Earlier this year, I expressed my ongoing grief concerning the absence of my dear friend Tower Records. The years go on and the dreams don\u2019t stop; the void in my life sometimes feels as significant as if it were another of my human friends who make up such a distressingly large congregation of the dead.<\/p>\n
If that isn\u2019t morbid enough for you, I\u2019ve got more. If it\u2019s not silly or stupid enough, I\u2019m just getting started.<\/p>\n
Ah, but I may just decide to be normal and respectable and mature about the situation. That would be a first, and sometimes it\u2019s fun to try something new.<\/p>\n
So, Tower\u2019s still gone and my soul still sustains a painful slap every time I drive by the former location of the Sports Arena Boulevard store. But there is an oasis in this desert of despair that I have not addressed before. It\u2019s far away, but accessible, and is within the upper tier of blessings to contemplate not only on Thanksgiving but every night of the year before beddy-bye.<\/p>\n
Amoeba Music!<\/p>\n
Their bags say \u201cBuy – Sell – Trade CDs, Movies, LPs, and Turntables\u201d and that\u2019s not saying it all; there are terrific collectible items of all sorts, from posters to tour jackets, and just like the beloved Tower, one hell of a book and magazine section. I must not fail to mention the frequent in-store concerts (McCartney has played there). So, I will not.<\/p>\n
Personally, I\u2019m not interested in the concerts. I go up there to get facsimiles<\/em> of music; not to witness the real thing. What overkill…<\/p>\n I\u2019ve avoided going to Amoeba on Fridays and Saturdays when it\u2019s just a bit too crowded for my comfort and there are a few too many hip celebrities who pop in on their way to some hip nightclub so they can get noticed and gawked at. They usually don\u2019t feel that they have to stand in line at the checkout area and if the serfs who are in line don\u2019t voluntarily relinquish their place (\u201cOh, please<\/em> go ahead of me!\u201d they coo), the hip celeb and his\/her entourage will just walk right up to a cashier and will usually be accommodated. After all, this is Sunset Boulevard and we\u2019re in Hollywood, aren\u2019t we? Once I witnessed a cashier\u2019s reluctance to fall all over herself and suck up to a very recognizable actress. The cashier used the same reply I used myself a few times in the past when the celebrity indignantly asked, \u201cDo you know who I am?\u201d It should be carved in granite: \u201cI know who you were<\/em>.\u201d I never noticed that same cashier on any subsequent visit, so perhaps I should thank her here for having taken one for the team.<\/p>\n Upstairs at Amoeba is what I like to call Movie Heaven. The lower floor will generally have a few locations spotlighting some incredibly low-priced selections of DVDs, and one is advised not to pass them by (I\u2019ve snagged complete seasons of series like Desperate Housewi<\/em>ves and The Wire<\/em> for two bucks) but upstairs is the full meal: row after row of the well-known and the obscure, the new and the carefully used, all arranged by genre, director, and\/or country. The section labeled \u201cCult\u201d is a favorite, and the one designated \u201cSmut\u201d is endlessly fascinating with its surprisingly classy international flavor. Bring the kids. The majority of Movie Heaven is DVDs and Blu-rays, but there is also a separate section for VHS tapes and a compact but substantial area for laser discs (which still look stunning on any pre-high definition television set.) The laser disc section used to be mammoth here, and I witness its ongoing diminution with a tender sorrow.<\/p>\n There is a fine selection of DVDs from England which are in the PAL format and won\u2019t play on regular players sold in the U.S. (which are set up for the NTSC format). But you can find dual-region players that play both NTSC and PAL DVDs\u2013I recently found one at Fry\u2019s for under 30 dollars. This substantially increases your selection of videos, as both the U.S. and England have released titles that are unavailable on the opposite side of the pond.<\/p>\n The majority of the vinyl downstairs on the street level is of the used variety, but Amoeba is likely to have new copies of any vinyl title currently in print. And the new vinyl sections in the store continue to expand as more and more vinyl is produced. The classical section is as well-ordered as it is voluminous, likewise the soundtrack department. I\u2019ve never seen more Georges Delerue import LPs in a single place (that wasn\u2019t my own home).<\/p>\n Amoeba Music is extremely popular, so the stock is in constant rotation. You\u2019ll find something new on every visit. One thing the general public isn\u2019t aware of is the special lounge for the store\u2019s favorite customers, who can hang out on couches and drink complimentary cocktails or sodas while watching videos on a wall-size screen. This V.I.P. suite has its very own concierge, a lovely lass named Lisa who has never balked at accommodating my own peculiar needs. Yeah, and monkeys fly out of Amoeba\u2019s butt, too. The public doesn\u2019t know about the special lounge and Lisa because they don\u2019t exist. I made that stuff up because I\u2019m deeply insecure.<\/p>\n Since I simply cannot stand driving to L.A. during daylight hours anymore, I\u2019ve been making my visits to Amoeba special occasions that involve more civilized transport\u2013I take the train. Disembarking at Union Station, I hop (sometimes, if I\u2019m real happy, I skip) onto the subway and get off at Hollywood and Vine. I avoid Hollywood Boulevard (which reeks of wee-wee, especially during the summer) and immediately go south on Vine to Sunset, where a westward walk of a block ends at Amoeba Music. For those who arrive by car, there\u2019s a welcome underground parking garage.<\/p>\n Hot damn\u2013their website amoeba.com<\/em> is a mail-order masterpiece, offering free shipping on both music and movies.<\/p>\n So, it\u2019s not Tower Records, where I could drive to every week or any time the mood hit. Amoeba is a very special place that I must make special arrangements to visit\u2013but it is a place that seems to know my grief and is willing to do anything it can to comfort me. And at that it has succeeded again and again. Amoeba has stores also in Berkeley and in San Francisco. I wonder if they\u2019d be interested in a certain place in San Diego\u2013a place on Sports Arena Boulevard that carries a bit of history…<\/p>\n Who knows? Good gracious, this is all sounding too much like a commercial plug and I apologize for that if it has annoyed you. But I really, really love the place, and as I say, it\u2019s doing a lot to help fill a empty part of me.<\/p>\n You want a commercial? A real one? One that\u2019ll make your jaw drop? One that I only saw only once on television and yet its insane after taste (figuratively speaking) still haunts me? Dear reader, take the time to Google the product called V.I.Poo and feast your eyes and ears on the latest step in personal products. The world just keeps getting freakier and freakier; life\u2019s parade must have plenty of surprises still lined up and ready to pounce. Keep grabbing the fun stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Earlier this year, I expressed my ongoing grief concerning the absence of my dear friend Tower Records. The years go on and the dreams don\u2019t stop; the void in my life sometimes feels as significant as if it were another of my human friends who make up such a distressingly large congregation of the dead. If that isn\u2019t morbid enough for you, I\u2019ve got more. If it\u2019s not silly or stupid enough, I\u2019m just getting started. Ah, but I may just decide to be normal and respectable and mature about the situation. That would be a first, and sometimes it\u2019s fun to try something new. So, Tower\u2019s still gone and my soul still sustains a painful slap every time I drive by the former location of the Sports Arena Boulevard store. But there is an oasis in this desert of despair that I have not addressed before. It\u2019s far away, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hosing-down"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11932,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11931\/revisions\/11932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}