A couple of years ago, I used to dwell about a block or two from Guestroom Records; I didn’t know just how good I had it then, because I very rarely would ever walk there, the huffing and puffing far too strenuous on my engorged ticker. But now, living roughly half a mile from the Trolley Stop Record Shop, 1212 N. Penn Ave., it’s the replacement record store that I walk to at least once a week, typically at a medium pace, usually to the tune of “Shakedown Street” in my headphones.
Standing around the roomy shop, sifting through the voluminous bins of old albums, I’ve come to an aged realization: now, at 41, I’m officially in the process of becoming one of the “old” guys that hang out in used record stores for hours on end. While I don’t have long white hair or a tie-dye t-shirt—give it time, I tell myself—I do find myself interjecting years worth of useless musical knowledge into discussions about what session players were on Steely Dan’s Gaucho.