Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Soundworks Closes

Walking down Valencia Street a week or so ago I noticed that yet another of my old record shop haunts, Soundworks, has closed. Owned by Sam LaBelle, Soundworks was known for its record pool, and when I went in there on Sunday afternoons I could always count on seeing some of the better-known gay DJs in there, trading gossip with Sam and picking up their pool records. Much of what was in their bins was older stuff, but it was a great place to pick up old acid tracks, or crazy late 90s trance. Their techno selection was okay, but it always seemed to veer a bit too much into the harder Belgian/Dutch stuff for me.

The closing of Soundworks means that, in the six years since I've moved back to San Francisco, every record shop that I used to frequent, with the exception of Tweakin' Records, has gone out of business. That roll call includes:
  • Housewares
  • Zen City Records
  • Soundworks
  • F-8 (and Reverb Records)
  • BPM Records
  • Open Mind
Say so long to the independent DJ vinyl store, it was really nice knowing you. Here's what an afternoon of record shopping was like back two years ago when I started this blog.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i used to shop at In House and before that Clear as well as some of the others you mentioned. Gone by the wayside as well....

-bradley

Larry-bob said...

How does Tweekin stay open? I haven't ventured inside in years, probably since the days when I would occasionally buy a drum'n'bass 12" (probably not there, though, since I seem to recall they didn't jump too heavily on that bandwagon.)

M said...

Open Mind has re-opened! I love that place too...