The first thing I noticed when I walked in was the strong cigarette smell. It reminded me of a motel 6, gross! Cool shop overall but don't expect to go home with much stuff because these guys know their stuff and the prices are right. I'll come back and update my review on my next trip. read more

Their prices are fair, but you can definitely find some gems. I've really been turned onto some good, new, local stuff from the records they feature on the wall. They also have a great selection of new experimental/noise and beats, as well as magazines. It's probably among the last handful of places to get new vinyl on the east side of Los Angeles. The service is better than it used to be, although not as good as the old place or when it was always the owners working the registers. There used to be this one hipster girl who sucked, but I think she left. Gotta support the little local places. read more

MY NEW FAVORITE PLACE! This shop has great Vinyl. Sealed stuff is a little more expensive (as most are in all other shops) but if you take the time to look through the crates you find some gems at EXCELLENT prices! I found a few Frank Sinatra records as well as some Beatles in the "cheeper section" of the store. It's a MUST VISIT! Guy who was at the register on Sunday was really nice and seemed to be really helpful with a person he was helping on the phone. read more

Last time I was at Poobah's was 1985 or so, when vinyl was still all the rage. This is a smaller store and it looked a bit tired. I liked the random boxes of stuff to sort through vs a curated store but unfortunately I didn't find anything I needed. Still, it's cool to see them still in existence. read more

i first patronized poobah when i was de-accessioning my record collection. i discovered p.b. during my search for an independent record store that bought used records. most of the vinyl was worthless, but when possible p.b. gave cash or trade credit, the latter always more then the former. i did my best not to shop, as i was trying to get rid of stuff, not acquire more. i bought a couple cds, stiff little fingers, wire, and a few others. it was nice to flip through albums again. i love the smell of the cardboard and glue particular to record albums of a certain age. very proustian experience. the only drawback was a pudgy 'dj' who blasted crap rap & did some scratching, as it used to be called in the eighties. he looked at me like i'd shot at him when i asked if he could lower the volume. like he was some sacred genius having his work interrupted. he waren't all that, he wasn't even all th. read more

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This is a really cool vintage record shop and recording studio. You can find 8 track tapes, LPs, casette tapes, and CD's here. There are also books and Tshirts and all kinds of vintage tape/LP players. Love to come to this shop every once in a while and browse. The staff is friendly and cool. Love it. read more

A great place to buy vinyl. Oh, and I miss the even older location on Fair Oaks Blvd. I took guitar lessons down in the basement from Mark Cohen in 1970. read more

Nice selection of 45's (which was my main interest at the time of my visit). Helpful staff, knowledgeable. I needed 2 more hours to get through the 45's, which were clean & well organized, but S.O. was pressuring me to go. I don't live in the area and was just passing through, but Poo-Bah is on my radar each time I visit. Always a joy to find another great record shop! read more

Not very helpful. Service not good. Workers acted like they were being bothered. Not responsive to needs.

Nice staff & good selection of 80's music that I was after. They were very kind to donate a portion of 'scratched' records to our school for an event. Thank you! read more

another store whose previous incarnation instantly means i've experienced better. i used to shop poobah's when it was in an old wood-floored house at the corner of walnut and wilson in pasadena back before cd's were even a thought. they had a cassette rack, but the store was pretty much dedicated to vinyl in all genres -- very respectable jazz credibility; wide assortment of international -- ska, reggae, soca; comedy, classical, spoken word, etc. it was a saturday pilgrimage to rifle through the unsorted used bins and score the who's tommy on japanese vinyl, a rolling stones "some girls" with original cover, a dead kennedys import ep, a don adams comedy lp, a beatles bootleg, or get introduced to the meat puppets. stacks of traded records waiting to be priced and stocked sat behind the register and when a guy would come out with two armfuls, it was like krispy kreme doughnuts hot off the racks. now the store has moved to colorado blvd. into a non-descript building with as little personality as the people who staff it. the place is smaller, the vibe is not so organic, the selection weak and random. it really is the epitome of why people don't get their music from record stores anymore. like i had to say for rockaway records, if you had never been there before, you might find it worthwhile, but for knowing what had once been, i cannot get very excited over it. read more

I'm a Record Junkie. I go intto nearly any record store I see. In thrift stores, I search through piles of seriously scabrous LP's no one in their right mind would want to look at . Or own. My tastes run far more toward Classical, good jazz, classic rock, good vocals, and away from 90% of pop, rap, funk, horrible fusion jazz and other mainstream forgettables. If PooBah is a great record store, it sure fooled me. It's pretty boring, actually. Smallish with three or four rows of bins, mostly of recent stuff, no classical whatsoever (Did I miss the Classical Annex?), and absolutely not a single album -- or CD -- I wanted to pay them their relatively high prices for. And that's after 20-30 minutes of searching. PooBah used to be located in an unappealing old house on Walnut Street where I went years ago and was similarly disappointed. Now, 20 years later it's in a run-down row of stores on East Colorado Blvd. Still unappealing. I imagine there are some good finds here, but I could find nothing. Prices were on the high side (I thought, but then I'm cheap). The CD's were not in the CD boxes, so I suppose there's some anxiety about theft involved in that decision. Not very satisfying somehow to pick up empty CD sleeves. Albums tended toward fairly unsophisticated popular music, some jazz, etc. Nothing much but don't let that stop you from trying. I have no idea why anyone would give this place FIVE stars? Am I misunderstanding something here? Isn't the top score for one of the best you've ever been in? I guess I have to disagree with those in love with this place, but this place doesn't even come close. read more

One of the best record stores in Los Angeles. The best record store in Pasadena. Very trustworthy, pricing is more than fair and I never even bother to check the vinyl, it's going to be VG+ or in most cases greater. read more

Give it a try again. In the past, I too have felt that Poo-Bah was a sinking ship, destined to end up just being a local place to go through the motions of flipping through records. However, over the last year, new owner Ron has given this store direction and has turned it back into a place where you have a good chance of finding something interesting. Selection may not be geared towards everyone's interest but bins are bulked up beyond just your thrift store filler. Not to mention, the store has been putting out titles on it's own label that demonstrate it's focus on ahead-of-the-curve local artists. read more

They left their soul back on Walnut. I'm really surprised they're hanging on at this location. I have a few bands I use to litmus test the available goods on stock at any given record shop. The "new" Poo Bah fails to thoroughly stock the most common great artists. This place has all the indications of a dying store as new stock is slowly replaced by used, and the used stock is slowly replaced by the stuff the will never sell. Pickings are slim and it becomes apparent that the majority of records on hand are the dispensable off-loadings of folks who need some cash. Lots and lots of one-hit wonder albums and promos with cut spines. Mostly trash. Perhaps DJ's with patience may be able to find some diamonds in the rough, but for me, it's too depressing to see what digital downloading has done to what was once a titan. read more

Poor Staff , Its Like They Hate Their Jobs. They Always Look Mad and when you ask them a question they don't even want to answer you. They need to fix that and get more records read more

This is very well organized store. And as with all the indie record stores, what you find is part luck and part supply and demand. The folks at Poo Bah dont hover and are available to help examine the vinyl to make sure its a good buy for the price and condition. They will even play the record if you want to test it out. Fun, blast from the past and very well price read more

Long before there was an internet or this monster called Amoeba, the primitive audiophile had to meticulously stake out his resources to find a place that would carry those obcure tracks he so desperatley desired. This is a surviving monument to the personalized recordshop and was perhaps one the most individual of them all. Armies of strange plastic toys glued to the walls, big daddy roths abound set in a dilapidated california bungalow. Excellent record selection, knowledgeable and perhaps rightfully snooty staff. Look close in the corners, theres some cobwebbs still clinging from the sixties man!! read more

Poo-Bah is one of the great record stores in Los Angeles. They have a great selection, especially of soundtracks and unique records. Plus, the staff actually wants you to be there! Strongly recommend making a trip to Pasadena to check them out. After a day of searching Silver Lake/Los Feliz and coming up empty handed, Poo-Bah left us with a great supply at very good prices. read more

Went in today and was excited as it was my first time. I thought this would be a place I would start visiting regularly till I asked the guy working there if my lady could use the restroom. In a short crappy way he say "no, denny's is the closest bathroom." It normally wouldn't have bothered me but he was so unfriendly and just gross so we just left. I was planning on buying a couple of records but will never go again. Even if I wasn't annoyed by this employee, the store is a C anyway. read more

I liked it. Cheap used stuff. Lots of records. Lots of obscure stuff. Some cds. The people who worked there didn't seem too snobby. They left me alone and actually smiled at me when I made my final purchases. Plus they have in-stores. Good times. read more

Groovy place! They even sell audio cassette and VHS tapes! Which I do buy often! These guys have it all, the guy who runs the place is laid back and just a good guy! Thanks for the store, you've got a customer for life. read more

I miss the old spot, the only thing I don't like about this place is the feeling that you have to look hip to get acknowledge maybe because only hipsters work there:/ read more

Records here are okay, selection is mediocre but interesting. Things are messy and 45's are just chucked into a box like trash. If you enjoy some hard core searching you may enjoy this. My main reason for two stars is due to the customer service, these dorks are trying too hard to be cool. Get off your butts and help a customer, at least organize shit and not sit around reading the newspaper like your at home. Geez people customer service 101. read more

Just wasted an hour flipping through the used rock LPs and the closest actual rock album was Aerosmith... Everything else was freakin Hall & Oats crap. So disappointing. read more

It's pretty sick. I ended up finding records that I didn't expect to find, and for hella cheap. I just wish they had one kool and the gang record I've been on the hunt for. Two toe thumbs up for me doe. read more

You would think you'd find better service at a record store that had to compete every month with one of the biggest record swap meets in the same town. Instead, the staff here has that creepy, narcissistic attitude that they are way too cool for their customers. If only they were as funny and brilliant as Jack Black in "High Fidelity," they might be forgiven. But these people are just clerks with no readily apparent redeeming qualities. I visited on Record Store Day, but the staff thought it was Pin-A-Spindle-On-A-Customer Day. For the entire hour I was there, they played the same, obnoxious, nerve-rattling noise that made my teeth go brittle. Truly, this non-music sounded like a Mad Max washing machine with its wires crossed, a metallic, industrial nightmare of a sound, followed by the washing machine track played backwards. In the wrong hands, it's a torture tool. When I checked out, I mentioned my discomfort to the mess of a girl at the counter. Man, I says, the sound was almost unbearable. I might have stayed longer if you had changed it up a little. Her response: "Well you could have said something." But I just did. To which she retorts, "Too late now." She then rips my receipt out of the swiper, and thrusts it at me to sign, unmistakably pissed off. I'm lucky she didn't stab me when handing me the pen. Okay, so it's my fault you kept playing the music only you could like because it matches your grating personality. I guess until then, you had not noticed there were OTHER PEOPLE in the store besides your sorry self. At this point, an awkward, skinny guy acting like a supervisor asked Messy Girl what she had been playing, and she gives him a name that was unintelligible to the human ear. Okay, thanks you two. It's been real. And I left. Outside, I ran into the same supervisor who had ducked out for a smoke. (To calm his nerves from the music, no doubt.) Hey, I says, sorry if I offended anyone with my comments about the so-called music. Awkward Guy looks at me and says with an awkward grin, "Oh, no, we just laugh!" "You laugh at your customers?" I said, also awkwardly. "I can't believe everybody in there was enjoying that." So to rub it in how wrong I am about the clerks' taste in music, he says it's their best seller! Well, now you know why record stores are closing! As I drove away, his answer just kept bothering me. Wait! How can that be? That album is his best seller but he didn't even know what it was until he asked messy Girl? Now I really wanted to know the name of the offending hit music. So I called him back and he says Senya, or some crap that doesn't even come up on Google. Really? Your best seller? "Yes, we order 10 at a time and we sell out." On vinyl or CD? I ask. "Oh no," he says, "it's only on cassette." Right, selling like hotcakes to all those cassette deck owners out there. When I told my son about my lovely Record Day encounter, I knew he would understand why I just had to call the guy back. My boy and I are both Seinfeld fans, and we had just seen the one where George gets insulted by some guy at work who makes fun of the way he's stuffing himself with shrimp. ("Hey George, the shrimp store called and they're running out of shrimp.") But Costanza can't think of a retort until much later, then spends the whole show waiting for the chance to meet the guy again and deliver his comeback: "Well, the jerk store called and they're running out of you!" Now I know where the jerk store is. read more

This is a nice little gem of a store. They have a comfy feeling and play all kinds of music. The employees are nice and approachable. They have a wide variety of nicely priced used records and even some good bargain bins. I spent about an hour browsing, and will certainly be back for more! The window inside the shop is really cool. You can climb inside and browse through some books and records. read more

vinylVinylVINYL!!! -I think we need more vinyl- nope- there is a very large number of LP's/Records/Vinyls, whatever you call this great medium. worth checking out. pick up a shirt while you are there. read more

I have found a great deal of good vinyl here, and i've visited the store regularly and often. I have sometimes felt over-charged for condition of LPs on BN or Verve but that's my fault for being a label whore. What I have a problem with is the completely listless and contemptuous staff. They actually thrill over looking down their skinny noses at customers in need of help. If ever I saw a living example of the staff in High Fidelity, Poo-Bah Records excels in emulating the fatuous character Jack Black plays. Its true. I've bought hundreds of dollars in the this store and I've been thanked once or twice. Assholes they be. read more

This place has been around forever. A Pasadena landmark since the early 90's back when they were still on Walnut Avenue. Known for their avant garde selections of jazz, electronic, hiphop & soul records, they definitely surpassed my expectations as a casual fan of music. If your looking for an obscure record or cd that nobody else carries, they might be the best people to find it for you. Unless your in Hollywood. read more

Great selection, but whereas I would only purchase vinyl from a non-smoking location online, why would I want to buy vinyl reeking of pot smoke at Poobah's? Every record there seems to have cigarette and pot smells embedded. Gross. read more

Poo Bah! Aaaaaaah. At first when I got there, this was my face;. But, now I realize that the price is fantastic, the records are good quality, and so much more! read more

Stopped by this local shop to check out used CDs with my son. While the CD selection isn't huge, it was nicely sorted and there were some cool and unusual things in there. The guy in the shop was friendly and chill. Nice place to have nearby, and extra cool having it so close to guitar center! read more

I've been coming to Poo Bah's since they were located inside a smallish house a little north of where they are now. I remember leaving my first visit with a $3 REM cassette..Poo Bah's Is for sure one of the best record stores in Los Angeles Country. The staff is friendly enough and the store has a great selection. Their prices are great especially when compared to the overpriced spots in Highland Park and Echo Park. They have an extensive dollar section and even 45's for less than a buck! read more

I'm not the most fervent hip hop/experimental vinyl collector so I don't stop by Poobah very often...but I really appreciate what they do with their label and brand. I stopped in last week to ask them about their upcoming website (I'm a web designer and curious about how local indie businesses go about their online presence). I was happily surprised by how glad all three staff were to answer my questions and share a bit about how they run their shop and label. I will definitely be back more often! read more

This is the best record store I've found in LA! I love small mom and pop stores, and this was a lovely small record store with a diverse selection and reasonable priced! I definitely recommend checking out if you want to find record gems in great condition! The owner is also very helpful and attentive! read more

I love me an ol' dusty record shop with classy tunes playing in the background. This has been a favorite of mine for a minute. Their jazz collection is insightful, and their 45' soul collection one that just makes you want to get up and shake your groove thang. read more

A little depressing to be inside of (perhaps it's the lighting), and flipping through the CD selection takes forever due to the way they strap booklets to stiff boards (the discs and their jewelboxes are kept behind the counter for security). Also, it's kind of grungy. That being said, they have CD players and you can audition whatever you want before you buy, so thumbs up for that. What gets them to four stars, though, is that they have also two small turntables with headphones up front and you can needle-drop any (unsealed) vinyl you're thinking of buying. Poo-Bah is the only place in LA I can think of where you can do this, apart from Record Surplus way over nearly in Santa Monica. Last couple times I've been there they've had a tremendous amount of old 45s at 25 or 50 cents -- I'm estimating around two or three thousand, plus a couple hundred "better" ones more carefully organized and priced between one and five dollars. I went through them all, if you can believe that, and walked out with about 120, a third of which I quickly verified the awesomeness of on one of the aforementioned turntables. I'd sort of given up wanting to go there for CDs, but right now they're my favorite place to go for jukebox chow. read more

I quite enjoyed this record shop. Good prices and good selection of what I was looking for ( classic alternative ) found XTC 'Skylarking' before they took 'Dear God' off, on vinyl. Good find. read more