RECORD STORES

BPM Music Factory 573 Hayes St. (tel: 415.487.8680 fax: 415.487.8683) A long time favorite of the City's club DJ's, BPM recently moved into Hayes Valley.
Frequency-8 1816 Haight St. near Stanyan (tel: 415.221.4142 fax 415.221.4143 email: illumin8@frequency-8.com) By far San Francisco's most incredible looking record shop - the ceiling is covered with flashing electronic gear. Great selection of trance and techno plus some clothing and mix tapes.
Groove Merchant 687 Haight St. (415.252.5766)

Long famous for its archive of old soul and funk records, Groove Merchant is also home to Ubiquity Records (a jazz/funk/soul label featuring local and not so local talents like San Diego's Greyboy). GM for the most part is vinyl only but carries a large amount of both import and domestic. The Beastie Boys name check GM on Professor Booty.

Open Mind Music 342 Divisidero (415.621.2244)

OPM shares the same space as Gabardines which makes it quite easy to pick out your favorite record and that Chevron jacket you were looking for at the same time. In all seriousness, have a wide assortment of both new music and old kitsch and exotica. The wide assortment includes new and rare alternative as well as the latest techno and acid jazz. You can also catch them at the local record swaps. Friendly and knowlegable staff.

Soundworks 228 Valencia near 15th St. (tel: 415.487.3980 fax: 415.487.1972 email: sndwrks@best.com)

Soundworks is a treasure chest of house, trance, techno, pop, ambient, jungle, acid jazz, trip-hop, alternative, and tribal 12"s, LPs, CDs, CD5s, mixed CDs/tapes, and videos. Centrally located near the freeway, but outside of the city's main shopping areas they should be a mandatory stop on any music buying excursion. Soundworks alos operates a record pool and is starting a dance music label this year.

Streetlight Records 2350 Market (415.282.8000) 3979 24th Street (415.282.3550)

They are actually three Streetlight's, there is one in San Jose as well. While both S.F. locations are good the Market location is the better one, SL carries loads of hard to find new imports, cool promo only items and rare old stuff as well. They have a huge selection of both CD's and vinyl, super cheap cut outs, on top of their normaly cheap price for music. Staff is fairly friendly and knowledgable.

Tower RecordsMarket & Noe/Bay & Columbus/Stonestown/(outlet)660 3rd Street

There are three Towers in SF and all are open till midnight(!), except for the Outlet which is open until 5 pm. The Market street Tower is fairly large. It has the best selection of the three. It caters quite well to the tchno/house/dance crowd with ,seperate dance cd single sections, seperate and often confusing ambient /techno section. . Very large selection of magazines and fanzines with a wide enough selection to make it quite competitive to some of the other magazine racks around the city. They also have a huge selection pop/subculture books as well. Limited listening kiosks with latest releases.Bass tickets built in. However no tapes. Drawback is the high prices for imports and despite its name it carries little or no records at all.

The Bay Street location is almost the same however but less emphasis on dance, and less selection in general.

The Tower Outlet is an experience onto itself-DIG is the key word here. Somewhere underneath the David Hasseloff live album and Tiffany's second CD, gems are here and the prices are quite cheap. 99 cents to $9.00 is the average for c.d.s. Lots of imports including Japanese imports. They also carry cheap unsold magazines, books, videos, some records and some tapes. Hint: check the carts that are around the store, they usually have the new arrivals. No Bass tickets here.

Tweekin Records 593 Haight St. (lower) near Pierce (easy to miss) (tel: 415.626.6995 fax: 415.626.5206)

Downstairs in a basement lies one of S.F.s finer Acid Jazz/Techno/D.J. record store. Tweekin carries LOTS of imports from both the U.K. and Japan. It caters to both vinyl and CD types and you can listen to either one before you buy (a big plus). They also carry mix tapes from local DJ's, slipmats and bags and the occasional T-shirt or two.

Virgin Megastore Market Street

Though not cheap, Virgin carries an extensive selection of import and domestic Acid Jazz, Ambient, House and Techno CDs and tapes. One full wall is devoted to mix and dance compilation CDs. A dozen CD listening stations allow you to check out the latest imports. Highly recommended if you are a CD buyer, but be sure to comparision shop with the indie dance stores.

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