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Mid-1980s comic book store in lower Manhattan?
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11 posts in this topic

When I was in high school we used to go downtown Manhattan to a comic book store that was basically a huge basement-level room of tables set up with longboxes.  I want to say it was Forbidden Planet but when I google search the 1980s picture of FP shows up as a corner store.  Does anyone remember if they had an annex that you would enter by going down steps from the street?  If not, anyone remember a comic book store like that in lower Manhattan from late 1970s-mid 1980s?  This was old-time, no frills comics and other sci-fi ephemera retail.

 

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Forbidden Planet in the early/mid 1980s was located midblock, had a first floor full of goodies and its back issues were in the basement with a large staircase in the middle of the first floor.  At some point, it moved across the street and has been at its corner location for a long time. I don't recall a shop that was entirely in a basement downtown. These was one on 53rd off Second Avenue that you went down a few steps to get to. 

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6 minutes ago, shadroch said:

Forbidden Planet in the early/mid 1980s was located midblock, had a first floor full of goodies and its back issues were in the basement with a large staircase in the middle of the first floor.  At some point, it moved across the street and has been at its corner location for a long time. I don't recall a shop that was entirely in a basement downtown. These was one on 53rd off Second Avenue that you went down a few steps to get to. 

That the layout I remember.  Midblock, with that large staircase going downstairs.  I got some great stuff there in the '80s!  Thanks!

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23 hours ago, OuterboroGuy said:

That the layout I remember.  Midblock, with that large staircase going downstairs.  I got some great stuff there in the '80s!  Thanks!

Yup. Near where I used to play pool in 1985 or so.

Edited by the blob
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1 hour ago, the blob said:

Yup. Near where I used to play pool in 1985 or so.

I've tried to describe to my kids what lower Manhattan (below 14th Street) was like when I was a teenager in the 1980s -- funky, shabby, oddball, dangerous, hole-in-the-wall shops.  I don't know of anyplace today that is like it -- maybe the main street in Berkley CA has some remnants of that kinds of shabby retail.

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3 hours ago, OuterboroGuy said:

I've tried to describe to my kids what lower Manhattan (below 14th Street) was like when I was a teenager in the 1980s -- funky, shabby, oddball, dangerous, hole-in-the-wall shops.  I don't know of anyplace today that is like it -- maybe the main street in Berkley CA has some remnants of that kinds of shabby retail.

Roger's Time Machine is still around (ok, I don't know what happened during the pandemic), he's a hole in the wall nowadays. But certainly not dangerous (ok, last time I was in there he offered me some shots of vodka or whatever it was they were drinking, but i was driving,,,) Forbidden Planet in the mid-80s was actually a nice huge store on the top level if i remember correctly. Downstairs was your bins and bins of back issues. 

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