New York City

My wife and I are going to New York City later this week for the first time. She has an audition with the touring production of Hairspray, The Musical. Anyhoo, does anyone know of any CD stores in the Manhattan? I know zilch about the city and was curious.....Google isn't very helpful either.

Oof. If this were 15 years ago I could give you a huge list of CD stores to check out because I went to college on Staten Island and spent just about every weekend combing the record stores in the Village. However, it's been ages since then and I honestly have no idea how many, if any, of those stores are still around. Even the "big" Tower Records (which was at 66th and Broadway if memory serves) is gone now.

The only one that I know for sure still exists (at least the last time I checked) is Bleecker Bob's Records, which is on West 3rd Street in the Village. That was a cool place to find underground metal/thrash/hardcore stuff (especially on vinyl) back in the day. Haven't been there since the early 90s though so I don't know what sort of stuff they stock nowadays.

Good luck to your wife on her audition!!

There is a Virgin Meagstore in Manhatten, but you aren't likely to find any bargains there. Yes, it's big and the selections are pretty decent, but like any chain store, it's over-priced and being in downtown NY jacks things up even more. If you're able to venture into Greenich Villiage, you might find a used shop, although I don't know of any specifically.

Thanks guys. Its going to be a bit overwhelming at first. But I can't wait to get there. MTV TRL here I come!

If it's anything like Boston, the used shops have all but dried up completely. Boston used to have them every few blocks, now there just a handful throughout the entire city.

NEW YORK CITY?!?!

...get a rope.




sorry, couldn't resist

I got a few results when I Googled "record stores in Greenwich Village," though not many of the names sounded familiar to me...

It looks like this place is still around, I visited them from time to time back in the day, made some good finds but like I said, it's been awhile so who knows what it looks like these days:

St. Marks Sounds
20 Saint Marks Pl
New York, NY 10003-8008
Phone: (212) 677-3444
St. Marks Sounds (with two locations two doors apart) features an extensive and inexpensive selection of new and used CDs and vinyl. Used CD prices range from 88 cents to $8.99 per disc. Categories include both mainstream and others, such as new wave, independent, power, blues, reggae, jazz, oldies, country, kids and soul.

And since you got me going down memory lane, I started Googling the names of some of the other record stores I used to go to in NYC (even though I knew it was probably a lost cause) and got very little results. I was especially bummed when I saw this on some guy's blog caled "Vanishing Downtown":

http://vassifer.blogs.com/photos/my_vanishing_downtown/secondcoming.html

Second Coming Records was an awesome store!! I used to go there ALLLLL the time, it was only a block or two from the NYU campus. They had an a-maaaaa-zing selection of bootleg vinyl. I bought my first ever bootleg LP (a Metallica album called "AM I EVIL") from this store in like 1988. One thing I will always remember about this place was this huge cat they kept around the store ...whenever I went in there, he would always happen to be sitting right on top of the section for whatever band I wanted to look at, so I always had to move him, haha. Shame to see that they're gone, but then I guess I shouldn't really be surprised either.


Shoot, now I feel OLD. Thanks, Spectre.

Eyesore wrote:

If it's anything like Boston, the used shops have all but dried up completely. Boston used to have them every few blocks, now there just a handful throughout the entire city.

Same thing is happening in Philly.

CURSE THOSE DOWNLOADERS!!!! Wait, different thread.....

T-Roy wrote:

CURSE THOSE DOWNLOADERS!!!! Wait, different thread.....

Crack is whack, T-Roy.

spectrefate wrote:

T-Roy wrote:

CURSE THOSE DOWNLOADERS!!!! Wait, different thread.....

Crack is whack, T-Roy.

Must be all that coffee in the afternoon... he's tweaked out on caffeine!!!

man hes tripping out on the stuff

Dude, I wanna see some more pics of your NYC trip! NOW! Stop working, I'm almost feeling guilty.

you can all moan about having no used cd shops we have almost none

Need to visit this city one day before i die.

Gilbert wrote:

Need to visit this city one day before i die.

It's alright, if you like saxophones.

The last time I was in NYC was 2003. I was very excited to go CD shopping at places like Bleecker Bob's and other shops around there. Much to my chagrin those shops absolutely sucked for metal. The best place I found was the Virgin Megastore in Times Square which had a massive Japanese import section. Overall, my local shop in northern Kentucky had a far superior selection of metal. So, thanks for nothing NYC. Lol.

New York City Don't Mean Nothing

Never been to NYC, but I once went to upstate NY (Niagara Falls). It’s actually really nice upstate. Totally different than the gloomy look of a concrete jungle.

Geez, seeing that age-old post of mine in the beginning on this thread brought back some memories, haha.

I went to college in Staten Island, NY from '88 to '92 so I was in NYC frequently to hit concerts/record stores/etc. The good ole days.

Once I graduated from school and moved back to the Jersey burbs, though, I was just far enough away from NYC that going there for concerts -- or much of anything, for that matter -- on a regular basis was just enough of a pain in the ass that I didn't bother as much, unless it was a very special can't miss occasion.

The last time I set foot in NYC was in 2000 to see Iron Maiden's Brave New World tour at Madison Square Garden.

I do miss the old haunts sometimes, but I am pretty sure that most of them no longer exist.

Before we had kids, the wife and I would go up to NYC between Thanksgiving and Christmas and do corny touristy stuff and visit with friends that lived there. We haven't been there in years though now.

My only experience in NYC was around 1993.

I took a train there from Milford, CT to attend an IBM seminar. During the "lunch hour" I decided to just walk around downtown and was amazed at the quality of the stuff the street vendors were selling. I bought a comprehensive book about cats that was my "coffee table book" for a long time.

I always wished I had had the time to visit the Central Park Zoo. Given the state of things in NYC now I doubt I'd even want to visit there these days but back then it was fun to just wander around in what seemed like another world.