A short history
In the summer of 2004 the Pitkämies mailorder was born; the new Eightball had come out and i wanted to buy in it Helsinki, which has three comic stores. None of them carried the comic in question which bummed me out. On the other hand, with the idea of running my own store already in the back of my head, I was thrilled or could not believe nobody else had thought of carrying quality foreign graphic novels and comics in a store. However, since i had no money or experience or knowledge of the finnish market (having moved here only a year earlier), this own store seemed like a very remote idea. It was my wife Hanna, who gave the excellent tip i should start by running a mailorder.
I had 100 € extra laying around that i invested in ordering a small batch of comics (including ofcourse, Eightball #23). I had hoped they would arrive in time for the comic festival, which would be then the official of my store or better yet, mailorder. Ofcourse they didn't. I had a reserved a table for the comics festival in Helsinki so i had no other option but to display my own personal collection, and saying to people that these were the kind of books and comics i would soon be selling through my website. The scheme worked, i handed out handwritten cards with my site's name on it, I collected some email address and by the time the comics arrived at my place, the most incredible thing happened: people actually started ordering them.
With the money i made selling those comics, I ordered more and that's how it slowly but gradually evolved into what it is today. In principal i only order books that i like myself. Sometimes that's a bit difficult to guess but in general you could say i avoid superhero stuff, lame European masters of the nineth art (Bilal,...) or teenage manga. I am however willing to try out new stuff and i regularly just buy straight from the artists if he or she happen to have some mini-comics that seem interesting.
After about three years of selling comics at conventions and through a modest site, the stock of books slowly grew until my tiny storage space in the cellar of my appartment was filled with boxes of comic books and became inaccesible for even a very slim guy like me. In april 2007 i decided i would seriously start looking for a decent spot for a store in Helsinki. To my personal great surprise locating a good and available storefront proved extremely difficult. Furthermore, i initially wanted to incorporate the comic store into a vegan coffee place (an idea which is actually still likely to be executed, albeit not within this decade) so i needed a place that was big enough, had decent aircirculation, the appropriate sanatory facilities and, above all, was affordable. Ha ha ha. Looking back now, i can't believe i was so naieve to think i could actually find a match for those criteria.
Along the way I asked the dudes from Ifsociety to join forces with me. The present location of the Pitkämies store was found and checked out thoroughly in december 2007, when i made the first offer on the place. Which was denied. The landlord mistakenly thought that Ifsociety was called High society and since the area of Kallio in Helsinki is vaguely resemblant to a "bohemian" area with lots of cheap bars, he was extremely suspicious. But, the misunderstanding was resolved and in early march the offer was approved.
At that point I asked the Finnish Comics Society if they were interested in subrenting the second storefront in the space plus the back room. I knew they had plans of moving out of their current offices (but that's a whole different can of worms) so my offer did not fall upon deaf ears. The Finnish Comics Society wanted to open a comics art gallery in the second storefront and use the backroom as an office space. Things started to come together nicely and when it turned out that the whole cellar (130 plus square meter) was available as well i "forced" the Kuti Kuti collective to come and join forces with us. Et voila, a nice synergy was born, a complex that combines a commercial yet culturally friendly store, an official non profit comics organisation and to top it all off, a collective of twelve stubborn comic artists all under one roof.
Pitkämies officially opened on the 17th of May.
The new Kuti tabloid decorated as on a christmas tree!
