A couple months ago I speculated that Zen City Records on Valencia Street, one of the few remaining DJ vinyl shops in the city, was closing. Well, now it's official - I walked by earlier this week and they are gone, records, angry dog, and all.
I used to shop at Zen City, but then their stock seemed to become more and more of the back catalog variety, with nothing new at all in their trance or techno sections. They always seemed to have a good stock of new domestic and import house, but, as SF DJs have turned more and more toward techno, breaks, and electro, record stores have needed to change their focus to keep up, and with fewer and fewer DJs playing vinyl, keeping all your stock in one medium seems like a bad idea. The owner of another record store that has also been consigned to history once told me that he didn't know how Zen City stayed in business; well, I guess they didn't. Though I think they were the victims of a myopic view of where the club scene was headed, as well as the changing technologies of being a DJ, it's always a bad thing to see another store like this go under. As of this writing all I know of that's left are Tweakin' Records on Haight, and Soundworks, as reliable DJ vinyl shops where you can listen to music in advance, and then Amoeba, if you know exactly what you want and don't need to listen to it first.
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