SF music stores

Hi,

I will stay for a while near Union Square next week in San Francisco. I can imagine Tower, Barnes and Noble, etc. Are there any other stores?

Probably I shall find a local Phone Book.

Thanks.

says...

There is a Rasputin on Powell very close to Union Square. I've never been in that store, but other Rasputins in the SF area are well worth visits. In SF proper, the best place to go is Amoeba on Haight Street, about a 15 minute cab ride from Union Square. The Tower classical store in SF is not in Union Square, but rather near Fisherman's Wharf, a terrible location for anyone who is not a tourist.

Paul Goldstein

But not that bad if you work there and enjoy commuting by cable car. ;

Having been a tourist there just recently, I agree that Amoeba/SF and Tower are best bets for out-of-the-way material (i.e., used & out-of-print), though the stores are a bit out-of-the-way themselves.

Regards, Eric Grunin

themselves.

Also the Streetlight on 24th St. in lovely Noe Valley.

Marc Perman

Last Sept, I found the stock at Amoeba on Haight pretty badly picked over. There were lots of classical CD's, but nothing that inspired me to part with some of my hard earned money. Perhaps summer tourists had stripped the place bare of anything much worthwhile.

And the organization of the classical stock was dreadful: if you were looking for a specific disk or two, as I was, you couldn't be quite sure you had looked in all the places it might be. Classical Millenium in Portland has the same problem, about which I groused a few months ago. There's (1) the regular classical section (2) boxed sets (3) bargain CD's (4) new releases (5) used CD's and (6) special imports. I may have missed a category or two.

But there's an excellent second-hand CD place in Portland, just up the street a block or two from the main Powell's (books), and it's absolutely fab.

Our little local place, Roger's Juke Box, is pretty good, though it's awfully crowded: a tiny hole-in-wall store jammed to the gunnels with CD's. I usually find a disk or two there worth buying, most recently Levine's Mahler First.

Unfortunately, for regulars, the stock there, too, seems somewhat picked over: there are CD's in the bins that have been there for at least five years.

This is a generally observed phenomenon. I was chatting with some of our LA-area colleagues recently, and I remarked that I have never found anything particularly interesting at Record Surplus. Thie response was that you have to visit frequently, because a lot of the good stuff is snapped up quickly, and if you go randomly you may not have good luck with your timing. I suspect this is generally true. Believe me, the SF Amoeba is usually well worth a visit, but on any given day it certainly may be disappointing.

Paul Goldstein

Roger, what's with Vancouver? I was there about a year and a half ago and expected to find a used classical store or two worthy of such a culture-rich metropolis. Sadly, I only found a small hole-in-the-wall place with hardly any classical.

Jeff Burton (who's delighted to live within driving distance of an Amoeba

I seem to recall a number of used CD stores, though mostly pop, on and around Robson St. in the early 90s that weren't there more recently. Sikora, however, was happily still there.

Marc Perman

The less-discussed LA Amoeba is well worth a visit as well, especially around lunchtime, given it's proximity to an In 'N Out Burger.

Marc Perman

It may be my timing but, the used CD selection at the Noe Valley Streetlight has never been as good as Amoeba/SF or Berkeley, though at one time it's LP selection was good. Parking the area is also worse than Haight. Academy or Disk Union it's not.

It's too bad Reprise in the Castro went out of business. They always had interesting used Historical CD's, Operas, and LPs.