Couch and Slippers
This was seen through the window of a gaudy furniture store that briefly occupied the space of the Hu Department Store. The Hu and this furniture (the name of which I cannot recall) occupied a space on 34th Avenue near Northern Boulevard and 48th Street. The place was later taken up by an industrial lighting concern which I noticed today is going out of business.
For all the years Hu Department Store occupied the space they had an incorrect street address on their façade and on their printed receipts. The façade and receipts said “47-09 Northern Boulevard” when they should have been 47-09 34th Avenue. Maybe they thought Northern Boulevard sounded more prestigious, or maybe given the potentially confusing 3-way intersection there was a zoning rule that allowed businesses to choose whichever address they wanted. The location could pass for either 34th Avenue or Northern to the casual visitor. Or could it? I don’t know, I never looked for it by street address.
As far as I know I spent money at the Hu Department store twice, but could not tell you for sure what items I purchased. Here is a receipt for two items, one at 99¢, the other at $9.99. I have a foggy memory of buying a hat or visor at Hu but I wouldn’t know for sure from this receipt if that was the $9.99 item recorded hereon. Notice the receipt separates the dollars and cents with commas, not the usual decimal point used in the U.S. Hu was, I believe, a Korean owned shop, making it a little odd they would use the comma when (according to this page) the decimal point is the standard in both North and South Korea.
Hu Department Store
The above receipt is from 2012. A few years later, in 2015, I bought some other things at the Hu, this time at a 50% discount. I see now that the newer receipt used the decimal point in its record of the dollars and cents I spent that day. I believe the 50% discount was on account of the store going out of business.
Hu Department Store
I asked one of the store owners how much longer they expected to be open. I should not have expected a cheerful, or even polite answer. The woman behind the counter scowled, unhappily muttering that the Hu Department Store didn’t have much time left. She might have said it was closing the very next day. I felt bad for asking. Between the seemingly intentional misuse of the Northern Boulevard address and its former penchant for separating dollars and cents with commas I guess the Hu was more mysterious and enigmatic than I had reason to think during its years in business. The things you discover by studying your receipts…
