Charity shops (or thrift stores as we in the states call them) are similar to therapy for me. You go in with no expectations of finding anything, you run into these odd people looking through odd things, and then you start the inevitable record rummage. They are 50 cents here, so anything goes. An hour later you leave with a mint copy of Henry Mancini's Best of, Lonnie Liston Smith - Vibrations, and a stack of 45's that look increasingly enticing by the moment. The whole experience is refreshing to me, which I find ironic, because the usual thrift store smells like dirty clothes and mold, and not to mention your local creepy, social deviant staring you down for picking up that pair of pants he was eyeballing 45 minutes ago.

All in all I think charity shops (thrift stores) in themselves are gold.

So, my housemate found a pile of records and a box of tapes in a skip recently. In amongst a load of standard classical tapes ('best opera arias', Swan Lake, that sort of thing) are a few mix tapes. These mix tapes are awesome. Which reminds me of that Dalston charity shop blog, which is also awesome, but I can't be bothered to find the link right now. But is in this thread somewhere, if memory serves.

Anyway, bump.

This reminds me that I should go on a charity shop hunt spree, one of these weekends. The Dalston one is pretty close to where I live and i haven't been there in a while, but there are some nice little ones throughout East London. Here's the links, twatface:

http://dalstonoxfamshop.blogspot.com...nomi-live.html

http://www.dazeddigital.com/projects...cle.aspx?a=538

Alice Coltrane's World Galaxy, original Impulse pressing for £1.50 recently. Charity shops pwn.

i once found a copy of Black Flag's Damaged in a hospital chairty shop, they haven't had anything thing that interesting since

shellac's the futurist, can't remember how much i paid but it was less than ten dollars; the cashier had no idea what record it was.