It's Andy Fish!

I’m really surprised that an internet search brings up very little to what was a gem of a store right here in The Woo for many years.

The store operated in Main South across from what I think is the first McDonald’s here in the city. It was a smallish store that was overstocked with comic books, trade paperbacks, hardcovers and paperback novels. It was a classic comic store and if I remember correctly it had no toys or items like that.

Eventually it moved over to Park Avenue next door to Thunderbird Pizza in a three store strip mall– this store was slightly bigger but it featured a basement which owner Bob Jennings told me on the first day in the new location that he was going to put in the best video store I’ve ever seen.

And you know what? He wasn’t wrong.

The store had a reputation for not having a very friendly staff, and Bob himself was nicknamed Grumpy Bob. Now I saw it- one of the things was no matter how well he knew you he stood up from his seat at his checkout desk and watched you while you shopped the store. I never had a problem with this because I don’t steal. That’s Entertainment over on Chandler Street was my regular shop and owner Paul Howley is a good friend. But I would come over to Fabulous Fiction when That’s Entertainment would be out of stock of an item. FF was also famous for having out of print collections, paperbacks and hardcovers which he would still sell at cover price.

But that video store? It was unmatched because he often had “grey market” titles for rent. What is a grey market title? It’s an unofficial release of a video for a title that never got an official release– so if you wanted to find something that had never been released you could find it there.

My favorite thing he had was something called Double Feature Productions– which would display a block of wood with a piece of white paper pasted on it– and it would list what volume it was and what was on the video tape the block of wood represented.

The DF would have two feature films with serials and shorts in between the features so you would have two films, three serials, several cartoons, newsreels and other interesting tidbits on there. They were so much fun.

Probably the best thing about his store- he had lobby cards and posters decorating the walls and it wasn’t the latest film features that would be represented, he wouldn’t display posters for classic films like CASABLANCA or CITIZEN KANE either– he would have posters for serials, movies like THE BANK DICK, GHOST CRAZY and a whole bunch of great B-Movies.

More on the lobby cards in another post.