Aslam said it’s over a hundred years old, where the first record I found of it was at least the 1960s. I was unable to find an exact age of the store known as Essex Card Shop, which has existed at at least three separate locations. If a hardware store is utilitarian, then a proper stationery store borders on frivolity-you don’t need a new folder for the official-looking paperwork you printed out, but wouldn’t you feel important if you did? Workers remove debris from the damaged store. Jayant Patel, the incredibly amiable manager of the store’s day-to-day operations, worked with you to figure out what you needed, even if you couldn’t properly describe it. But Essex Card Shop was a place filled with nice people. There are stores that have things you don’t need but suddenly want, sold by people who don’t care whether you buy or don’t (that’s beneath them). As eulogized as the East Village’s small business community is, it still very much exists. The other storefronts on the west side of Avenue A between Fourth and Fifth Streets, aside from some minor smoke and water damage, were spared-but the interior of Essex Card Shop was a charred and soaked wreck. ![]() ![]() (I rent in the building that also houses Essex Card Shop). That day, I watched the massive FDNY response from my roof above Avenue A. The source of the blaze was determined to be a teenager who had set a fire in the back area of the store. He estimates he lost over $300,000 in merchandise, most of which insurance didn’t cover. “The fire is a lot,” he said, shaking his head. on January 10 on Avenue A, when a blaze quickly grew to engulf thousands of dollars of extremely flammable wares-greeting cards, Moleskine notebooks, an expensive photocopier, and countless knick-knacks accumulated throughout the years. This week, shop owner Muhammad Aslam talked to me about the moments shortly after 4 p.m. Smoke billowing out of the Essex Card Shop on January 10, 2022. I say it was one of the remaining stationrery stores because in January, a fire ripped through the venerable institution. The East Village’s Essex Card Shop was one of the few remaining classic stationery stores downtown-a place where regulars (including myself) and people running a stray errand in the neighborhood could find exactly what they were looking for, even if it wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. Also, they’ll take your passport photo and notarize your lease, no problem. The corridors in these stores are somehow both finite and labyrinthine-compressed into small city plots, you can almost always find what you’re looking for, possibly caked in a fine layer of dust, in a part of the store you thought you’d already explored. This is where you go when you remember a thing exists but cannot properly describe it and it’s exactly what you need-a thumb tack, but really big? Also not shaped quite like a thumb tack? Also, it’s a magnet. They are the refuge of a last-minute school project, where all you need is some glitter, a painty pen, and two-sided tape to really make it look like this presentation on Charlemagne has been in the works for a while. ![]() You know the type-overflowing with notebooks, glue sticks, large cardboard paper stock, outdated atlases, and even model skeletons in bell jars. As Rite Aid and CVS continue their hostile, now decades-long takeover of New York City’s retail corridors, a lonely few stationery stores soldier on.
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