Rockers, if you awaken anytime soon—but not after midnight on Dec. 24—from your headbanging-induced, coma-like sleep, then do yourself a solid and head on over to ARISE Music and Coffee for any sort of last minute gift-buying, guilt-driven compulsion that strikes after said sojourn to rocanrol party land. By the way, while you were there at the club last night you told everyone you loved them, so now you have the opportunity to demonstrate such by laying on some real love. Precious and mostly local rocanrol artifacts from T-shirts ($10 to $20) to patches ($3 to $10), hats ($15), cassettes and CDs ($5 to $15) and even collector’s edition vinyl albums from bands as diverse as Sleep ($80) and 5-Star Motelles ($20).ARISE traffics in authenticity. Here in one small shop is the essence of Burque’s music community, expressed as a form of creative marketing and presentation that will surely encourage repeat visits. And oh yeah, big heshers, they totally have your size: I scored a 3X Spirit Caravan T-shirt there for a measly 15 clams!Adding to the homestyle, small town record store vibe, ARISE serves a variety of soft drinks and coffees that may be sipped whilst chatting, shopping or jamming the fuck out to whatever metal masterpiece happens to be playing on the joint’s Pioneer turntable. Ellefson Gourmet Coffee is available for a mere $20 per bag.Besides that, entrants to this craftily designed portal to rocanrol-landia can visit with the two proprietors, who happen to be some of the friendliest, most knowledgeable and totally def members of the local scene, Mike Trujillo and Roman Barham. Thinking ahead to the holidays, if that’s still possible, Arise is the perfect combination of “local” and “music” for shoppers interested in a true encounter with holiday enchantment.
Mecca
MECCA
Here and there along the portion of Central Avenue that scampers craftily and with curves, west out of downtown Burque, there are remnants here and there of a long-ago local culture that has now mostly been replaced through gentrification and the intransigence that goes along with poverty.But there are also grand, if often neglected and so slightly overgrown, examples of the other Burque on the path between Downtown and Old Town.MECCA, the time capsule-like shop project of Rock De La Vega, has seen periods of intense popularity as well as a turn towards retail anonymity due to the ART construction project that wiped out many an old time business in MECCA’s stretch of west Downtown. But somehow, like an implacable poltergeist, the thing survives—filled with objects and books and music and reminders of what was and what can be again.The shop’s currently open only odd hours and that makes a visit even more mysteriously elusive in content and in form. A recent visit though, on a sunny day in November, yielded notes on the following treasures:There are thousands of records at MECCA, ranging in price from $1 to $25. LPs, 45s, even the odd 78 are here for you, turntableists. There was a handcrafted tin candle holder on sale for $8.75; a skull-print bag was on offer for only $4.89; a boxed hardcover book on Marcel Duchamp is available for $4.89, as are many other art books, whose prices range from $3 to $50.MECCA also offers a slew of retro board games ($5 to $20), the odd metal globe ($11) as well as all sorts of sheet music priced to move at between $3 and $10 per book. There are so many oddities and not-so-oddities on sale here that we predict you will find something cool—if only yourself staring back up at you from a favorite, forgotten book, game or fancy plastic space helmet.
