Update: I concluded my visit to San Francisco with a visit to Down Home Music in Berkeley and a parking lot sale in front of their store. Of all the vinyl shopping trips I made during my stay (including several to Amoeba), Down Home was by far my favorite. Super-nice staff/owners(?), great selection and acceptable prices.
Amoeba, in hindsight, was my biggest disappointment, despite the fact that I bought a lot of records there. In a nutshell: I bought a new record that had just come out and paid Amoeba's premium price of $30 for it, only to discover the same record after the fact at the Mad Monk for $25. I wanted to return it to Amoeba, but they only issue store credit. (Store credit only for a brand-new, sealed record -- are you kidding me??). Store credit obviously doesn't do me any good, so I just made peace with the idea of keeping the record, only to then find it again, this time at Down Home, and for $20. WTF? The staff at Amoeba was very hit or miss -- some super-nice, others complete a**holes. The biggest disappoint, though, came when I looked up a used CD I had bought at Amoeba on Discogs while waiting for the train back to San Francisco. At that point, I had no more time to return to the store. I paid $11.99 for a used CD in VG/VG+ shape that can be had for $14.95 new AND is supposed to include an outer box and a 40-page booklet. That to me borders on fraud. I'm tempted to stuff that CD into an envelope and send it back, asking them to return a copy to me that justifies the price I paid. What do people think? Is that worth the trouble?
