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DAWNING_AT_AQUARIUS

                                             August 13, 2021
                                                    
Once upon a time, on a Valencia Street long ago,    
there was a small records store I shopped at        
quite a bit for many years: Aquarius Records.       
                                                    
There was odd phenomena here that I only gradually  
became conscious of: the record store clerks           The people working there
would never comment on a single one of my              were clearly of the same
purchases, no matter how remarkable it really was.     tribe of music freaks as
                                                       college radio DJs like
I eventually read an interview with one of the         myself, and yet they
people who ran the place (not exactly the founder--    didn't act like it.
it had a complicated history, changing hands        
several times, and moving around): one of the       
features of the place was evidently that the        
staff was taught to *never* disparage anyone's      
purchases-- and consequently they never made        
a single remark about them.                         
                                                    
    It's something that never would've occured to me,
    but there are apparently many people out there who     The kind of comments
    are happy being "normal"/"mainstream" and really       I'm used to getting
    dislike hipster clerks looking down on them.           from record store
                                                           clerks is stuff like
      A freind who actually lived in the Haight,           "Wow, I didn't even
      but was of the basic blue jeans persuasion           know we *had* this!"
      once remarked that she disliked shopping on   
      Haight Street because of the attitude of      
      people working there...                        
                                                     
         I was puzzled, and talked about             
         it with Dangerbaby:                         
                                                     
            "I've never noticed that."              
                                                     
            She looked at me and gestured, saying   
            "Well, that's because-- "                
                                                     
            "Oh."                                        
                                                              
          The cool crowd was actually shallow enough         
          to be taken in by my half-hearted posing.      
                                                        
                                                        
                                       Apparently, the people working at
                                       Aquarius got it out of their system
                                       in their written record reviews:

                                           PROBLEMATIC_TALES

                                       Which is funny, because those actually
                                       often annoyed me more than a verbal
                                       comment might've.

                                       Like the dude commenting on the
                                       latest from Peaches remarking
                                       dispagingly about her trashy
                                       lyrics: "Someone has to say this:
                                       You went to Mills College!"

                                          This store barely carried anything
                                          by Mills College people.  There
                                          was hardly anything from the
                                          Bay Area Improv scene, but a hell
                                          of a lot of boring metal crap.

                                          If Peaches had been doing
                                          something remotely as high brow as
                                          her musical education, Aquarius
                                          would never had touched it.



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