Monday 3 September 2007

Nostalgia Squared

The Forbidden Planet International blog reports that Nostalgia and Comics, the Birmingham comics shop, is thirty years old.


That means that it must have been about four when I started shopping there. Now, Nostalgia – as everyone I knew called it – is just around the corner from Birmingham New Street railway station; and my school was just across the road from Coventry station. Trains from Coventry to Birmingham took twenty minutes (express) or thirty minutes (local). So there was just enough time to dash out of school at lunchtime, catch a train, make a hasty purchase at Nostalgia, and still be back in time for the bell for afternoon classes.

Completely against school rules, of course, and wholly reliant on trains being fast, frequent and reliable. Golly, and I thought that I spent too much time wallowing in Nostalgia then.

Picture
Nostalgia and Comics as it was - the sign has since been replaced with one using FPI's corporate branding. Photo found on Yahoo Travel.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

can you remember the two Dr Who(?) monster costumes in the window? the place has changed quite a bit in my opinion and not all for the best. There seems to be a lot less "independent" comics for sale and too many Marvel, DC etc.
just around the corner there was Andromeda-top notch sci-fi/fantasy bookshop. I remember it being by City Music before it moved and closed down.
Before they "updated" Brum there used to be a subway area by Nostalgia and in there there was a shop called Readers World. If you caught it on a good day they used to have tons of old comics. Some quite rare. It moved to where Selfridges now sits and I think it moved again, not far from the chinese quarter.