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Category: Music & DVD's [Edit]
Neighborhoods: Hayes Valley, Mission"I knew about this store before I ever even stepped foot in it. My sister is a DJ on the side, she used to live right behind Cha Cha Cha's…" read more »
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Every time I come here I find something interesting. They have books,T-Shirts ,and other sundry music stuff including turntables.
Vinyl! The New CD!
Good Jazz selection-I always find something good. For Jazz on vinyl it's either Jazz Quarter or here.
Cd's ,tapes also.
Prices reasonable as compared to other places with vinyl.
Yay!
I can't believe I haven't written a review for Grooves. One of my favorite record stores next to Rooky's! I almost always go in there with nothing in mind to buy but find so much great stuff. They always have great records in their new arrivals and the prices are VERY fair not unlike some giant store on Haight street next to McDonald's that shall remain nameless. The guys are awesome and helpful AND they have a listening station. They also sell needles and record players. Definitely one of my top 3 record stores in SF.
Ray is the man!
I've been shopping here as long as he's been in business. Great selection of vinyl. (I probably cleaned out his selection of 1960s Brasilian/lounge music).
Sorry folks.
Great selection of jazz and older world music on vinyl.
He also carries 8tracks and reel to reel tape.
Lahve the sign, lahve it, laaaahve it!
I spent 2 hours in here yesterday, and came away happy with some new 45's. The place is a bit cramped...with GOODNESS. A decent jazz and reggae/dub section. A good novelty/soundtrack/spoken word section, and a great rock one to boot. The listening stations are a bit tore up, but they do function. With Tower and Streetlight, and just recently Open Mind closing just up the street (on Market) to the crapola economy, I hope Grooves keeps on keeping on ...
Not the best store in the city, but neither is it the worst. Like a few others in the city, records seem to be a bit pricier here than you'd even find on eBay, but at the same time, there are definitely deals to be had.
There is a nice selection of a wide style of music, and there are boxes galore to dig through.
I like this store much more than the ones a few blocks away on Lower Haight. But I think they suffer from the same problem of over pricing records that really should be dollar bin (or near dollar bin) price.
But, it's pretty good and I will definitely stopping in on the regular.
long-time browser, first-time shopper: today i bought a turntable from mr. grooves store owner because yesterday i bought records and had nothing to play them on. there's only so long i can live within walking distance of a dozen records stores without bringing home the wax!
he set me up with a solid turntable, and promised that if i wasn't happy with it i could bring it back without a hassle. standing behind your merchandise gets five stars in my book. he did mention that he doesn't tend to sell too many amps for the reason, seeing as they're not his specialty.
Their vinyl collection is nice but I only got to see a fraction of it and don't feel like returning: I first visited at 12pm on a weekday (half an hour after they were supposed to open) and they were closed, despite having the lights on. I waited for a few minutes and then took off (nobody responded to repeated knocking on the door either).
I came back to the store a few minutes before closing time and they seemed annoyed by me coming that late in the first place and were rushed to close up shop. OK then, I guess I'll take my business elsewhere.
YUMMY LOCAL RECORD JOY JOY...
...or.. less enthusiastic...
a really kindly old gent selling a surreal collection of awesome records at just WEE too pricey a cost. Which is fine. I love this place, and is next to my friend's restaurant Delfino... so I love to pop in there when I am visiting him and begging for an Empanada.
Great selection, great old dude, and awesome atmosphere. Location is a bit rough, but it is hard to be an independent record store anywhere nowadays... so ... 5 STARS!
For those of you who suspect it's a drug front due to folks never leaving with a record, you've never seen me leave Grooves. Every time I step out Grooves my bag is full with records I've been dying to hear, others I heard in the store then had to have, and others that just looked like something my collection required.
At first it may appear to be a bit of a mess, but that's deceptive. Once you get into the, well, groove of Grooves you can easily find whatever you're looking for. I highly recommend starting in the new (well, new the store) bins to scour the grab bag of various records there. Then hit it alphabetically. Once you do that a few times, you'll easily get used to it.
And then there's the proprieters. Oh my God. If you could somehow contain knowledge there's no way you could ever gather up all the musical factoids the staff know here. They're absolutely brilliant people and will always be willing to help you find the record you didn't know you needed.
Grooves is a regular Sunday morning stop for me. It's a tradition that will never cease. I'd sooner stop drinking water or breathing air.
The guys here are nice, and they have some cool records, but in general I think there are better options in SF. In general, the attitude seems to be "what you see is what we've got", and there isn't that much turnover in selection. Fun to stop in every 6 months or so, but certainly not a weekly thing.
Great store for collectible vinyl and vintage morsels waiting for some TLC.
I went in here looking for nice acapellas/vox and boy did I hit the jackpot!! ...Loads of classic 1950s/60s recordings, stuff like self-help instructionals, humour, poetry... I even found an LP of Boris Pasternak poetry in Russian on side A and english on side B! And another LP of wicked classic horror tales complete with sound effects and scary narration!!
This has got to be a drug front. It has looked exactly the same for fifteen years and I've never seen anybody leave with a record.
Once you enter Grooves, it seems like you're in a hardcore record dork's one-bedroom-apartment living room: in addition to the fairly-well-organized bins of vinyl, there are cardboard bulk frozen chicken boxes galore filled with more records -- every nook, cranny, and crevice (watch yo ass!) is full. There's a big selection of soundtracks to old television shows and movies, and an even bigger selection of WTF?!, and the prices aren't bad. There's also one of those mechanical arm game machines -- you know, the kind that you normally try to score candy bars and cheap-ass stuffed unicorns from? Well, this one's filled with Ozzy Osborne action figures and plastic pan flutes.
This place reminds me of Rob Gordon of High Fidelty's bedroom. It's loaded to the max with any sort of vinyl you can imagine. Be prepared to get your fingers dirty from looking through all of the albums. Any hardcore vinyl collector should stop by here at least once in his/her life. It's a little tucked away from the rest of the city, but if there's something you MUST add to your collection, Grooves may have it. If you're a music junkie who just likes to browse, you can literally spend hours in here. Not for your average music collector.
Wow. Behold the teeniest record store with the most compact and eclectic collection of records that I have ever lay eyes on. Tons of Beatles and Dylan albums, several guilty-pleasure 80s records (see: The Bangles, A Different Light), and a whole lot of rarities. There aren't a whole lot of contemporary artists, but it doesn't really matter because there is so much of everything else. I could probably spend a day in the store and still not see everything this little record-store-that-could offers. Beautiful.
After a late night spent consuming odd concoctions of alcohol and dancing with your friends to hip hop from various decades, Grooves is the perfect cure for the ensuing hangover. You can walk out with anything from Balinese gamelan to Don Cherry's El Corazon to Glassworks by Philip Glass. I had been casually looking for vinyl versions of all three of those and they were all there to greet me, today, at Grooves, my new favorite record store ever (apart from the psychedelic mythical one in Tijuana I haven't been to yet). Before I lived in San Francisco, when I passed by as a visitor I always assumed it to be a good place to find many levels of house and techno music. Not true.There is however a solid selection of much past (and future) music that is not house or techno - from rock to folk to soul to soundtracks to spoken word to my personal favorite, the "????" section, not to mention the boxes and boxes of "new arrivals," mostly in the jazz department, which the owner hasn't felt like filing yet.
There is a nice listening station that looks out over Market Street, which is a great way to experience new music, and the owner is a generally friendly if perhaps somewhat crotchety dude. It is pretty apparent that he really loves music, including country (but maybe not rap). He is totally the kind of dude that will appreciate your selections, whether they are totally eclectic and random or super specific (like say you wanted to get a bunch of Neil Young or all of the Environments records, BAM), because he only stocks stuff he seems to be ok with (again, no hip hop or techno). I personally found the prices way reasonable (everything I bought was under $10 and included several unopened freedom jazz LPs). I really don't understand how you could on any plane think Amoeba is cheaper because everyone knows that place is way overpriced on everything. Like $6 for a 7inch for a band that nobody outside of San Diego has heard of which the band itself sells for half that. Plus, what you are getting is probably really educational so how priceless is that.
If you really want to complete the whole experience, I recommend that right afterwards you take yourself over to It's Tops (keeping it in the old timey zone) and get yourself a vanilla or cherry coke while you read about your selections. Then, you should immediately ride your bike up a big gnarly hill with tons of traffic. The combination of being completely jacked up on sugar and excited about music will give you a pretty solid understanding of what a heart attack might feel like.
This is my favorite neighborhood record store. It's dank and musty like the bowels of an old ship, complete with barnacles on the walls (not really, but that would be cool) and it's captain is a salty old bearded character, whiskers white as the MC5 limited edition white vinyl album I bought here. Woo! That was a fun analogy.
Anyway, I'm usually the only one on the poopdeck. Maybe another lost soul will breifly peruse the booty, but usually it's just me and my captain.
They have fun collectible stuff, and happy cheapies, too. The gold coins, sapphires, rubies, and shrunken heads aren't as clearly labled as they could be, and there are several unopened treasure chests littering the deck.
You won't find newer treasures like punk and rap, but jazz, classic rock, oldies, and fun miscellaneous-ness is abound. I got two great Star Trek read-a-long story records here, and a "Music of Mad" album, complete with a forward (do they call them forwards when it's on a record?) by Al Feldstien himself. Awesome. And my captain gave me a grin and a hearty tumbs up when I purchased said records.
Ray is such a g!!!! a great place for cheaper records that are still just as dope as $50 soul 12" I have found some of my favorite records here for under $15 .. they have a great international section
Yea, what the hell is this place? It can't be a trust fund baby's spot coz there hasn't ever been anyone inside - and that money runs out sometime. Right? It can't be a drug front with the real pot store across the street, there would be a turf war, well, if stoners could muster up the energy to fight. It's a mystery & I'll buy you a beer at the Zeitgeist if you can explain to me the reasoning for 'Grooves' existance....
I found this place entirely by accident. I am a newbie to the world of vinyl, only really interested in the medium because it's cheaper than CDs, and I refuse to go digital (let's not go there right now). I warily wandered in on Saturday, forced off the M-line a few stops early by St Patrick's Day crowds, and nestled myself in the children's vinyl -- a fast-approaching trip to Disneyland has made me especially nostalgic lately. Right in front was a copy of "Pecos Bill" as narrated by Robin Williams, a record my dad used to have. I knew it was love right then.
I keep saying I'm going to pick up an old LP player one of these days, but I've been dragging my feet because I keep my record collection at my parent's house in San Jose. I'm going to get moving on that now. I hope Pecos Bill stays put until I find one.
There was also a little printout taped to the counter that read "Yelpers love Grooves!" with exerpts from a few glowing reviews on it. Yes, we DO make a difference.
after a rather intense, argumentative class in my graduate program one afternoon, i came here looking for some T.Rex to soothe my angsty, weary soul. alas, there was no T.Rex to be found. no happy marc bolan in a tophat. i sighed, audibly.
kelley asked, "are you looking for something specific?" when i told him of my search, he apologized that there was none in stock. "i see you've already moved to the "s" section," he commented, which gave me an idea. "perhaps you could recommend something to me?"
i gave him parameters that were only a little less demanding than the twelve labors of hercules; he stumbled only briefly, and emerged from thought with Morgen, a reissue of 1969 psych rock group from germany, and Karen Dalton: "if you're into the folk thing, she's kind of like a billie holiday of folk. you see here, richard manuel of The Band worked with her on this album, and wrote one of the songs."
he then threw Jimmy Buffet at me which i am hoping was just a test-- a test to see if i would just lap up anything that my 3rd favorite DJ in all of san francisco recommended. i think i passed. a kind, tatooed gentleman was in there at the time perusing the "new arrivals" and laughed, "i have over 1500 records, and not one of them is Jimmy Buffet."
some discussion over the moniker of Buffet fans later, i walked out with some fabulous records. i promise to come to grooves at least once per week. cheers, kelley and ray; it's people like you that make this the best city in the world in which to live. xoxoxo
Grooves is the only hipster-free, reasonably-priced, perfect selection-having record store I know of in the city. When I leave here with my "Disney's Robin Hood Soundtrack" and Ahmad Jahmal albums I don't feel like a poseur or a cliche douchebag. Instead, I feel like I just spent a few bones on some good shit for me. This review blows so I'll meet you at Zeitgeist to explain the beauty of this store in more detail, Food Gnome.
What a great place. If you got time to scour through piles of dusty old vinyl you'll leave with more than a few treasures. About as unpretentious as record stores come. I love Grooves. The prices too are beyond reasonable.
the best selection of vinyl i've come across. the prices can get a little steep so if you're broke like me go to amoeba.
this place is alright if you're looking for old classic rock or jazz, etc. not a good place to look for new stuff or much indie or punk type stuff. cool location and vibe, though
I've hit up every great record store on the Pacific, from Off The Record in San Diego to Sonic Boom in Seatle, and Grooves definately makes my short list for the hottest spots for digging on the West Coast. The owner is a fantastic dude with an immense musical knowledge, and their inventory (which changes daily) is absolutely unbelievable. This place is a vinyl junkie's dream. Sorry kids, I do love Amoeba but when it comes to finding serious gems in S.F., Grooves and 101 Music (at the corner of Grant & Green in North Beach) are the places to be.
When I read these other reviewers asking if Grooves is a "drug front", or "who buys stuff here?", or some such other nonsense, it immediately labels those reviewers in my mind as completely clueless. Obviously these people have no taste, zero knowledge of music history and would be far better off shopping at Sam Goody or the Wherehouse. This is a record collector's store, and a fairly diverse one at that. If you just want this week's Alterna-flavo(u)r or some gay dance 12" remix silliness then you may be disappointed. If you have a wider knowledge of musical history you will find many gems that you just DON'T see at Amoeba. I almost don't want to be too glowing in my review so that I can keep the aforementioned jerkoffs away from this cool store, but at the same time i want Grooves to stay in business....I nearly always find something cool and interesting at Grooves...and the messiness is part of its charm.
Neighborhood: Lower Haight
Category: Music & DVD's
Neighborhood: Lower Haight
Category: Vinyl Records
Neighborhood: North Beach/Telegraph Hill
Category: Music & DVD's
Neighborhood: Haight-Ashbury
Category: Music & DVD's
Neighborhood: Haight-Ashbury
Category: Newspapers & Magazines
Here's a few of the record stores in the Bay Area.…
