When I was invited by some of my friends to join them for a 9 days trip to Denia, Espana, it didn’t take me much to say yes. Everything to escape the Belgian weather plus a chance to explore that part of Spain a bit. Denia is a 1 hour car ride away from Valencia City. It is a typical Spanish city around the coast where daily life is focused in & around the beach. Food-wise it’s a winner with fresh seafood, meat, tapas (pimientos verdes, abondigas,…) cava and great rioja wines but a no go area for veggies (hey it’s Spain!) Street culture is almost non-existing (highlight was a Mod-store Tommy where the store owner was spinning vinyl behind the counter, but he got all his records in Valencia City). Denia is also the closest point to Ibiza. Since Ibiza was facing massive forest fires, we decided to try our luck in Valencia City.

Valencia isn’t the biggest city around which makes it attractive enough for a daytrip. The way the city has been set up, makes it just perfect to stroll around, especially the older part of the city during siesta-time. Since Spanish peeps still consider this as holy (also logically in retrospect when faced with temperatures above 37 degrees), we could comfortably explore the city. First thing I noticed was the amount of pieces, tags etc colouring almost every wall, shutter,… Wherever there was free space, you could see a piece, a stencil, sticker or tag (especially a dude called BLOKE had the city on lock by tagging).

Since my fingers are starting to itch every time I hit a new city & since I’m a firm believer of the “crate-lovers are better lovers”-catchphrase, I did my homework before arriving in Valencia City (thanks Amparo for the tips) and came across following rec stores :

Harmony Discos, Pasaje Dr Serra 9 (Junto Plaza Toros): when you have Valencia’s Central Station in your back, go to your right. You will find this store in a shopping street under roof, filled with small shops.
Arrived here during siesta-time, so had to go back & forgot to take new pics of store without those shutters down (silly me). The music they carry, goes from the usual 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s stuff with a niche for metal&hard rock. They have a small selection of funk/soul/jazz/blues. Bought a Kurtis Blow classic over here. They also carry a fair share of 80’s maxis and loads of merch. The store has only one turntable on which the store owner self is spinning his own recs, so you have to ask him to play your records. He digged the Kurtis Blow album and started to bust a move behind the counter, yuppa!

Devil Records, C/Els Manyans 5: Bumped into this one rather by coincidence, on my way to Harmony Discos again while taking a shortcut via a store where I had spotted a Goonies-t-shirt. The store itself carries a shitload of eighties-records, lots of reissues of different genres (again leaning heavily towards metal/rock), merch shizzle. They have a couple of reggae, jazz, hiphop crates (lots of local spanish sounds though).

Discos Mardigrass!, Pza virgen de la paz 2 (junto pza redonda): Interesting store in a very interesting area (lots of streetart for instance). This store is specialised in jazz, funk, soul, hiphop, disco, house & latin. Besides full albums and 12-inches they also carry 45’s. It is a very small store, but man, it’s stacked with vinyl and… an organ, haha. I started with browsing through the hiphop crates and got myself a big smile when I bumped into the face of a buddy of mine, One-Cell. Boy, they had the first Beat Drunx album for sale (11eurobombers), no joke!!! Worked myself through every crate possible. Nice selection, mostly secondhand, some reissues and newer stuff. Price wise not cheaper nor more expensive than any other proper secondhand store, dude just knows the market value of his stuff I guess. If I would live in the Valencia area, I definitely would check this store more often. But with this also comes the fact that I have to work on my Spanish language skills ;-)

Oh yeah, if you have time at hand, you should definitely check out the buildings of the City of Arts & Science, awesome shizzle!

Catch y’all on the next one,