LOVING NEWBURY COMICS

Once I was excited by Virgin Megastores, and Tower had its day, too, but I’m devoted to Newbury Comics now -- the 24-store chain doing about $75 million in business a year. The prices are the best around and the vibe is good. But the chain, and the canny inventory system that underlies its success, won my admiration and continued patronage Thursday, when I called to see if the Harvard Square store happened to have a copy of a somewhat, shall we say, specialized album.

It was stupid of me. I wanted to give someone a copy of the album within the next two hours. But I asked anyway:

“Do you have a copy of William S. Burroughs’ ‘Dead City Radio’?”

Amazingly, they had it. In fact, not only did the store have a copy of this 13-year-old spoken-word album by a dead heroin addict, but the guy answering the phone didn’t even hesitate before answering. He knew.

Is there a lesson here? Maybe. If Newbury Comics didn’t have it, I was going to have to put my own “Dead City Radio” into the laptop and burn a copy.