In My Opinion...

Milkcrate Café is a strange, but welcomed little shop in the Fishtown area of Philadelphia. It oddly enough sells coffee, café snacks (sandwiches, soups, etc), and records all in the same building. The café entrance greets you with a giant wall of records. These records tend to be higher in price and arguably in rarity. As you make your way through the tables decorated with records, you hit the café counter. This is where you can purchase a delicious hot chocolate (seriously, it is awesome) or a hot sandwich (which I have not been able to try just yet). If you are there on strictly record digging business, head down the steps to the right of the counter. A majority of the records for sale are located in the basement. The tiny room of records is full of interesting records that I have not really found anywhere else. They have an eclectic selection of genres, but each genre is quite tiny in size. The records themselves tend to be in good condition, but they are higher in price. I am assuming this is the case due to the neighborhood, but the records tend to be too high for my taste. Overall, Milkcrate café is worth checking out, but do not let those hopes skyrocket. They records are expensive, but some are unique enough that they can sneak by with that price tag. 

What the people say...

Milkcrate Cafe is an odd mixture of coffee house and record shop. Seeing as I don't drink coffee, I can't comment on the quality of their non-vinyl products. Milkcrate's walls are lined with various records from a variety of genres and usually has a good selection but recently I've found it to be saturated with a lot of represses. In the past though I've found some decent records at Milkcrate and the basement is where this place really shines. The basement is lined with racks of records, and they even have some more obscure racks that some other shops in Philly don't tend to stock like industrial and goth sections. The downfall of Milkcrate is that it's kind of out of the way being all the way out on Girard, and their prices leave something to be desired, as I often find relatively common records that are marked up. However, I suppose they cater to casual record enthusiasts based on the fact it's pared with a coffee shop and they carry a lot of represses. Overall, I'd say Milkcrate is good if you're just starting out and don't really know much (or care) about pressings or price.

-James, Record Collector

Record Breakdown

Type of Vinyl: Mostly used, but saw a few new.

Trade-ins? Not that I can see.

Pricing: Higher end. Roughly $15-$35 a record. They do have a cheap selection under the shelves that are $3 a piece. 

Average Condition: Pretty good

Digging Required? Not much. The organization is pretty good for the higher priced records, but the cheaper records require a good amount of digging because they are in no particular order.

Great for people looking for: Local, Punk, Metal, Rare, Latin, and Rock.