In this day and age, a new record store?!?

PHONO SELECT RECORDS
2312 K Street
Sacramento, CA, 95816
(916) 400-3164
Open Tues-Thurs 11am-8pm, Fri-Sat 11am-9pm and Sun 12pm-5pm 

Unlike most major American cities, lil' ol' Sacramento isn't entirely accustomed to independent businesses that cater to a mindset outside of the Blockbuster-GAP-McDonald's-Starbucks-lockstep sticking around for very long. It seems like those small bastions of consumer cool that burgs like San Francisco, Portland or New York take for granted have a very limited shelf life here. Take record shops for instance.

Even before the obsolescence of the brick & mortar record retailing was coffin-nailed by the Internet, those repositories of local shimmy discs in Sac were few and far between. Sure, Tower Records had its roots in the River City before it's timely demise, Dimple is still THE record shop to purchase crusty Eminem CDs and fart spray under one roof, and local over-priced indie The Beat has been around for decades now. But smaller shops have ridden less-than-stellar waves here. Record Haven, Manic Music and the much lamented-ly lost Tone Vendor have all come and gone, leaving a gaping hole in Sacramento's independent record shop scene (thankfully, Records, with its R. Crumb designed logo has done it's miraculous part to cover half this void).

Recently, however, Phono Select opened its doors this weekend to offer a stylishly brilliant ray of light on Sac's fairly dismal record purchasing landscape. As far as record purveyors go, Phono Select is a much needed breath of fresh air in a town that needed it so, so desperately. Located in the burgeoning and impromptu indie-rock block centering around an area of Midtown that can at best be described as Sacramento's Haight/Telegraph/Hawthorn faux bohemian business district, this borough bordering 21st to 28th and J and K streets seems like the perfect nest for what is sure to be this town's premier underground record peddler.

Phono Select  is a record collector's record store, plain and simple. Walk in and the first thing to strike you is the over-all aesthetic of the space, which is spartan and simple: it looks and feels like one of those off-the-main-strip shops you'd find in Berkeley, Chicago or Los Angeles. It's obvious some thought beyond Sacramento's typical "good-enough" attitude towards design went into this shop, what with the painted cinder block west wall opposite the Mod blue east wall, warm-wooded slat counter space and muted floors - all illuminated by a huge picture window.

Beyond the sight of the place is the nitty-gritty of a well-stocked shop. The store owners have utilized their distribution contacts from their time served as Tower Records buyers and managers to stock their shelves with some fairly obscure and reissued titles. A long row of vinyl graces the east wall, while an equally long row of CD's occupy the west wall. In between is a table display for rock t-shirts and turntables for sale. Near the entrance is a wall of tchotchkes containing books, pins, vinyl toys and other assorted goodies. Given to the forward-thinking imagination of this store, the listening stations consist of two turntables, a computer and a tape player (yep, Phono Select even stocks cassette tapes!)

On my visit to Phono Select's grand opening this past Saturday, I walked away with Bomp! Records recent reissue of The Telescopes # Untitled Second (previously known as "the self-titled shoegaze album," originally released on Creation Records) and a used copy of The Champs Spotlight On..., as well as the book The Art Of Band T-shirts, some cool record label logo magnets and various 1" pins. The pricing on all of this stuff was amazingly reasonable (for instance, LPs are typically priced at $15-$20 new, $5-$10 used). For their inaugural opening, the owners were even handing out free t-shirts and two limited edition mix CDs, both curated by each of the owners. Then of course their was Baxter, the super mellow shop dog, just taking it all in.

This town has needed a store like Phono Select for quite some time. It's a welcome change from the same-ol', same-ol'. A lot of hay gets made about the death knell of record shops, but in my opinion this is complete rubbish. Sure, the Internet has taken its bites out of the recording industry and shuttered it's fair share of record shops, but a shop like Phono Select is a great record store that caters to its customers' tastes and gives them a place that feels like the kind of store they wish they could open. And it's here in Sacramento?!? Why that's a cause for celebration right there!

Greetings!

Welcome to the premier posting of Hi-Lo [Sacramento], a blog which will showcase the highs, lows and everything in between concerning California's state capital,  Sacramento.

Sacramento is a, well, fairly "eccentric" berg. While the City Planners would seemingly love nothing to micromanage Sacramento into a "World Class City," Sacto's natural jankiness still seems to leak through their heavily lacquered-on "classy" veneer. For every prefab and mundane ultra lounge, full of douche-y The Hills poseurs, there's a scuzzy dive bar around the corner where, no doubt, the natives are being entertained by the spastic dance moves of Downtown James Brown (one of Sac's many, many eclectic characters).

Sacramento, goes by many names: Sacto, The City of Trees, Stucco City, Sactown, Baltimore West, The River City, Sacratomato, NutSac, Slackramento, Suckramento, etc. In keeping with Portland and Austin's motto of keeping their cities "weird," Sacramento has the unofficial motto of, "Keep Midown Janky," which was first coined by local Melanie Dinos ("junky" + "skanky" = "janky"). Try as we might, Sacramento will never shake its low-brow vibe, which most of the locals have learned to embrace, accepting Sacramento's endearingly odd personality and quirks.

Some of the facets that have put Sacramento on the map include being the the birthplace of the now-defunct Tower Records chain, being the hometown of the hair-rock band Telsa and being one of the targets of Ted "The Unibomber" Kaczynski's mail bombs. Sacramento also lays claim to famed indie bands (past and present) such as Tiger Trap, Hella, Mayyors, and Ganglians, as well as pioneering the now national trend of The Zombie Walk and being the hometown to underground comic artist and frequent New Yorker cover contributor Adrian Tomine. So, I guess we have our proud moments, too.

Sacramento's main hub is the downtown/midtown area, also known as "The Grid." This urban area is fairly easy to navigate, with numbered streets running west to east, intersecting with lettered street running north to south (crack-open a beer and watch drivers from the neighboring suburbs drive the wrong way down one way streets!) The area is still dotted with some of Sacramento's most historic buildings and Victorian and turn-of-the-century homes, even though most of the grandest buildings (The Alhambra Theater, The Sacramento Hotel, The Buffalo Brewery) were razed in the "old is bad, new is good" short-sightedness of the late '60's and early '70's.

Sacramento's urban core has much more character than its surrounding suburban slums, most of which seem to have a dubious and depressing "I give up" feel. Given that, there are still many fine gems hidden within the 'burbs car-centric nooks and crannies (the all-vegetarian Sunflower Drive-In comes immediately to mind!) The Grid, however, is where it's at in Sacramento, offering many things to see and do and eat, well within walking or bicycling distance.

But it's the people who give Sacramento it's chutzpah, and unlike other cities and their decadently extravagant citizens (I'm looking at you, Des Moines!), Sacramento's denizens are a bit more, shall we say, "interesting." On any given day, you can be hexed by The Bird Lady, schooled in the finer points of death metal by Ground Chuck, told a tale of woe by a  horse-voiced "gummer," or yelled-at about the nefarious dealings of the C.I.A. by Middle-Aged-Man-On-A-Razor-Scooter-Wearing-Life-Sized-Butterfly-Wings. There are dozens and dozens more of these wonderfully crazy characters, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Hi-Lo [Sacramento] will hopefully endeavor to cover Sacramento's best and worst qualities (which are, at times, frustratingly intertwined) to give you sense of what Sacramento living is all about, from a blogger who currently calls Midtown Sacramento home. Think of this blog as a primer; read on and see if you have the janky inside you to stomach living in a marginal town that frequently makes no. 50 on any one of Men's Health magazine's Top 100 lists ...if you dare!


Best of luck to ya, hon.