Migratory Video

Happy New Year! All's quiet in the library around the holidays, so Shelved @ NYC has been on something of a hiatus. In the interregnum, here's an interesting/sad bit of news about one of the city's best commercial collections:

Kim's Mediapolis (Broadway and 113th) closed in September after an intolerable rent increase by its landlord, Columbia University. Subsequently, Youngman Kim donated his 30,000+ DVD and video rentals to Columbia University Libraries' Butler Media Collection. Now comes word that Mondo Kim's (St. Marks Place) rental collection is headed to a not-so-local non-library, the town of Salemi, Sicily, where all 55,000 films will be screened at the "Neverending Festival". Vanishing New York has some nice coverage of their impending cross-Atlantic journey. The remaining, non-rental portion of Mondo Kim's is moving to a new location on 1st Avenue. Kim's Video on Avenue A closed in 2004 and the Christopher Street store is no longer owned by Mr. Kim.