Severe rains pummeled the East Coast this weekend, leading to record rainfall at Kennedy Airport and flooding throughout the region, especially hard-hit Staten Island. And sadly, the New Dorp location of Jim Hanley’s Universe comics shop was badly hit, as the above video shows. On Twitter, it was announced that:
Our Staten Island store in New Dorp will be closed again Monday. It suffered extensive rain damage in this weekend’s storms….We have a lot of work to do, but we have the best staff in the world and we WILL reopen.
A clean-up effort is under way but the total amount of damage looks severe.
JHU New Dorp is one of two stores owned by Jim Hanley — the other, in Manhattan opposite the Empire State Building, is one of the best known shops in New York, and a fixture on the scene–however, even if insurance covers some of the loss, this is a huge burden to the chain. Writer Vito DelSante, who works in the Manhattan store, wrote:
I have to get to the point here. I’m not sure when the Staten Island store will reopen (I had the day off, but according to Twitter they will be open tomorrow), and in this economic climate, this is a very huge hit. All stores, all over the country, are suffering. So, I’m asking everyone in the NYC comic book reading area to come to JHU this week and spend some money. Yes, support your local comic store, take care of your pulls if you have them, but stop by Jim Hanley’s Universe on 33rd Street and buy something.
We have an entire aisle of discounted books. We are offering a 25% discount on Avengers 16 and ALL Avengers books this week for our Customer Rewards Program members…come in, sign up and take advantage of this. Every dollar counts. Look, everyone talks about how great a community we comic fans are. I wouldn’t ask or put this out there if it wasn’t absolutely crucial. Come by this week. We’d love to see you.
We consider JHU our “local,” and we’ll be stopping by to plug a few recently noticed holes in our collection this week for sure.
Damn. All of the Jim Hanley stores are something incredible, and I hope the SI branch can recover from this.
Thanks, Heidi. We appreciate you mentioning this and we can’t wait to see you this week.
Oh man. I’m so sorry to hear this. My best friend’s store flooded during the 90’s when the company next store opened a water valve in the bathroom they shared, in order to get out of their lease. Only my friends store filled with water. He said the only thing that kept him from crying is that a script for Titanic was the first thing to float by, when he opened the front door, in the morning. Again, so sorry to hear about this. I feel your pain.
How terrible, I’m down in DC these days but the 33rd street JHU was my main shop for a long time.
I’ll be sure to stop by next time I’m up.
Ugh- bummer. The Jim Hanley crew have always been a great team on so many levels.
I remember when it happened to us (some junkie washed her panties in the sink in her hotel room above the store…. then nodded out and left the water running all night long)– we opened the door, and a cloud of steam poured out.
It really sucks.
Marvel Essentials can really absorb a LOT of water, we found out.
Best of luck in the recovery!
-B
I had minor flooding in my basement apartment (not the first time, most everything is on pallets) before I fixed the pump at 2 AM on Sunday morning. Some freebie manga paperbacks were lost, and I had to empty a few boxes (man, cardboard just wicks up water!) I’ll stop by this week to buy some birthday presents for myself…
Even the Lincoln Center B&N had some flooding back in the day… one of the millionaires upstairs left the water running, taking out about five aisles of books.
Sorry to hear of the flooding. Best of luck for some dry weather this week to help avoid mold and mildew damage throughout the stock, the drywall and flooring.