Comics shops as the new coffee houses

One of the professed aims of Starbucks is to serve as a social "third space," akin to the historic role of coffee shops in the emergence of nongovernmental noncommercial social networks in Europe.  While the company has succeeded to a certain degree, there is a key difference: for the most part, customers in Starbucks don't interact.  It's a public meeting place for private individuals--couples or a group of friends talking to each other; co-workers conferencing; laptop legionnaires tapping away by themselves. 

By contrast, the coffee houses famously described by Jurgen Habermas went beyond the public aggregation of private spheres.  They were a place where the various customers interacted amongst themselves, even if they didn't know each other before they came in.

This came to mind as I read the most recent blog post by Paul Cornell, whom some of you may recognize from the epic Dr. Who two-parter last season in which the Doctor became human:

I popped in to officially open the shop the other weekend . . .  and found myself part of a warm sitcom about selling comics and actually talking to your customers. There’s already quite a social life developing around that shop, as with all the best comic retailers.

That's more like the classic model of the coffee-house-as-civil-society.  The best comic shops are indeed stores that are more than stores--they are places where people connect.