, " Batman Forever: The Computer Game ") on the shortest night of the entire year. Since we had to have a completely dark sky, we had a miiiiiiighty short window for shooting in. Kind of amusing. Yes, I know, NYC has a ton of light pollution. That’s a given. But we had to strike as the color temperature of the ambient light in the alley started to shift.
There are other alleys in NYC but this one has the advantage of having a “short view” looking north. It terminates at Canal Street and so you have buildings blocking the northbound view. Kinda cool.
As for supermarkets. I live in Queens, always have aside from a stint in Orange County NY where the Shop Rite in Monroe was so ginormous as to have it’s own weather patterns. 
The supermarkets in Astoria, which counts as closer “city” Queens opposed to opulent neighborhoods filled with all or mostly all stand-alone homes with lovely lawns, are small. The aisles are so narrow that when COVID-19 hit, it was much more frightening to go food shopping than it was to go to the laundromat.
Not finding a particular type of food in the local supermarket? Google around. I would believe that Bronx and Brooklyn will offer similar situations to this: in Queens you not will struggle to find a kind of food, vegetable, packaged/ refrigerated/frozen food from ANYWHERE on the planet. There are markets dedicated to most if not all nationalities.
For example, on Northern Boulevard on the Astoria/ Sunnyside border ( around 42nd St ) is Food Bazaar. My god. I’ve lived here for 12 years and only in the last year or two have explored this gift. It’s ENORMOUS. .And it has aisles solely dedicated to specific ethnic foods. One aisle is marked Korean. Another is marked Vietnam/ Thai and so on. There are “generic” product aisles, but for when you have a hankering for that special cooking oil from Jamaica that your grandmother used to use, or you decide to cook Indian and buy the sauces already jarred, or dozens of other iterations of this, this joint is the real deal.
I’ve found spices I did not know existed. No clue if all stores are like this, but holy mother of god, you want to dive into amazing authentic ethnic cooking supplies? Try this.
Also, of course, if you need something specific at least in NYC you can find it by seeking out a neighborhood filled with people from that part of the planet. This, of course, has nothing to do with New York City.
You’re in Lincoln, Nebraska and need a Vietnamese supermarket? Get yourself over to the Viet Hao market on O Street. Can’t go wrong.
In my NYC experience, the chain supermarkets do well with the core ethnic aisles. They are HIGHLY variable depending on where in NYC you are shopping. My local market has about a half aisle for Spanish foods ( I know, I know, too broad a brush ), a small area for Kosher, about a half aisle for Asian ( I know, etc ).
A market near here has a VERY good Estonian and Latvian aisle. And so on. Genuine packaged Polish foods are easy to come by in some areas, etc. etc. As are gorgeous supplies if you are cooking Ethiopian, etc. Big city. Every body eats.
Our Key Food nearby is configured that it has a decent-sized deliveries only parking area in the back. While it fucks up my day a bit to sit and watch a new big rig driver do the multi-turn jiggle move to get the truck into the lot, I sure do appreciate the deliveries. Not all have this. MANY take their deliveries down the steps on the sidewalk. Chilling. Step wrong and you fall and die.
On a side note, almost none of the chain drug stores I can think of in my part of Queens take deliveries anywhere but on the sidewalk. Rain or shine, bitter cold or smoking hot summer, there are the large blue plastic tubs piled up neatly being watched by a store person. Many dozen at a time. All inventoried and zip tied closed. Fascinating to see. ( One must presume that all drugs aren’t delivered this way but who knows? )