I discovered some terrible news yesterday. Hits and Misses, Toronto’s go to record shop for punk, hardcore, crust, etc., is being shut down imminently.
Over the years I’ve lived in Toronto I’ve made a point to regularly pop in and scour the bins (both at the old location at Bloor and Ossington and the new one next to Rotate This! on Queen West). I’ve always found interesting stuff I can’t get at Rotate, Sonic Boom, Vortex, or any of the other shops in town.
I’m not going to speculate on the circumstances and I don’t pretend to understand commercial property laws but it does sound from Pete’s post that this is an irreversible process and the store will be shuttered within the next two weeks.
If you live in Toronto or nearby and are into punk or its myriad sub-variants, please do get yourself down there and buy whatever you can.
Unfortunately this seems to be a trend. Not one but two prominent and excellent sources of vinyl have closed down in my area (central Texas) in recent months. Encore records which had an excellent niche of hard rock and metal here in Austin, and also Sundance Records in San Marcos which was practically an institution. It had been there 35 years with a huge selection (and signed picture of Jimi Hendrix) but unfortunately neither of these excellent shops could keep up.