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Re: Coming to Toronto
| quote: | Originally posted by Vanilla
I'll be heading out to Toronto March 14-18 and I wanna know where's some good places to buy vinyl? |
i can help with this one. to get most of the good vinyl shops in one fell swoop, take the subway to Yonge station, then take the other line south to Dundas. get off there and start walking north along the west side of Yonge.
merely a block up, you will see a Sunrise records. get in there and climb up the stairs to Eastern Bloc. Disclaimer! they are in the process of moving, and i haven't been there for a few weeks, so they may or may not be still there. their new location is somewhere on Spadina & Queen, but i can't check for sure, because their website is "currently unavailable". 
Anyway, once you're done there, you should be able to see Play De Record on the EAST side of Yonge, just a bit up north from Eastern Bloc. there they have a pretty good selection of trance even though the shop overall caters to more hiphop/d'n'b/breaks/etc. i.e. you will never hear trance being played on the loudspeakers. and it's pretty cramped, and you have to get through a hall of porn videos first. but it's a very nice place, good place to get vinyl.
anyway, hope you didn't splurge all your cash there, cuz there's more to come! get out of Play De Record and keep walking north. stay on the east side of Yonge from now on - there are no more record stores on the west.
Soon Yonge will start sloping upwards, and before you hit College, you should see The Pit. it's almost at the very intersection of College & Yonge. if you hit College and miss it, then go back. it's a few meters down - you really can't miss it.
there they also have an appreciable selection of Trance, enjoy etc. now for the final store, Release Records, imo one of the best. leave The Pit and cross College, walking north and on the east side of Yonge all the time. after 1 or 2 blocks you should get to Release.
A tip: the storefront is fairly small, so if you miss it visually, keep in mind that you CANNOT miss it aurally, because they always have prog blasting through a speaker or two in the front. so if you hear prog, you are at Release. (incidentally there is also a hair salon much further up north that also blasts music, sometimes it's ok and sometimes not, but if you get up to there then you are WAY too far north).
anyway, get in Release, and enjoy, it's a wonderful shop, one of my favs. it caters more to Progressive (if you couldn't tell from the music blasting from the front). but they also have good trance! a lot of the records are behind the counter so you might have to ask for the guys there to pass you some vinyl. don't be shy, they're all cool. also make sure to check out the "best sellers" wall on the left as soon as you go in, as you can find some awesome new tracks, as well as some old classics there. it's a mix of everything on that wall, in terms of genre.
Anyway, when you're done, and you're crying over how broke you are, but at the same time happy to have so many quality records, and want to take the subway back home or wherever, you can either a) walk back south to College and get into College station, or b) keep walking north till you hit Bloor (where there's the Yonge/Bloor station). it's a longer walk, but if you're not in Toronto much, you might as well do that and get a little "scenery", if that amounts to much.  plus, there are quite a few food places on that stretch of Yonge. also if you're not dead tired by now (i certainly would be!), and if you didn't spend your entire day in those four record shops (i certainly do... lol), then you could also walk a bit on bloor, there's a chapters and an hmv and some other stuff, plus the ROM (royal ontario museum) is a few blocks west of Yonge, on Bloor, (Bloor & Avenue) so if you are anxious to exhaust yourself even more, that's a nice place to hit.
OR, and this might be even better, (because the way i described it above is just what's convenient for myself) but only if you want to be UTTERLY broke, you can reverse the order of the trip, i.e. instead of going down to Dundas, get off at Yonge initially, then walk south along Yonge (on the east side), visiting the record stores mentioned above in reverse order. that way, when you're done, and leave Eastern Bloc, you can just go another block south, to Dundas, and then visit the Eaton Centre, which is a gigantic mall with lots of goodies inside, and (more importantly to your starving self at this point) two humongous food courts! i.e. lots of grub to be had. 
http://www.torontoeatoncentre.com/
of course if you have other ideas that's great too. but this is now way off topic.
so to summarize!
ROUTE, "get me to the record stores and back ASAP"
- take subway downtown
- transfer from Yonge to southbound line, get off at Dundas.
- walk north along Yonge till you get to Eastern Bloc (west side of Yonge)
- cross the street into Play De Record (stay on east side from now on)
- go north to The Pit (right before College & Yonge)
- go north to Release Records (remember the music playing outside, you can use that as your cue)
- walk north till you get to Bloor/Yonge (or south to College) then take subway back.
ROUTE, "get me to the record stores and leave me downtown"
-just reverse the order of the above, i.e. get out at Yonge/Bloor and walk south. when done you'll be smack-dab in the middle of downtown, then do whatever you want.
OH and there are more record shops in Toronto, most notably Metropolis Records on Spadina (at the northwest intersection of Spadina & Queen), but quite frankly, it's not worth the trip there because a) their trance selection is not good at all, and b) after hitting the heavy-hitters on Yonge, you will (most likely) be too tired and too broke to go there anyway. YMMV.
mmmm hope all that helps! enjoy 
Last edited by Alccode on Feb-19-2003 at 06:08
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