Remember records. Remember what it was like to browse album covers, not necessarily knowing what you wanted but knowing you'd find it. The iTunes store may have more titles but it has nothing on this treasure trove. A record store has a personality, a feel. It has a soul. 101 Music, on Grant Street in San Francisco's North Beach is a gem, and one of the last of its kind.
Here you could buy dreams. Music and the instruments to make it. Staring at record albums, feeling them pass through your fingers, stumbling upon something rare and unexpected - that's what record stores were all about. Now they're freakish curiosities, like haberdashers, or shoe cobblers. Little enclaves of nostalgia reserved for the few remaining vinyl connoisseurs.
The neighborhood record store was, in the 60's and 70's, a place to discover something you never knew about yourself, because popular music was always slightly ahead of you. It was an ever evolving barometer of culture and the truest reflection of the zeitgeist. Music showed you where you came from, what you were and where you were going. The record store, to a 12 year old boy, was the philosopher, politician, preacher and poet in his own backyard and his gateway to the mysterious world of adulthood. There never will be anything like them again. Saving money and traveling to a place to obtain a physical object that held the song you needed to hear, not just now but anytime you wanted. That was still a special feeling. And as incredible as it is to carry my entire record collection around in my pocket, I would give up that convenience in heartbeat for the experience of scavenging for records in a place like this again. And playing records in the dark with my brother until dawn.
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