Update: Comic book store!
Mar. 18th, 2005 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
logicbuttonCrackwhores only. Because you guys are more likely to care. Edit 4/12/2010: Whatever! This store was awesome and everybody should get to read about it.
So here's a question: How is it that in Atlanta, a city with ninety million people, we have to collectively ask around on Public Folders for a decent comic book store and end up with one that is forty minutes away by car, but in Freiburg, which has 200,000 people including the college students, I can find two within easy walking distance of my dorm on my own after three weeks, without even trying?
I haven't actually been to the one that's about two blocks away from me. That's what I'm doing today. The one that I did go to yesterday, downtown, is awesome. They have everything one might possibly want, and I mean everything. Almost. Their slogan should be, "We have absofuckinglutely everything you could possibly want except Fullmetal Alchemist!" But seriously, this place is great. I absolutely heart the way it's set up: you go in, and in the entryway they have ads for their stuff, and you turn right into this tiny room that appears to be mostly comic strip collections (Calvin and Hobbes and such) and random books and a guy sitting at a desk, and then on the left wall in the back there's a sign over a doorway that says "comics" and has an arrow indicating the door, and then you go through it and you're in this tunnel-like hall, it's seriously just like a hall of mirrors, except instead of mirrors the walls are covered in posters of classic comic book characters. So you walk for a little while, and then finally come out into this little room, and to your right is a wall and a couple stationary stands full of comic books, and in the back there's like a little office or utility room or something, and then this is what you see when you turn to your left. The blue is manga. So I browsed for a long time, and didn't even have to feel weird about being in a store for a long time without buying anything, because I just went ahead and got Yami no Matsuei 5 and 6. Oh,and don't be fooled by the scale in the picture. The tall bookcases are actually considerably taller than I am. The thing on the far right is a beam which is also a shelf that leads to the opposite wall, in case that's not clear.
Oh, I don't think I've mentioned this to you all yet, but one wonderful thing about Germany is the price controls on books. Most bookstores have a bunch of sale items (like in the US, mostly coffee table and children's books marked down from, like, $40 to $5 except here of course it's €40 to €5) that they have out near the entrances and outside the store, but other than that all books in Germany legally have to be sold at the price printed on the book. So the bargain hunter in me doesn't have to feel guilty for buying manga on impulse at comic book stores! And, as has been previously established, it is cheap anyway! Yay, everybody wins! And it was a wonderful day until my stupidity broke the electricity in my room and my suite's kitchen. But that is another story and shall be told another time.
So here's a question: How is it that in Atlanta, a city with ninety million people, we have to collectively ask around on Public Folders for a decent comic book store and end up with one that is forty minutes away by car, but in Freiburg, which has 200,000 people including the college students, I can find two within easy walking distance of my dorm on my own after three weeks, without even trying?
I haven't actually been to the one that's about two blocks away from me. That's what I'm doing today. The one that I did go to yesterday, downtown, is awesome. They have everything one might possibly want, and I mean everything. Almost. Their slogan should be, "We have absofuckinglutely everything you could possibly want except Fullmetal Alchemist!" But seriously, this place is great. I absolutely heart the way it's set up: you go in, and in the entryway they have ads for their stuff, and you turn right into this tiny room that appears to be mostly comic strip collections (Calvin and Hobbes and such) and random books and a guy sitting at a desk, and then on the left wall in the back there's a sign over a doorway that says "comics" and has an arrow indicating the door, and then you go through it and you're in this tunnel-like hall, it's seriously just like a hall of mirrors, except instead of mirrors the walls are covered in posters of classic comic book characters. So you walk for a little while, and then finally come out into this little room, and to your right is a wall and a couple stationary stands full of comic books, and in the back there's like a little office or utility room or something, and then this is what you see when you turn to your left. The blue is manga. So I browsed for a long time, and didn't even have to feel weird about being in a store for a long time without buying anything, because I just went ahead and got Yami no Matsuei 5 and 6. Oh,and don't be fooled by the scale in the picture. The tall bookcases are actually considerably taller than I am. The thing on the far right is a beam which is also a shelf that leads to the opposite wall, in case that's not clear.
Oh, I don't think I've mentioned this to you all yet, but one wonderful thing about Germany is the price controls on books. Most bookstores have a bunch of sale items (like in the US, mostly coffee table and children's books marked down from, like, $40 to $5 except here of course it's €40 to €5) that they have out near the entrances and outside the store, but other than that all books in Germany legally have to be sold at the price printed on the book. So the bargain hunter in me doesn't have to feel guilty for buying manga on impulse at comic book stores! And, as has been previously established, it is cheap anyway! Yay, everybody wins! And it was a wonderful day until my stupidity broke the electricity in my room and my suite's kitchen. But that is another story and shall be told another time.
