November 6

After saying my goodbye’s to my hosts I began my mega Honolulu vinyl adventure! I had four thrift stores and three record stores on my RADAR, a lunch spot suggested by my buddy Rich and six hours to make it happen.

My first two stops were relatively close to where I was staying and the farthest away from my eventual destination at the airport.

Number one was a local thrift store called Savers:

It is a local version of what we know in Spokane to be Value Village, same font on the sign saying price tags etc.

They only had two piece of vinyl in the whole store, one was a Kenny G record and the other was some Christmas album. I passed on those but did spend quite a while mulling over the rack of aloha shirts, of which have become a big fan.

Next up, only a few blocks away, was a Goodwill store. The place turned out to be a Goodwill outlet when I got there and the crowd was gathering outside the door to be let in to pick through bin after bin of items.

There was a fairly large rack of records, most of which seemed to be 12 inch singles or laser video discs for some reason.

I did manage to find one King Crimson record that, although musty and scruffy, seems like it will be playable. For only $0.25 how could I resist!

I gave the cashier a dollar bill and got three quarters in return, which was great… I was going to need some quarters for parking meters because the next few stops were real near Waikiki and downtown Honolulu.

The Goodwill store downtown had another large lot of vinyl records, but nothing there really screamed out “own me!”

good news is There was a parking meter right out front that still had 8 minutes on the clock, I ran in for a speed pick and got out of there quick!

A short distance away, just west of most of the major hotels and resorts in Honolulu and a stone’s throw from Waikiki Beach was a Salvation Army:

The place had its own parking lot so that removed that issue. I’m actually glad it did because, even though we were so close to the ritzy resort area, this place seem to be in the middle of a homeless camp!

My small rack of vinyl right next to a for sale pair of Bose 901 speakers netted no new purchases:

So that was that for the thrift store shopping in Honolulu. Once again, had it not been for the required airline travel home I would have come home with an armload of interesting stuff. Nothing stellar but a good picking day nonetheless.

After lunch at L&L Hawaiian BBQ joint, I pointed my trusty rental car toward the first record store on my list, Hungry Ear music in Honolulu:

The store was rather small but clean and tidy. A mix of vinyl and CD with gear both new and used. Also a good selection of turntable parts & cleaners.

The guy on the counter turned out to be the owner and we chatted for a bit about music on vinyl and blogs and the like. He said that the vinyl community in Honolulu was thriving at the moment and they even had a large record fair just a month or two ago that was very well attended.

The used vinyl section of the store was modest but every piece was pristine in VG+ to NM condition. The wall hanging section was a mix of new releases and still sealed copies of vintage pieces. Amazingly the prices on the stuff was very reasonable by mainland record store standards! There was nothing here on my must have list so, even though I had a stack accumulating from the $5 discount bin, I left with just a t-shirt for my wife.

Another record store called Toogruvz was listed on the Google machine as being right across the street. I wandered over that way and found the address but apparently Toogruvz was not too groovy because the place was vacant. But what I did find was another thrift store that was not on my list:

This independent thrift store was run by a woman from Pennsylvania who retired here years ago and in this store as a hobby.

Here I found a still sealed copy of a Sammy Davis Jr record that was well worth my $2. I was also tempted by a great selection of Japanese recordings of folk and pop, but passed.

My final stop for the day was at the record store I was most interested in, a mix of records CDs books and comic books in a well established store called Jelly’s:

Jelly’s had big rack of musty crusty vinyl records, just like what I’m used to. Other than the new vinyl, no protective plastic prophylactic jacket covers and many pieces without even record sleeves.

Nothing here on my “I can’t live without this” list either so I took my thrift store treasure and headed out to catch my flight.

All in all I would say it was a successful day, I saw plenty of traffic in downtown Honolulu and managed not to crash myself for cause too big of a problem for the Hawaiians. A GPS with spoken directions is a must as most of the road name start with either a “K” an “L” or a “W” and sound remarkably similar.

If anyone’s interested here’s the list of places I visited on:

Hungry Ear Records
Address: 2615 S King St #100, Honolulu, HI 96826
Phone:(808) 262-2175

Toogruvz Records Hawaii
Address: 2600 S King St # 201, Honolulu, HI 96826
Phone:(808) 946-7773

Jelly’s Honolulu
Address: 670 Auahi St, Honolulu, HI 96813
Phone:(808) 587-7001

Savers Thrift Store
Address: 1505 Dillingham Blvd, Honolulu, HI 96817
Phone:(808) 842-0061

Salvation Army Thrift Store
322 Sumner St
(808) 522-8460

Goodwill
3638 Waialae Ave
(808) 737-3284
1075 S Beretania St
(808) 521-1798