Bergen Street Comics & Retailer Optimism

In my Friday ramblings around Fort Greene and Park Slope, I found myself walking home past the Pintchick Oracle on Bergen and Flatbush. Along with the usual weather report, this time it had information about the independent shops on Bergen Street between Flatbush and 5th Avenue. Some great new ones have opened up on the block in the last year or two, from a used-and-new bookstore to a girl-friendly sex shop to clothing stores of both the hip hop and maternity persuasions. I was surprised, though, to see the Oracle announce "Bergen Street Comics - Opens Friday, March 6." Um, today? I thought, a little Scott Pilgrim-like in my glee.

Today indeed, as it turns out. I went down the block and turned in at the Bergen Street Comics Sign. "Did you just open today?" I asked. "Just a few hours ago, actually," said the young man behind the counter. His name is Tom, and he's the owner. We started talking shop immediately, and he told me that he had long wanted to open his own comics shop, and worked at Midtown Comics for the last few years to learn the trade. He clearly learned his inventory there, but the aesthetic at Bergen Street is a lot more "high end", as a customer coming in after me noted: exposed brick walls, dark wood cases, none of the florescent lighting and cheap wire-mesh fixtures associated with boys-only comics stores.

I browsed happily, noting classic favorites (including an entire bookcase devoted to Watchmen -- smart move), and new finds, including a Vietnam comic called Guerillas and the collected Freakangels by Warren Ellis, which I'd read parts of online.

I ended up buying 40 dollars worth of comics (Alan Moore's DC Universe, since I just read Watchmen, and the Freakangels collection), which I can't really afford and could probably get cheaper through my day job. But it was too exciting to be buying something from a brand new store on its first day -- and I was hoping to help it be a good one. And he was giving out good customer service: when I brought up Freakangels in hardcover, he pointed out that "while he didn't want to turn down money", it was also available in paperback, which I did actually prefer. "I'm not a collector, just a reader," I said. "That's the audience we're hoping to serve," he replied. Good market research, I think.

Of course I had told Tom about my own ambitions to open a bookstore in Fort Greene within the first five minutes, and he was very encouraging. "If your experience is like mine," he said, "a lot of people are going to say to you 'Are you crazy? Have you noticed what we're in right now?'" -- i.e., a recession. But he said he'd also gotten lots of good advice and support from people in his industry, particularly a comic store owner in the Bay area. That comics retailer told him he'd opened his store in the midst of the Dot Com Bust, which was followed immediately by 9/11 -- and yet his sales had continued to grow every year. Tom and I agreed that it took some luck, and some business know-how, but -- well, you know. It's worth doing, and it's totally possible to make it work.

I left wishing Tom and Bergen Street Comics the best of luck. I kicked myself later for not taking pictures of the place on its first day, but I did save my receipt, so I have proof I was really there at the inception.

Bergen Street Comics doesn't have a website yet -- they're still putting books on the shelves, give them a break! -- but I look forward to following their progress, and welcoming another bookish institution to the neighborhood. We can all use more of Tom's kind of crazy.