Barrio Dogg

Late last month TC took us, her good ol' parents on a tour of SDSU. It was cool seeing her "routine" (where she parks, where her classes are and where she hangs out). State has changed so much since I was last there as a student...

afterwards, she took us here to Barrio Dogg, one of her favorite spots to go with her friends...

Red Devil Records & Taylor Maid Farms Coffee

I think we had about less than an hour left on our meter and thought we could kill some time checking out some shops around the corner.

It turns out that this area was part of San Rafael's historic downtown district...

Return to Jones Coffee Roasters & Pooh Bah Records

Since I didn't really care for my drink from Civil Coffee...

I wanted to "make up for it" by having another coffee drink from this place...

Signs in LA plus Amoeba Music and the Capitol Records Building

A Hi-Fi sign seen while in traffic en route to downtown LA...

Okay, there was a sequel?  Who green lighted that? The first movie wasn't too bad but still...

I was more interested in that vintage sign and giant globe...

Pooh Bah Record Shop

From the peace and tranquility of Arlington Garden, we headed over to the outer reaches of E. Colorado Blvd...

where we admired the pretty flowering trees...

and noticed a few places we wanted to stop at...

Rasputin Music

Not too far from Amoeba Records was yet another record store...

that Bert and I were eager to show TC.

Amoeba Records, Berkeley

Now we were in Berkeley after having experienced hipsterdom in Oakland.

The afternoon was still "young" and there were two established vinyl pillars of the community to still visit.  We parked near this brightly painted bathroom which happened to be at the historic People's Park.

More on this later...

As we walked down the street, I noticed this mural in an empty lot. Apparently, it gets painted over a lot.

Our first stop was just down the street on the corner of Telegraph and Haste, Amoeba Records...

1-2-3-4 Go! Records

One of TC's requests during our trip was to visit record stores, particularly this one...

known as 1-2-3-4 Go!

Drinks at Subterranean and the new Dark Horse Coffee in North Park + TC's first record at Red Brontosaurus Records

A utility box somewhere along 30th Ave in North Park...

taken by TC as I was at a light...

It still works! The return of our record player...

When I got home yesterday, I was greeted by the sight of this relic...

But oh, what a welcome relic it was...

Record Store Day crawl finds...

Back to Record Store Day, which was April 20th this year.  I had a fun time checking out different record stores with Cy. The San Diego Record Show was also a very cool event that I'm glad we checked out...

Hopefully, I can catch the event again next year and bring Bert and TC with me.

Here's a roundup of the stuff I picked up that day...

Cow Records - Pacific Beach

Right after Thrift Trader, we walked the few steps over to Cow Records next door.

This is the other location of Cow, which has another store in OB on Newport Ave. I'd always been curious about this place so it was only right that we visit Cow during our Record Store Day Crawl...

Record Store Day outfit

Before going back to the Record Store Day crawl posts, I thought I'd throw in a random outfit post...

In honor of record store day, I wore my aluminum 45 adapter necklace which I thought rather fitting. In fact I got compliments on the necklace while Cy got compliments on her yellow 45 adaptor earrings that day...

I wanted to be comfortable so...

Groovy Records

Our next stop was a record store we both haven't been to...

But before we get to that, a few more scenes from movies involving record stores!

Even though I really hated "500 Days of Summer", the flick did have a record store scene...

in which they bag on Ringo Starr! Poor Ringo doesn't get any respect...

Iona using her staple gun at Trax in "Pretty in Pink":

And a more "recent" movie (if you call 1995 recent), "Empire Records"...

which I didn't really like, but it did feature a very young Liv Tyler (she has her father's lips), along with Renee Zellweger, and the song "Free" by the Martinis (featuring ex Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago). I thought the premise was okay (small independent music store tries to fight off its impending conversion to a chain music store) but the acting really sucked!

The mid-90's were a dismal time in music, in my opinion.  Says the chick who's stuck in the 80's (and 70's and mid to late 60's!)!

We were both curious about this store which was a few steps away from The Flame (just around the corner from Park and University)...

Next stop - The San Diego Record Show

Oh fk yeah man, I FOUND IT!!!!

My favorite clip from "High Fidelity" starring Jack Black as Barry, a snarky record store clerk at Championship Vinyl...

"Buh-bye...."

DAMN, I WISH I HAD THAT JOB!!! Ha ha ha, but of course, If I actually said everything that I was really thinking in my real job, I'd be fired. Seems like many of the genteel niceties and social mores are thrown out the door when you are a record store employee...It's like a free pass to be an asshole!

After our sugary breakfast of champions at the Donut Bar, we headed out to the outer edge of Hillcrest for a once a year extravaganza of vinyl...

Record Store Day Crawl - Return to Donut Bar

Record Store Day was two weekends ago and it's high time I finally posted on my adventure that day....


(Record Store Day 2013 image courtesy of www.recordstoreday.com)

The Record Store Day Crawl (both records AND food) was shared with fellow music lover (she's hard core!) and fashion blogger, Cy of any2ndnow.

I couldn't help but think of a couple of movies that had scenes set in a record store. The first one was from the John Hughe's classic "Pretty in Pink" (released in 1986 and the first "date" movie for me and Bert while we were wee young 'uns back in high school). The movie featured a pre-"Designing Women" Annie Potts as Iona, the fashionably chameleonesque owner of TRAX, a new wave record store, frequented by Andy (Molly Ringwald) and Duckie (her best guy friend who "likes her" but whom I felt was obviously gay but still in the closet).

One of the funniest scenes involving a record store:

Even though I am not a fan of  Otis Redding's, "Try a Little Tenderness", the Duckman did killeth the song whilst prancing about in his super cool creeper shoes and thrift store garb!

Non-music lovers right about now have probably clicked the "read more" button because the post title refers to "donuts" and were either not interested in hearing about records (SACRILEGE!), Jack Black, Duckie's sartorial choices and my nostalgic interest in vinyl, or were very impatient to read about some damn donuts.  Ha ha. But moving right along...

Nickelodeon Records

Down the street from Viva Pops is the iconic Normal Heights sign on the corner of Adams and Felton.

As mentioned in a previous post, my goal was do to do everything on Adams that day...

Off the Record on University

Off the Record is a used records/CD store on University near the North Park sign. Turns out that the Hillcrest location closed years ago. This is the only Off the Record now.

Painted green box right next to Off the Record.

I wasn't looking to get anything; it was more of a look-see...

The guy in the corner was sorting cd's; he was the sole employee there. Whatever music he was playing was pretty cool. I should have asked him what it was. I remember asking an employee at the old Off the Record on El Cajon what was on and it turned out to be the Rutles, a British parody band of the Beatles (check out their mockumentary, "All You Need is Cash"! It's classic! Plus it has Eric Idle playing the Paul McCartney character). This was pre-internet (probably 1992 or 1993) and I had to special order the damn cd for $13.99 and pick it up at the Hillcrest location. I'll never forget that day because it was raining and I got a fkg parking ticket while parked in front of David's Place (a coffee shop that used to be next to the Brass Rail gay bar).

I didn't take too many shots in here but I had to take one of this wall of old soul/R'n'B records.

So it was just a look see kinda visit. This place is smaller than the Hillcrest Off the Record. They also had lots of LP's there. No cassettes, ha ha. The cd's ranged in prince from $4.99 (used) to $16.99 (new). still I like M-Theory in Mission Hills since they had that 2 for 1 deal going last Fall.

View of the store as we were leaving (we parked two blocks away and headed up 29th):

A free Record Collectors newspaper I picked up while at Off the Record featuring Stones guitarist Keef Richards. It's a wonder he's still alive after all these years. Now he's just known to the youngsters as Captain Jack Sparrow's father in the 3rd installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.\

[Update 2/24: I finally had a chance to leaf through this magazine and it's pretty cool. I didn't realize there were tons of record stores in LA! The Bay Area also has some good ones like Amoeba and Rasputin. Sadly, the only ones mentioned in San Diego were Record Heaven and Lou's with nary a mention for Off the Record or M-Theory. The article on Keith Richards was pretty good too. I could tell the mag was definitely for audiophiles and record lovers. In the late 80's, I bought a pin from Rhino Records with a design on it for "Save the LP". Vinyl seems to be making a comeback too and not just for Dj's.]

All the record stores I used to go to are gone: Licorice Pizza (I'm showing my age here), Blue Meannie (in El Cajon), Tower Records in the College Area (and later in La Jolla)...Sigh.

Song currently playing as I post this:
"Drive My Car" by the Beatles from the album "Rubber Soul".
Actually the whole album has been playing. I had to endure the Bieber earlier (TC's choice), then I got to put on "Hard Day's Night" which segued into "Rubber Soul". Seems like the Biebster is unable to sing without the help of Autotune. Unfortunate. A lot of these singers use Autotune and they all sound the same, robotic and boring. Whatever happened to real singing and actual musicanship? Sigh.

Okay, song playing as I sign off from this post:
"Norwegian Wood" - The first Beatles song that featured the sitar (played by George Harrison/taught by Ravi Shankar/father of Norah Jones), it was also a lilting ballad about Lennon's extramarital infidelities.

Cool Jerk book signing @ M-Theory

Before the complete fuckfest of fuckery that led us to missing out on Mariposa Ice Cream, we made a quick stop just six blocks away to the cute neighborhood of Mission Hills where there was a book signing by local comic artist, Paul Horn ("Cool Jerk"). We parked by the Mission Hills Public Library where I saw this cool sign celebrating Banned Books Week which is from September 25 to October 2! Let's celebrate!

Most of the books I like are on that list (the Harry Potter (series) by JK Rowling, "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier, the classic novel beloved by anti-social misfits and serial killers,"Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger, and lastly, the Captain Underpants series (hey, I have a 10 year old kid that thinks these are hilarious; she has since graduated to Stan Sakai's "Usagi Yojimbo").

The book signing was at M-Theory Music, which used to be located in South Park several years ago. I thought this was a rather cool choice to have a book signing.

Although we missed the Tabe BBQ truck earlier (please read about it in Darlene's post, "Music, Comics, Food"), I was glad to see there were some books left. I intended to get his whole Cool Jerk collection. If you bought the first three, then the 4th one was free! As Eddie Murphy would say, "Chopsticks, 29 cents...What a bah-gain. Ah think ah will buy some! Now that is a bah-gain for me!" (from his first comedy album, "Delirious" for those of you that don't get it).

By the way, Paul is the husband of Darlene from the blog, My Burning Kitchen; I finally got to meet both of them that evening. It was so nice putting faces to the names. Darlene is as awesome in person as she is on her blog. And, she's cute as a button too! She was also kind enough to give me a little food gift, which I'll blog about in a future post...Oh yeah, Paul was cool too!

How many of you have met any readers of your blogs? I've only met a few and so far, they've all been pretty cool people. No budding Jeffrey Dahmers or axe murderers (I hope).

Here's Paul signing my books...he even drew the different characters for me! I wanted to squee so badly but refrained from completely geeking out.

I felt like a total fangirl yattering to him about my love for Berkeley Breathed's "Bloom County". If it weren't for that strip, I wouldn't have given a flying fk about politics back in the 80's (Iran Contra scandal anyone?).  Bert used to give me Opus stuffed toys as gifts when we were in high school and college. He even gave me a Bill the Cat stuffed toy and one of my most prized possession, the Opus the Penguin phone!

TORC looking at CD's with one of the employees. She ended up buying a Smiths CD (I think it was "Hatful of Hollow") because it had the song she was looking for, "Reel Around the Fountain". TORC, if you're reading this, please correct me if I'm wrong!

I will definitely have to come back here to look around in more detail...we stayed only long enough to chat and get the books signed. It was nearly 8 pm so Darlene and Paul were just wrapping up as well.

And before we go, here's that Bill the Cat stuffed toy (this image isn't mine but one I found through Yahoo). My Bill the Cat doesn't have a bandanna around his neck or a stain on his belly! Can you believe this shit is going for $80 online? Bill has scraggly hairs all over his back too, funny. "Ack!"

And here is that Opus phone I was talking about. OMFG, it's going for $120 on ebay! Yikes! Too bad mine isn't working anymore! But even then, I wouldn't sell it!  Isn't he cute? When you lift the phone from his back, his head turns! Sadly though, my Opus phone now resides in a lonely dark corner of TC's closet. Maybe I should get it fixed and put it in our living room. Now that'll be a conversation piece or an eyesore depending on whose side you're on. Not as bad as a "Leg Lamp" though, eh?

As mentioned earlier, Mariposa was a bust so we'll have to go there another time!