(Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow vet Paul Kaufman recalls a time when music shopping meant leaving the house.)
If you’re like me, you spent many hours flipping through records at stores, looking for treasures.
As a small kid, I started out locally, on Garnet Ave. in Pacific Beach. The Wherehouse and Licorice Pizza were a couple of blocks apart, so when I was just learning my history, I could spend hours looking at album covers and picking up magazines at those places.
As a 13-year-old, something commercially available was usually on the top of my list (early Badfinger fixation), and those sorts of places usually fit the bill. For a while, Licorice Pizza had a cut-out bin that had some real finds. They also carried imports, and I have distinct memories of saving up the princely sum of $2.50 each to buy the early Sex Pistols and Clash 45s (with real art sleeves! And no big hole in the middle!). It was a double thrill, because it was the closest thing to international travel I would experience until I was much older.