My first two thoughts are that they really took a hit from the lockdown or that the whole thing with employee control was an absolute disaster. But regardless, it’s sad to go in there these days.

Bangor and Lewiston Bull Moose locations have seen better days. It must be location or local management based, because Waterville, Brunswick and Scarborough are really fantastic stores.

Went there last summer and was quite disappointed in the vinyl selection. Really like the Vinyl Canteen.

Makes sense. Glad to hear the others are doing well. I should get down to Waterville sometime. There used to be a couple good record stores. Bangor seemed to have a long time manager for quite a while. Wonder if he got done.

Haven’t heard of that. Is it in Bangor?

Buying physical media has been on a downward trend for a long time. Covid accelerated people shopping online instead of in person. An in person physical media store is a pretty rough business in 2023.

yeah it’s downtown, across from bagel central

>they really took a hit from the lockdown or that the whole thing with employee control was an absolute disaster

I mean, they fired the whole staff of one store for wanting customers to wear masks. That tells me a fair amount about company management.

Good point

Yeah it has gotten baaaaaad over the last 4ish years.

I think I'm going to go check it out! Thanks for the heads up!

Mill Creek is awesome too, definitely my favorite location

Waterville is amazing. I've only ever walked out of there without what I wanted once, and that's because someone beat me to the one copy they had gotten in.

Bought a Sublime record from the Bangor location last year while staying in the area for a weekend. Got home and realized the two disc set was somehow two copies of disc B instead of one A one B. Ruined my week

I’ve noticed the same. Even with relatively popular bands, they have no copies of anything or maybe one CD at most. I’ve had some credit with them for a while and haven’t really had anything to buy.

I go to Waterville, Lewiston, and Windham primarily. None of them are really worth visiting anymore unfortunately and it’s sad as I’ve loved going there for so many years.

Keep in mind they do have a pretty decent sized online presence now so I take it that’s where a lot of their inventory is going.

Bangor is a shit hole. Along with most of the business in it

Sad that this is the only comment so far pointing this out.

I love the Watervile store

So's the new Biddeford one, from what I've been hearing. Apparently it's a bigger store than the one in Sanford, which...yeah, I can buy. I have to wonder just how small it actually was, though.

I didn’t know it moved. It was up by the mall for years. But I haven’t been there in over a year.

oh really? i didn’t know it was near the mall- where at?

That strip mall behind Bangor Savings and between Miguels and McDonalds.

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Lewiston store is fine as far as the facility/staff, but they don’t seem to send new inventory there nearly as often as they used to. Lots of bare shelves.

wait i think you misunderstood, we’re talking about the vinyl canteen. bull moose is still at that location.

Oooh! Yup I misunderstood!

no worries!!

The workers got their jobs back with backpay and unanimously voted to unionize too. https://www.ufcw.org/actions/campaign/bull-moose-union/

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I'm mean, thats good news, doesn't change the fact that company management did it in the first place.

I mean the truth is there very slim profit margins in print books and used movies and games in modern times. After your pay the staff, the light bills and buy new inventory. There’s not much money left.

It just blends in with other locations in Bangor. Run down, slummy and in general. Feels ugly or dark in there at times. Selection of things are not great compared to other stores. I stop at other locations and end up with things, Bangor though, I'm lucky if I bought something out of there once a year.

The Lewiston store has a weak inept manager. Their assistant manager and her are both deeply insecure and are slowly alienating or firing the competent staff

The Manager literally just fired one of their best staff for no cause, and hired the assistant managers friend directly to shift leader with no prior experience.

Give it a month it two before they fire the other two competent staff and hire their own cronies/friends.

In Lewiston it's absolutely management. The new manager is completely ineffectual as a leader. Firing well liked employees, hiring friends to shift leader with no training or experience. They're also incapable of taking constructive criticism, or having direct conversations with employees. As a person, I think the manager and assistant manager are chill people, but they have the leadership qualities of rancid shrimp.

Yeah they’ve really dropped the ball in Brunswick. It’s sad to see because I grew up buying from there. Now I just go straight to deep groove records and call it a day. Much better selection.

What do you think of the record connection in Waterville? Personally I liked it better at the old location. The new location is huge and nice but I haven't found anything good there in awhile. I used to always find stuff.

I noticed that the Bangor location just seems to be slowly depleting their stock of TTRPG materials without really restocking or getting any new material in.

I'm in there on occasion and haven't seen their shelves hold something new in weeks. I visited the one in South Portland, which seemed to have so much more and even some pre-owned books of 4e dnd, which got me pretty excited.

Bangors location seems like it's running itself down, and I'm not super sure why but I hope it gets better because it's the closest one to Belfast.

Windham master team reporting in. That still has a newbury comics vibe and is very clean and nice. Sorry for your loss.

Bangor as a whole has been falling apart for a while now chief

Went there a few years back, I should get down that way for sure. There's another store that opened fairly recently in Brunswick I keep meaning to get to as well - Deep Groove Records

I’m actually from Vermont. We went to Bar Harbor last year for vacation, and hit up as many record stores on the way as we could. I thought the Record Connection was probably the best store that we hit. Great used selection. I think the space is an old pharmacy that has been rehabbed. There’s plenty of room to grow. The Vinyl Canteen being in second place. There’s a good one in Portland, but the name escapes me.

Retail in general is in an extremely tough spot right now. Cost of goods, wages, and utilities have skyrocketed, but for many sales are still below where they were before the pandemic. Supply chain issues have persisted somehow as well.

Especially since that whole area was anchored around the mall and now the mall is basically gone.

Deep Groove is great. Small store but not too small, and the owner is a cool guy. Prices are a bit higher than The Record Connection but you will only find mint records there, all cleaned on a vacuum machine.

There's a couple record stores in Brunswick if you get a chance to come back. Also in Brunswick is a weekend only flea market in an old mill that has quite a few records.

I wonder how much of it is the landlord. The other places in that strip mall are also rundown and the parking lot is worse than the Bangor Mall’s, if you can believe it.

cause nobody in maine is cool enough for those places. they’d rather order online 🥲