I've just written a long paragraph about local bands & the live music scene, but have put that to one side for a separate article so I can stick to the point...
Which was record shops. The British Record Shop Archive lists lots, some I remember, some I don't. Living in the wilds of Hanham off to the east of Bristol, record buying was mostly about a record shop in Kingswod High Street, which I can't remember the name of, or trips to HMV in Broadmead to spend my paper round pay on whatever John Peel had played that week. My best ever record buying experience was when a boutique (clothes shop) on Hanham High Street which had tried to sell records as well for a few years gave up and sold boxes of singles for 10p and LPs for £1.50. I bought dozens, lots of punk and post punk including some that are real rarities now... I also discovered Plastic Wax Records happily still going and the world of second hand records. I can still remember buying an import Stranglers E.P. because I hadn't heard of it and literally running to buy The Ramones Rockaway Beach after it was on Radio 1. 
Record shops are on the up with the "vinyl boom", and that's a good thing, even though I suspect that a good number of the discs bought are for display rather than playing. The new shops that pop up (and down again) are nothing like a "real" record buying experience though. Have you read High Fidelity? The book describes a real record shop, and that is what I loved, and indeed still do. Grubby, probably fairly disorganised, and don't bother talking to the staff who will either ignore or ridicule you. Nick Hornby and Giles Smith both had that right. The aforementioned Revolver Records was the archetype in Bristol, I went in once, and was too intimidated to go back for ages. But when I realised it was the only place to get some of the stuff I wanted I was hooked. Rival Records in Park Street with it's racks of cheap discs to flick through. Music Market in Bath a shop so small 3 people had to leave if you took a record off the rack. There was Record Fayre above a camping equipment shop which sold imports at £1.99 that were so rubbish half of them didn't have grooves deep enough for a stylus to find. 
All this may sound like I'm a vinyl fan. I'm not, it was rubbish. I don't doubt that the new 180gram collectors discs are better, but seeing people in their twenties rooting through boxes of vinyl in a charity shop recently getting all misty eyed about them reminded me of using Mark's sister's Nolans singles for airgun targets. The vinyl was useless and the music was crap. When I worked for my Dad selling 78rpm records and gramophones in the eighties the question of collectability came up all the time. How to make a Bing Crosby record collectable? Throw it away. White Christmas sold 100 million copies on 78 alone so to make it rare we'd have to fill up a lot of landfill. Same applies to vinyl,. In 1977 there were 15 million LP's & singles sold in the U.K, so questions about rarity and value are to say the least spurious.
Does the real record shop still exist. Yes it does and here are my recommendations.
Plastic Wax: Cheltenham Road Bristol BS6 5QU - Lots of vinyl and cds. the hours I have spent scanning the shelves since I was 14 are beyond counting. Always something new, always a bargain.
Missing Records: 247 Argyle St, Glasgow G2 8DL - Under the railway bridge hidden away. A recent discovery and one I'm still digging into. Another small shop, and there is always a Glasgow "character" on hand to liven things up.
Musical Box: 457 W Derby Rd, Liverpool L6 4BL - Friendly owners, I made his day when I asked for Jazz cds, went out with armfuls.
Record Collector: 233 Fulwood Rd, Sheffield S10 3BA - Closed Wednesdays as I found out. Separate cd & vinyl shops so I don't have to walk past any of that nasty black plastic. second best record shop in the world. Totally impossible to find anything, just browse and have fun.
My tip for collecting by the way is buy cds. They will come back. The special editions and longer playing times will attract people. When downloads start to die away over the next few years, and they will, cds with their currently low prices and superior digital reproduction will be the new vinyl.
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