We are all freaks

There are many, many people who love their teenage years, the years of learning that stay with you forever, the years in which you build your imagination, the shared references, the tastes and criteria that will always accompany you. The culture of television, comics, toys, first readings, the characters that captivate you, even if they are the bad guys; all of this is called the generational universe. What today is Lego and the strimeros, fifty years ago it was Star Wars and Mazinger Z; forty years ago, Masters of the Universe; thirty years ago, Dragon Ball, and twenty years ago, the letters of Magic. And so on. Luckily, we have astronomical spaces like Freaks, which have been working for twenty-six years to preserve all the essences of the imaginary worlds we love.

Since 1999, on Calle Alí Bei and Paseo de Sant Joan, Enric Torres remains the sole guardian of the fantastical cave. Three partners decided to open a special place in a good area of the city, within a five-hundred-meter radius where comic book, video game, pop culture, board game, and general collectibles stores already existed. A kilometer zero inhabited by Norma Comics, Gigamesh, Black Lotus, and Alien. And why call it Freaks? As a tribute to Tod Browning's classic film, Freaks (1932), premiered in our house as The monsters' stop. "Years ago, many of us called ourselves freaks ourselves because we liked horror and science fiction, because many of us wanted to dignify the culture that the academies did not consider worthy," explains Enric. freak It had no pejorative connotation, but everything went wrong when Cárdenas started digging into the geeky world. And hence the derogatory term.

Freaks worked very well. In ten years, they had five stores open. There was a lot of diversification: movies, visual books, HeroClix—the strategy board game figurines—clothing, and an exclusive comic book franchise. The 2008 crisis did a lot of damage, and the pandemic finally underscored the need to reunite everything in a single space. Today, the store offers a representation of everything. However, the philosophy hasn't changed much: "Have things that no one else has." Other stores have visited them incognito over the years to copy their model; Enric vouches for it.

What's working well for them these days? Acquiring stocks of comics and toys that have been stored, as if trapped in time, and that can see the light of day and generate new demand. Or acquiring the collections of clients who are disappearing and giving them a new life. There's a good selection of carefully chosen secondhand books, as well as new editions created by the magnificent existing clients and new signings, who are seduced by the charms of such a special place. An essentially male clientele, Enric acknowledges, but quite varied in terms of age. There are young people with classic tastes, and there are those who are just discovering the Marvel universe thanks to its films, but who are interested in investigating and discovering that Marvel comics were already published here in the 1970s. On the book counter, you can find Werner Herzog's biography, but also a volume on Pajares and Esteso or the life and miracles of Juan Carlos de Borbón. "La España" cañí "It also has its audience."

Monsters, zombies, science fiction, horror, Eastern cinema, old Smurf figures, a selection of DVDs and VHS tapes, and display cases full of toys from the 1980s. Although Freaks advertises online, more people come to the store: "We like people to come here, to touch, to make noise, to stir things, to ask questions, to learn. We have a lot of Peter Pan customers: people convinced that turning 14 is the best time of their lives," Enric explains. Humans like to collect. We're currently experiencing a boom in nostalgia—without any suspicious or pejorative bitterness—and we like to fill the spaces in our homes with objects that occupy our memories.