{"id":243641,"date":"2010-07-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-09T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/vinyl-is-king-at-hillcrest-shop-where-collectors-trump-ipods\/"},"modified":"2010-07-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-07-09T07:00:00","slug":"vinyl-is-king-at-hillcrest-shop-where-collectors-trump-ipods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/vinyl-is-king-at-hillcrest-shop-where-collectors-trump-ipods\/","title":{"rendered":"El vinilo es el rey en la tienda de Hillcrest donde los coleccionistas triunfan sobre los iPods"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Pearson
\nReportero SDUN<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tucked away near the busy street corner of Sixth Avenue and Robinson Avenue in Hillcrest is a tiny, independently-owned music store called Record City. It\u2019s one of the last of a dying breed\u2014the independently-owned record store where patrons actually can purchase vinyl LPs and hard-to-find albums by obscure artists, not just CDs like those sold at the big-box stores, or credit-like cards you can purchase with a certain number of downloads from iTunes.<\/p>\n

\"Vinyl<\/a>
\u201cIt\u2019s a pet peeve of mine that people \u2026 come in here and ask us why we don\u2019t have a psychedelic South American section,\u201d said Record City employee Jack Adler. (Christy Scannell\/SDUN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>Record City, owned by Las Vegas resident Leonard Leavitt, originally opened on El Cajon Boulevard back in 1993 (the original Record City in Las Vegas opened for business in September 1988 and is still in operation). Record City\u2019s Hillcrest location opened in 1999 after Leavitt decided to close the original location on El Cajon Boulevard due to slowing sales.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the record stores closed around then\u2014even Tower Records,\u201d Leavitt said. \u201cThat was right about the time Napster and Internet downloads hit and became popular.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Graham McNamara, the current manager of the Hillcrest Record City, was frequenting the El Cajon Record City. His said his passion for music pulled him into the store to search for the records he loved growing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1997, I was working as a hairdresser for SuperCuts,\u201d McNamara said. \u201cLeonard said he was looking for a new location to move Record City, and he wondered if I would be interested in running the store\u2014not because I had experience managing a music store but because he knew I had a vast knowledge of and enthusiasm for all kinds of music.\u201d<\/p>\n

McNamara\u2019s mother is British, so he spent the majority of his teenage years, from 1975 to 1980, living in Great Britain\u2014when the sounds coming out of the U.K. were changing the musical landscape. The Sex Pistols were causing a stir with their violent, unpredictable shows; the sounds and political messages of The Clash were becoming popular the world over; and, of course, disco music was reaching its heyday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have to say that, of all the great music that came out in those days, my favorite bands have to be The Police and a band called Showaddywaddy, who was a pop group that specialized in revivals of hit songs from the 1950s,\u201d McNamara said. (Showaddywaddy\u2019s song \u201cUnder the Moon of Love\u201d was a No. 1 hit on the U.K. singles chart in 1976 and spent a total of 209 weeks on the charts.)<\/p>\n

Jack Adler, a Record City employee who started working there 10 years ago, said the store has the largest inventory of used records in San Diego County, and a lot of that has to do with McNamara\u2019s passion for tracking down hard-to-find albums.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a pet peeve of mine that people search the Internet and find out about some obscure music, then come in here and ask us why we don\u2019t have a psychedelic South American section,\u201d Adler joked. \u201cI don\u2019t think someone who downloads music is passionate about the band they are listening to. People with iPods are just not that passionate about music anymore. There\u2019s something about getting a record you\u2019ve been trying to find for a long time. The difference between someone who likes music and downloads individual songs, and a collector, is all about passion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ron Crosby, a frequent shopper at Record City, who describes himself as a \u201cself-employed swap meet vendor who focuses on selling music,\u201d has lived in San Diego his entire life. Crosby said it\u2019s McNamara\u2019s passion for collecting music, and the fact that McNamara and Adler give each customer personal attention as opposed to the clerks working in big-box stores, that makes Record City stand out from any other music store in San Diego.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecord City is just more intimate,\u201d Crosby said. \u201cWith the attention you receive, it\u2019s kind of like buying music from a friend, whereas you get the feeling your business is not appreciated at the big-box stores.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prices at Record City range from the $1 bin to albums between $4.98 and $7.98, although some of the more obscure albums are a little more expensive. Record City is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. And contrary to popular belief, the music store across the street called Thirsty Moon is not affiliated with Record City, McNamara said.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Daniel Pearson SDUN Reporter Tucked away near the busy street corner of Sixth Avenue and Robinson Avenue in Hillcrest is a tiny, independently-owned music store called Record City. It\u2019s one of the last of a dying breed\u2014the independently-owned record store where patrons actually can purchase vinyl LPs and hard-to-find albums by obscure artists, not […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1321,"featured_media":243642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Vinyl is king at Hillcrest shop where collectors trump iPods","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}