Ian's paper caused me to think about music stores in Long beach and I went to the corner of Martin Luther King Avenue and Pacific Cost Highway to check if VIP Records is still there - and it is!  It takes up about half of the strip mall, sharing the corner with a barbeque place, fish house, beauty supply store, a couple of clothes stores, and a smoke shop.  The whole of the front and side of VIP have large scale versions of cover art.  There was difinitely a community within the store.  People hanging, chatting, listening.  I've put a couple of photos under the "files' section of this site.