Stuff seen on Hawthorne St...

We hadn't been back to this area since our visit in 2012...

Hawthorne St. is part of the Hawthorne District...

Anti-Black Friday & Small Business Saturday 2018

It was a beautiful morning in Golden Hill...

on the shopping day known as "Black Friday"...

Portland Day 4: Excalibur Comics + Vintage Pink

After our fun stop at TOV Coffee House...

we made our de rigeur stop at a local comic shop...

Clayton's Coffee Shop

While mom was in surgery...

My dad, sis and I had a late breakfast at one of Coronado's institutions...

Chinatown by way of Hi-Fi

Leaving Silver Lake...

we headed over to Chinatown...

and passed through Hi-Fi..

Return to Imperial Grounds + a peek into Ms. Vintage

Yesterday, Bert and I had some free time since TC was at a volunteering gig.

We already had breakfast at Mango Mango (post is forthcoming)...

so coffee time it was...

Return to the Blue Pig & Porto's

We'd been here before...

this cute little vintage store on Magnolia...

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...

Christmas books Part 3 - The Golden Books

See the Pez with the green "body"?  That's the newest Christmas Pez.

 I like it so much better than the previous elf (not shown) which looks a bit on the creepy side. This one is more cute. Plus he's green!  Some of the Pez dispensers have candy in them, but I don't really eat the candy. To be honest, I don't know how old some of it is, so yeah, that would be gross to ingest it. But I digress, this post is about books....

The Blue Pig

We'd passed this store earlier that afternoon while looking for the Martial Arts History Museum...

The motley assortment of items on the sidewalk caught my attention so we made a mental note to check it out after seeing the museum...

Frock You! Vintage Boutique

Right after we enjoyed our relatively tame burgers from Crazy Burger, I wanted to do a quick looksee here...

before we headed out to dessert...

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...

"The Girl Can't Help It"

With our trek to the Spruce Street Suspension Bridge behind us, I wanted to take a quick detour to North Park to check out a small gourmet shop on Ray Street. But first, we had to find parking. I parked a few streets back from University Avenue, ending up on Grim Street.

When I got out of the car, I was pleasantly surpised to see that we were near Lucky's Breakfast, which used to be calledGolden Phenix (no "o" in their spelling), a place I've only read about through Kirk's blog (that post has a photo of the old sign).

It had an old school look and feel both outside and inside. It was already the early afternoon, so Lucky's was definitely closed, as they are open for breakfast only. A quick peek in the windows showed a completely, uh, "uncleaned" restaurant. No one was around. Dirty plates and dishes were still on the tables.

I actually wanted to take a quick peek in the store that was next door to Lucky's before going to that gourmet shop...

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...

South Park Walkabout 2013 - The Sights

Last weekend, TC and I had the pleasure of attending the South Park Walkabout with Cy and her son...

Neither of us had been to this event before so we thought it would be fun to check it out...

Fab Shopping on Fern...

You gotta love the bubbles on this sign!

One of the places we passed while heading back up Fern Street to while away a few minutes before checking if we won the big raffle...

South Park shopping...

After our nice lunch at Apertivo and quick stop at Eclipse, we headed over to the neighborhood of South Park to check out some of the smaller shops and perhaps get some dessert. 

These Christmas decorations were here last year. I like how it looks next to the street art mural...