I planned to be productive today, but it's 1pm and I am still bumming about. It's sunny and warm(-ish), I think I may go for a walk before I do anything.

Science's 10 Most Beautiful Experiments

I'm familiar with all of them. Yay me! with the appreciation of beautiful science stuff.

Howdy, folks!

Yeah, that is sad about Rhino going. I practically lived there when I went to UCLA. Well, at the store before they moved. It was a lot grungier. Rhino was the first record store I ever went to with a listening booth. That listening booth was instrumental to my purchase of a number of LPs and 12" singles from groups I'd never heard of like The Shillelagh Sisters and The West India Company.

I wonder why Amoeba's formula has been so successful and Rhino's wasn't (although I never saw the years when Rhino went to stocking comics or anything but music)? I think Amoeba was so successful here in Berkeley because they filled a niche. All we had at the time they started was Leopold's (which had been bought by The Wherehouse and was already in the process of being liquidated), Rasputin's (where the store help just dripped with attitude and the selection wasn't so great for anything that wasn't rock), Tower (high prices and antiseptic atmosphere), Saturn (a little boutique store in Oakland whose emphasis is on pop vocal rarities and novelties), Down Home Music (in El Cerrito...great selection but high prices)...I can't remember whether dba Brown and Berigan's were still around at that point (they were boutique stores with jazz and vintage jazz stock). That's a lot of stores within a 5 or so mile radius, but it didn't feel like it did you any good because there wasn't any single place that hit the spot.

Amoeba kicked right off with a large stock, reasonable prices, friendly staff, and knowledgeable music buyers in all sections of the store (that I frequented anyway). Prior to Amoeba, Leopold's had had the best International section (occasionally Tower) in Berkeley. (Down Home has an excellent International section but its prices are higher than any other store.) Amoeba had Cheb i Sabah as its first International buyer and it really showed. They took so much of that business away that you started to see Rasputin's beefing up its section in response. Tower as well. But as I said, every section's buyer seemed an ace and it enabled you to do one-stop shopping because they carried everything, even classical.

But everything that Amoeba has is something the Rhino I remember had. Except for the square footage.

But as I said, every section's buyer seemed an ace and it enabled you to do one-stop shopping because they carried everything, even classical.

That is the mandate of the Amoeba buyers. "Treat your section like your own personal specialty store."

But everything that Amoeba has is something the Rhino I remember had. Except for the square footage.

The square footage is key, though. That's what guarantees volume and flow and consequently lots of turnover in the used stock. There's always something new. At Restless Records I knew every bin by heart. I rarely had to dip outside the new arrival bins. No way you can do that at Amoeba.

Yeah, it seems that might be it. But wasn't the new Rhino store much bigger? I think I only visited there once. I've been visiting my parents (and thus, LA) less frequently. And now that I've lived away for so long, I no longer have an Angeleno's mind about distances by car. So the drive from South Pasadena to Westwood seems like a big noxious pain in the ass.

Cass,

I loved your story. It reminded me of a report I just saw on high/higher end wines being offered in boxes. Seriously. Check this out:

[link]

That Rhino isn't even the size of one floor of the Hollywood Amoeba.

In New York magazine, they had an article about how one chain of drugstores, Duane Reade, does so much better in NYC than CVS or Rite Aid. Basically, what it all boiled down to was that Duane Reade was so much better at negotiating rents than the other chains.

I didn't know that. I knew that Amoeba had been a big hit in LA. I was really freaked when I first saw a credit card commercial that was set in Hollywood Amoeba. I was like "Hey! Amoeba's my neighborhood store!" It was weird when I first found out it had expanded beyond the Bay Area. I guess it's a measure of how far the store's influence radius is that instead of building more and more stores in the Bay Area, they felt one in Berkeley and one in The Haight was sufficient and that it was time to conquer other cities.

Chocolate Clone-a-Willy:

The classic Clone-A-Willy allows you to make a copy of your Johnson, and with the optional motor you can even turn it into a vibrator. The latest version is the Chocolate Clone-A-Willy which lets you make a real milk chocolate copy that is 100% edible and, apparently, quite tasty.