Best Vinyl stores in L.A.

what's the address of the fairmont miramar? anywhere in santa monica leaves you w/in a half hour to the record collector and a bit closer to Rhino in westwood by UCLA. basically you just drive down wilshire and make a left (north) to get to either of those stores. i don't know where the record rover is.

never bought anything there, id have to really need it. he sits there in the unorganized place and if you shows interest in anything, you can hear the cash register wheels in his head and mouth. as i remeber, the prices were ludicrous at low end and i didnt bother to ask about the wantables.
record surplus is THE store to hit, it changes often enuf to go more than once a week. my doubtful friend was a convert in two visits!
......regards....tr

tommy, you're so right about the cash register in his eyes. i went in and asked if he had the chet baker/russ freeman mosaic set. he said he did which impressed me because it's not easy to find. 'how much?' i asked. 'eighty dollars' he replied. 'REALLY! That's all! I'll take it!' i shouted. Right away and w/o missing a beat he said, 'Oh, the that the um I was this one was that the one I was thinking about the I this was that this one is one hundred dollars.' (I think that's verbatim). so he jacked the price up twenty bucks; not really a big deal but ya know...come on.

my relationship with that store went down hill from there. he always had what i wanted but w/o getting into it any more the guy is just unethical. if you know what you want you can beat him at his own game but it's too tiring.

You need to be very, very careful at the Record Collector. Prices are grossly inflated; he views himself as a kind of art dealer selling Monets and Rembrandts, as he likes to put it, and charges accordingly. But if there is an LP that you really want, he will have it. I would suggest he's only worth buying the really expensive records from. Otherwise, a rip-off.

My concern as a vinyl lover is when to buy the CD and when to buy the LP. A lot of the Cuban-Latin jazz that I love just doesn't seem to hit the wax...but on the otherhand I'm sometimes shocked when I see in the new release bin an LP that I thought would never make it out on vinyl. I just never know if something is going to be put out on vinyl. I end up buying the new release as a CD because I don't like waiting.

Is there some sure-fire way of knowing if most or any of the new releases now-a-days will be put out on vinyl or not?