Berlin record stores

I don't doubt it is, I got that recommendation from a friend.

i have been living in berlin for more than a year now and i never went to a record store. except saturn, media markt and that sort of crappy megastore. up till two weeks ago - before the u2 stopped its regular schedule - i even walked to nollendorfplatz every morning without realising that there was a record shop close to it. weird.

What's happened to the u2?

if i understood well they are building an elevator at the gleisdreieck. therefore up till september(!) the u2 does not circulate from wittenbergplatz to gleisdreieck. you have to change to the u1 up till gleisdreieck. why do you want to know?

Station B shut down about 2 years ago. Staalplaat has indeed moved to Flughafenstr.

My top recommendation would be Dense http://www.dense-shop.de/where-to-find-us/ Probably my favourite shop in Berlin. Great selection.

Musik Unter Den Gleisen at the top end of Friedrichstrasse has a pretty decent selection of vinyl & cds including second hand in the basement. I use it a lot, admittedly mostly because it's 5 minutes walk from my flat. http://musikdrehscheibe.de/kont.php4

"Freak Out" on Prenzlauer Allee is a decent enough indie record store http://www.freakoutrecords.com/ Although it's been a while since I've been there..

also, there's a great place on weserstr. called rumski pumski, or something, except that google tells me it's definitely not that. anyway, run by ed from dense promotion, and seemingly pretty great for avant stuff.

Want to know 'cause I'm spending a lot of time in Berlin (e.g. this weekend for Matmos, perhaps moving there for a while in August) lately and the U2 goes everywhere I want to go. Oh well, better than when the U1 was closed and I lost convenient transportation to three of my favourite fast-food joints. Sorry for the thread derailment.

There's always a replacement bus service, it's a bit slower but being Deutsch über Reliable.

no pun intended, presumably.

Spacehall mentioned by Tuomas above now has 2 shops next to each other on Zossener Strasse -- one vinyl, one CD. Both very large, new and secondhand. Perhaps worth a visit if you are in Kreuzberg 61.

Off there on Thursday for the first time... Any further tips?

rumpsti pumpsti is tucked away down a side street in neukölln & is awesome for soundscape concrete aktionist rumble & drone & abstract laptop music / sound-art http://www.rumpsti-pumsti.com/ Weserstrasse 165 & not so far away from the staalplaat store (Flughafenstr - a 10 minute walk) which reminds me of howard & andy jacques' these records in elephant & castle when that was going - tons of stuff - jap avant prog, field recordings, drone, noise, etc. spacehall in zossener strasse does indeed have a smashing techno vinyl ( vinyl building a couple of doors down from the cd shop, nice tibetan eatery over the road from it ) - you really had better know how the techno you're looking for is categorised tho cos it's all filed by category - is it "retro deep tuesday step" or "dark balaeric nu-afternoon beats" - you can always ask the ladenbesitzer ( or ladensitzer as i like to call'em ). managed to pick up a couple of morphine records 12"s & an oni ayhun - whoop!.
never got around to visiting Dense records cos i bust the chain on the bike i borrowed. musikdrehscheibe / musik unter den gleisen: Friedrichstrasse 128 has a rummaging basement but I didn't really see anything of interest - i'm sure that stuff comes & stuff goes there. i'd suggest skipping it if you're on a tight schedule. The Mauerpark Flohmarkt (Sundays) isn't really much of a "flea" market, just stalls and stalls and stalls of guys selling damp old ryuichi sakamoto lps for 30€ a pop - who knows you might get lucky with something but it will take you forever to trawl the whole market ! i got nothing but i enjoyed the stöbern ! there is a good variety there i did see both bogshed & material lps, which makes a change from peter maffay & udo lindenberg, i guess!

Amazing, thanks!

2nd hand electronic stuff?

One of my favourite record shops closed last year and is now this bar: http://www.hackendahl-berlin.de

It's actually a cool bar, but still... *sniff*

Mr.Dead & Mrs.Free near the Nollendorfplatz closed in February. I haven't checked the successor, riseikel yet.