HERE is Rolling Stone’s list of the top 25 record stores from San Francisco to Boston. I have been lucky enough to shop at 6 of them. (Thanks for the tip Greg Kirkos)
Amoeba Music located in Hollywood, San Francisco and Berkeley, CA. Even in the days when record-store chains ruled the music world, nothing compared to Amoeba. It was, and is, simply the most thorough and welcoming place a record lover could hope to shop. Each of its three stores features more than 100,000 items — much of it surprisingly high-grade, and with loads of surprises and rarities around seemingly every corner. Which, as anyone who’s been to any of them can tell you, is a lot of corners.