Talk to Cheapo's Day for more than thirty seconds and you get the impression that he knows a lot of people.

The importance of those relationships, the connectedness that Day is talking about has a through line: stores like Cheapo have long functioned as gathering places, where musicians, music industry people and music buyers interact, creating the animated conversations that serve as another form of background music heard in active and well-liked stores... See more

Cheapo remains, for many true blue music fans, their first stop when visiting the Boston area.

"I had the idea that you could have an all cutout, all discontinued record store --which nobody was doing in New England. People were doing it in New York, but they were mixing --they'd have records and other discontinued goods. Beacon Hill Music was in existence then, so I wasn't the first 'used' store in Boston," he says. "We did well, and I deci... See more

What record stores like Cheapo possess goes way beyond music. Not long ago, they were vital conduits for the flow of musical information within the culture. Trends --the rock 'n' roll revolution, for one-- owe their existence in large part to record stores. While digital technologies attempt to mimic the physical features of community, they are, sa... See more

Day isn't being sentimental or nostalgic --just matter-of-fact. To further illustrate the point, he adds: "If you wanted to know how to sew a shirt, fifty years ago, you went into the store where they sold sewing stuff. If it wasn't too busy, you said to the lady, 'I'm having trouble with these cuffs,' and she knew how to do it. It didn't matter wh... See more

Simply put, the mixture of small businesses is absent and the look and feel of many of our nations streets has grown colder and more sterile. In today's global, corporate business model, a bland sameness covers much of the world's urban and suburban streets. There's more upscale dressing on everything.

A Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts landmark, Cheapo has been a familiar sight along Mass. Ave. since the mid-1970's. Wedged between the campuses of Harvard and M.I.T., the neighborhood has seen gentrification --they now have a Starbucks-- but retains its roots and gritty appeal.

When asked about what we as a culture lose if record stores like Cheapo disappear, Day is quick with his response: "Specialized information. It doesn't disappear entirely, but there's no way to disseminate it. Perhaps the Internet's taken the place of all that."