How do you know you're in a hip record store?

Of course, this isn't really hip in a good way is it?

Re the question: it has precisely 30 CDs, all mounted on the wall. The rest of the shop is full of art books.

And I know I'll have to risk a glance at the records, but I KNOW where I'm @ when a good number of the used CDs often cost as much or MORE than the new CDs.

Hardly any stock. 12" singles only. More staff than customers.

A somewhat apposite anecdote.....maybe...when I was little and Shaquille O'Neal came on the scene......remember that? the hype wave was insane.....every mall FootLocker had that giant cutout with his actual size 20-something shoe on display.....everyone and their dead grandma knew who Shaq was, he was in everything........so I went to the mall with sis and I got the official black Orlando champion jersey at Big 5, it cost a pretty penny......as I was chilling by the shoe racks, this very corny black guy (yes, corny black men exist) behind me starts jabbering incredulous to some white chick like, "O'Neal? Who the heck is O'Neal.....TATUM O'NEAL?, hahaha!", not even in a good natured way.....it was bullshit.....he knew who Shaq was like everyone else, and he was in a sports store......I go "huh? it's Shaq! everyone knows Shaq".....he just goes 'pfff' all dainty and shit......then my sister steps in and goes all sarcastically, "OH....SO YOU AREN'T AWARE OF LIKE, THE MOST FAMOUS BLACK ATHLETE ON EARTH RIGHT NOW....BUT YOU KNOW TATUM O'NEAL....CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU'RE THE MOST ANGLICIZED BLACK MAN I'VE EVER MET!!!!"....she starts mock-clapping.....I didn't know what anglicized meant or who Tatum O'Neal was, but I knew that my sister made this guy look like a total BITCH.....he was speechless.....it's about the only cool thing my sister ever did

You don't. Until years later when you reminisce with other sad muso geeks about how much better little Xxyyxx was than the new omni-globa-mega-corp franchise that only sell the latest Teen Bleepcore tunage.

;-)

if I go in and they have the record I want, that place is damn hip

first time i ever heard this was over the PA in oxford street virgin megastore back before they closed the bit that's now MadHouse.

you know you're in a record shop that THEY think is hip when:
you can't touch the records, they're all on racks behind the counter.
(i hate that)

Seriously, Best Buy and Circuit City kick the ass of my local "cool" record shop in a couple of categories important to me, like Latin music (look for high percentage of Chicano families copping the new Los Tucunes de Tijuana CD).

I've heard so many good things about Best Buy. I don't think I've ever been in one.

There are posters plastered all over the place, practically obscuring any view one could get from the large windows up in front, even. Loads and loads of rock t-shirts on hangers hang from wherever they can hang -- this is not excluding the ceiling. Plenty of other rock t-shirts are folded and put into a display case. Yet another display case features rock pins from bands as disparate as the Ramones and the Damned. Along one side of the store is a place where local bands place fliers advertising their latest club gigs, and where ultra-leftist anarchist types place their propaganda -- I'm sorry, literature. Taped to the tiny little parts of the windows that aren't covered by posters are ads for musicians looking for bands and bands looking for musicians, requisite "influences" list included. Music features -- the boxes of used vinyl for $1.00, the more "in demand" used vinyl in old record bins, newer releases by vinyl-friendly artists in more old record bins, tons of used CDs by artists of varying degrees of obscurity, tons of newer CDs by artists of varying degrees of obscurity (also including some imports), and a wall of cassettes behind the lone register. There some music videos by the side thrown there as an afterthought, and before you leave the place you can pick up any one of the local alternative newspapers. The store is located on a corner in a neighborhood close to downtown, so the parking situation isn't pretty, but people will come and park wherever they can to get to the store.

Mind you, I prefer the local chain of secondhand CD stores and even Barnes & Noble/Best Buy/Half Price Bookstore, all of which are places where I don't feel as self-conscious about what I'm looking at, but I have had some good times at the "hip" store and did squeal like a teenybopper when I heard Nirvana played in said store. It was one song, but it was enough to make me feel 14 again.

Oh, and this store also has a turntable so you can sample the vinyl before you purchase it. That's the one thing I actually get excited about on a regular basis when visiting this store. I *heart* vinyl.

(for those of you who might actually visit San Antonio one day, I'm talking about Hogwild Records, which is near San Pedro and Cypress)

Are these two really that disparate? I was expecting Pat Boone or something for the second example.

Poobah's in Pasadena is probably the hippest store in the world that has completely unhip looking employees. Even the local Wherehouse is likely to have more tatoos/piercings. It was started in '69 and probably has some of the original employees.

¨THAT IS ALL THEY ARE GOOD FOR.

OR

Good hip: There's a great store in Paris that PARCELS your purchase for you in a sealed envelope so you get to OPEN it later. Glorious.

The owner of one of my favorite stores is also a bartender at my favorite club. And you forgot muttonchops, or is that just a Washington thing?
:^}

Hipness signifiers:
Magazines you've never heard of.
The place is wallpapered with flyers from shows 15-20 years ago and the artists' names are now known only to collector scum.
There's a small section of second-hand books related to music.

i read this and i was really trying to imagine how, say, an andrew wk poster might go about defending/guarding a miss kitten poster.

This reminds me. If there are any folks in production on this board I still hold true to my theory that sales of CDs would go up 10-15% if they'd just make them easier to open.

For The Love Of God