I recently found myself in Culver City and spotted a familiar-looking wall. Not because I’d been there often, but because I remember seeing it from the passenger seat of a co-worker’s car over a decade ago as we drove past on the way to…lunch? A bakery? I can’t quite remember. But I do remember Spider-Man climbing out of the upper window, and Superman changing in a painted phone booth. And I remembered having seen other signs of a comic shop in the building at the time, and the sense that I’d snapped a photo with my phone.

As it happens, I’m enough of a digital pack rat that I was able to find the older photo in less than 15 minutes! The photo itself didn’t reveal anything new, but I’d named the file “Dreamworld Comics.jpg,” which gave me somewhere to start.

Weirdly enough, when I found the current website and Yelp entry, the address looked the same as the one visible on the door…but it was definitely a different building.

It turns out they moved down the street several years back. From 12402 Washington Boulevard to 12402 Washington Place. If I’d gone one block north I would have seen the current store!

Google Street View shows them in the corner storefront back in 2008 and 2012, so when I snapped the photo in 2011, I would have seen the name a few seconds later.