there goes your favorite local record store

With a nice mixture of music-geek purity and acute business sense, Tanveer Badal reports on the final days of a Los Angeles institution, Aron's Records. Badal used to work at Aron's and captures the essence of what made the store so special in its heyday, while accurately detailing what brought about its downfall.

I feel very much marooned without Aron's. (No doubt people on the Westside feel equally weepy about the close of Rhino Records in early January of this year.) Amoeba is simply too gargantuan to give the same intimate pleasure of discovery that Aron's used-record bins provided. It's a very good store, but it can't compare to my first love.