By Dustin Brown
The two suits of armor guarding the entrance to the Moving Right Along warehouse in Glendale send a mixed message to would-be customers passing along Cooper Avenue. Though the Medieval relics create a forbidding presence with their swords pressed ominously into the ground, the signs they carry are nothing short of inviting: “Office Chair Sale $35.”
The anachronistic tone set by the ad-wielding knights is appropriate for a shop where relics of home furnishing commingle without regard to era or style. An aging jukebox and claw-footed bathtubs sit alongside gaudy ‘60s furniture pieces and lacquer Italian bedroom sets, proving beyond doubt that every corner of the store offers something for every taste.
Moving Right Along owner Jim Rueda often has first dibs on the richest furniture collections in the borough, because used furniture is only one arm of an extensive moving and storage business he has been building for 20 years.
Rueda’s harried customers are frequently desperate to be rid of cumbersome furnishings, which usually find their way into the Glendale warehouse. Estate lawyers call Rueda to clean out homes of the deceased, and real estate agents send him in “to remove clutter from a home so it’ll sell better,” Rueda said.
“We have a gamut of everything, because we get our furniture from so many different places,” he said.
The customer base for the company’s trove of furniture ranges from average families furnishing their homes to Manhattan bars digging for quirky couches to liven up their decor. Most find what they are looking for.
“This takes a very unique taste,” Rueda’s assistant Bob Meditz said while showing off a ‘60s-era entertainment center, replete with fake fireplace, crystal chandelier and four speakers hidden behind yellow-satin curtains. “I call it a Herman Munster set.”
Although the Munster set elicits its share of squeals from weekend customers eyeing its glowing electric flame and sparkling chandeliers, it hardly stands out in a warehouse where eclecticism is the norm.
While a mini-bar enclosed inside a world globe sat alluringly on the warehouse floor last week, a small sign informed any would-be buyers that one customer had already nabbed it — at a bargain price, no less, $225 for a piece listed at $300.
Although the 10,000-square-foot Glendale location at 89-20 Cooper Ave. sells a wide array of “antiques, collectives, and gently used furniture,” Rueda’s 35,000-square-foot Ozone Park warehouse houses a storage facility, a shipping center and fleet of moving trucks.
Rueda got into the moving business as a Forest Hills teenager when he made deliveries for his best friend’s father, a furniture upholsterer. He incorporated Moving Right Along in 1981 at the age of 23, after having informally run a moving business as a college student using only his muscle and a van. Eventually the van grew into a fleet of eight trucks and the business he formerly ran out of a small Jackson Heights apartment expanded into two huge warehouses in Glendale and Ozone Park.
Rueda has no intention of staying tied down to his buildings, however. This year he plans to introduce a rolling furniture shop, which will cart items on a flatbed truck encased in Plexiglas for sale around the city, and a service which brings storage units directly to client’s homes, where they can be filled and sent straight back to the warehouse.
The armor is for sale, too — Rueda has 50 suits in all, which he bought from a supplier out West.
The cheapest ones go for $90, and if you talk a good bargain, maybe Rueda would throw in the chair sale sign — or even better, an actual chair.
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
