San Francisco is now home to world's tiniest comic shop, "Hella Novella"

October 17, 2019 8:55 AM

San Francisco is now home to the world's tiniest comic shop. Not only is it the world's tiniest, at 71 square feet, it's also devoted solely to "local artists, women, and people of color."
posted by Slinga (9 comments total)

This may just be the thing to get me to go out and buy physical comics again.
posted by ursus_comiter at 9:16 AM on October 17, 2019 [4 favorites]

Ha! I just walked by and noticed this place yesterday. For another omg so tiny experience, there's a shop in Bernal Heights (12 Small Things) that's maybe even smaller. Not to mention the ceramicist and the lemonade guy who both have impossibly small stalls cut into the walls along Valencia.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:18 AM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'd love to visit this place. Wish it was open on weekends.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 11:38 AM on October 17, 2019

If I had money right now I'd go there and spend it.
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:14 PM on October 17, 2019

The spelling of the location in the article isn't what it is on Google Maps: Plaza Adelante (2301 Mission). I'd sure love to check it out; a lot of the underground comix that I got into back in the day were published by Last Gasp.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:53 PM on October 17, 2019

Very cool to learn about this! And Hella Novella is such a delightful name.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 5:57 PM on October 17, 2019

Well that’s awesome! More so because it seems unlikely that the profit from sales would cover the rent for the space—someone please correct me if I’m mistaken! A true labor of love.
posted by ejs at 7:01 PM on October 17, 2019

I have never been and dunno if I will get a chance to go, sadly. My days of hanging around comics shops are mostly behind me, I suppose, but in the eighties they were a sort of proto-Internet, replete with arcane knowledge and the distant early warning signs of what we might now call incel culture. I was a straightish white boy so I was embraced as a member of the in-group, but flip any one of those toggles and it is a very different experience I would have had.

I did like that a few years ago I was in Victoria BC on Free Comic Day and passed by a local comic shop after breakfast. Half an hour before opening there were a dozen customers lined up, and they were all young women. Far out.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:10 PM on October 17, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'd love to visit this place. Wish it was open on weekends

The website says Tue-Sat 12-6PM
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:54 AM on October 18, 2019