Dave's Fanboy Sermon

By now most of you know that Ground Zero has moved. It's not a big move, really. In fact, I can see the old location right out my front window. I've often heard that moving across the street is a hundred times harder than moving across the state. I've done both and I can now tell you it is the truth.

It's not a move we would've made if we hadn't been forced into it. We had been at the old location for fifteen years and that was something we were quite proud of. Now, if I remember correctly, Star Books in Lubbock has been at its present location for almost thirty years. So fifteen is certainly not any kind of record, but it is still a pretty long time for a comic shop - especially one here in Tyler. In that time we had about a dozen next door neighbors move in and then close. The Ink Well, Edward Jones, Creative Candies, Digicom, Redneck Computers, Fast Cash (and a few others who's names escape me at the moment) all came and went in the space next to us. The center had also seen Second Look Sports, C.J.s Hobbies, Gold's Gym, Delio's, Will's Seafood, Carina's Video, Extreme Audio and a host of other businesses arrive and depart. Through it all, we stuck it out and sold comics and the occasional game or two.

So why move? Well, basically what happened was this: the landlord shows up a month or two ago and asks us if we would be interested in moving to the store to the south end of the shopping center. It seems the health food store next door to ours is itching for more space and the owner wants to accommodate them. As we’ve been in the same spot for fifteen years, our rent is actually lower than most of the other spots in the center (most of whom have been there less than half as long), including our next door neighbors. By moving us to the far end of the center, they can add our space to that of the health food store (at the higher rate of rent) and sign us to a new lease (also at a higher rent than we were paying). It’s pretty win-win for the landlord and I can see why he would want to do it. For my own part, however, I’m somewhat reluctant. They assured us that they wouldn’t force us to move; which I’ve come to find out is landlord-speak for “starrt packing.”

The south end of the center is mostly offices and other non-retail use. It’s pretty much a dead zone for retail sales. It also angles away from the loop, making it oddly invisible to traffic. When a baseball card shop occupied that space several years ago, hardly a day went by that someone didn’t come into Ground Zero and ask where it was. Obviously, our spot was something we really didn’t want to give up. However, we had been on a month to month lease for a long time, and at a lower rate of rent as well, so the writing was on the wall that we were not going to be occupying that space much longer.

Illustration by Gerald Kelley