The Daily Campus

Issue date: 2/9/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Charles Salvatore Store24 is a favorite late-night haunt of hungry students searching for snacks. The store is located along Route 195 in the same plaza as Husky Pizza and Wings Over Storrs.

Store24, at the corner of Dog Lane and Route 195, has brightened the faces of thousands of UConn students as they seek satisfaction for their midnight cravings. It has been a mainstay of campus life for so long that it's almost impossible to imagine a time without it.

However, Guy Lefor, a Store24 veteran of nearly seven years, remembers a time when the establishment was not the main destination for party goers and students pulling all-nighters.

According to Lefor, the only other 24-hour location he can remember was at the Dairy Mart, which was located near Huskies Restaurant & Bar.

Store24, which first opened in 1981, shared around-the-clock status with Dairy Mart for a little less than a year, Lefor said. He added that Dairy Mart's manager soon reversed the decision to stay open when the store ran into problems with the bar crowd from Huskies.

"They'd leave [Huskies], but you know, "one leg was shorter than the other," said Lefor. "They'd go in a circle, and 45 minutes later, they'd come back, Huskies would be closed, and the Dairy Mart was the only place open. The manager couldn't handle it."

These days, Store24 is "the only place to go after 1 [a.m.]" said Grace Alpert, a 4th-semester theatre studies major, because "it's just an awesome place to go in the middle of the night."

Even around 2:30 a.m., during the heart of the third shift, a wide array of people flow through the door, ranging from a UConn police officer buying a few snacks to Sachiko Komuro, a 2nd-semester costume design graduate student.

Komuro, who was working late in the graduate studio designing costumes for the upcoming show, "Pericles," said she had averaged only three hours of sleep per night for the last week, and the microwavable macaroni and cheese she purchased was going to serve as both dinner and breakfast.

With the approach of the weekend, the flow of customers into the store intensifies, said Santi Palmieri, a 19-year-old Storrs resident who works the late shift on weekends, as well as acting as assistant wrestling coach at E.O. Smith High School and modeling clothing for John Casablanca's Modeling and Career Center.

Continued...

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