Aquarius Records (store)

Aquarius Records storefront for Milk set.

Aquarius Records is an independent record store and the oldest record store of any sort in San Francisco, California, established in 1970. Aquarius is known for carrying an obscure selection of psychedelia, metal, and world music, and has an extensive mail order catalog. The store's selection is relatively small but carefully chosen and annotated by the staff of music aficionados. They claim to have coined the modern alias dronology for the drone music genre.[1]

History

Store at current location on Valencia

The first Aquarius Records store was located in the Castro area of San Francisco. There were two early locations on Castro Street, including one next door to Harvey Milk's camera store. Chris Knab bought the store in 1972[2] and in 1978, he co-founded the independent punk rock and new wave music record label, 415 Records, with Harvey Milk's friend[3] and his, Howie Klein.[4] Around 1983, the store moved to 3961 24th Street, in Noe Valley. In 1996, new owner Windy Chien moved the store to 1055 Valencia Street in the Mission District.

Notes

  1. ↑ In this catalog page (Archive.org copy of 2002) they claim: "Here at Aquarius, we've coined such neologisms as "dronology" and "fuckery", simply because we hope that such words offer enough connotation even without a lot of context."
  2. ↑ "FourFront Media & Music: About Chris Knab". Archived from the original on 27 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  3. ↑ "SFBG Radio: Talking to Howie Klein". Retrieved 2011-06-27.
  4. ↑ Levitin, Daniel. "A Brief History of 415 Records". Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-25.

External links