Ocean Beach is one of the more eclectic beach towns along the southern California coast. Nestled away toward the beginning of San Diego’s Point Loma peninsula, it’s home to about 30,000 hippies, punk rockers, bikers, and witches alike. On the west side of Sunset Cliffs Boulevard is Newport Avenue, which is probably where the Ocean Beach vibe is most concentrated. Along these few blocks of stores, restaurants, and bars, “OBcians” come out and play.

By day, the palm tree-lined streets fill with ex-hippies grabbing coffees and skateboarders walking their dogs. By night, the bars fill with locals and other San Diegans, and live music is jammed out into the wee hours of the night. Music is what keeps the OBcian’s rhythm of life grooving on. That and maybe a few different illegal substances

So there’s nothing more important than Cow Records, OB’s only and longest-standing record store. Cow Records sits nestled between two bars, only about a block from the ocean on the north side of Newport Avenue. You might miss it on a first walk down Newport Ave. It's only about 15 feet wide, and its signage is fairly basic with white lettering and a black background.

Once you notice the colorful translucent records that serve as shutters for the windows, you’ll get the hint that this place sells vinyl. Inside the store, every surface of the room besides the floor, is covered with posters, record sleeves, or old vinyl. Even the fluorescent lights have colorful vinyl in their shades.

At the front desk, you're nearly always greeted by shop owner, Greg Hildebrand, a man who at first may seem cold and unapproachable, but ask him a question about something in the shop, and he is a colorful character who is filled to the brim with stories. Talking to Hildebrand is like digging through an old bin of records; you may get a lot of random stories, but occasionally you’ll get one or two that make the whole conversation worth it. Most of all, he loves talking to his customers about the music they pick up or about his band, “The Chimpos.” His band presses their records and sells them at his shop.

The shop looks like any old record store. Hildebrand describes it as an extension of his own room from when he was a teenager — one can certainly see the inspiration, as Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath posters fill the white space of the walls, and of course, a cutout illustration of a cow hangs behind the counter. The center of the store is full of bins of old used records where you could spend hours looking for once-loved classics. To the left are tightly sealed new records, ranging from Charli XCX's “Brat” to Alice in Chains’ 1994 EP “Jar of Flies.”

Hildebrand’s story about Cow Records begins in the mid-70s when Hildebrand was attending Point Loma High School. A friend’s dad owned several record stores called Arcade Music and one of his stores happened to be on Newport Avenue. Hildebrand worked at the store on Sundays so the owner could have a day off, during this time he became acquainted with the store and grew to love working behind the counter.

By approximately 1988, the owner of the store got in trouble with the law and, long story short, had to sell Arcade Music. Hildebrand was first in line when he heard the store was being sold. With only about $15,000 in equity, Hildebrand offered everything he had.

“I was thinking it’s definitely worth 15 [thousand], but I was hoping it would be less than ten [thousand]”

The owner was confused when Hildebrand had $15,000 on the table. He actually meant $1,500. Hildebrand jumped on the deal and made Arcade Music his own, eventually changing the name to Cow Records. He moved across the street about 15 years ago and runs the shop every day alongside his wife. Hildebrand is the heart and soul of Cow Records, vouching for cheaper rent and finding the best record collections to buy and eventually sell at the shop. Hildebrand has kept his shop through a rather tumultuous time in music history. The record industry is a rather fickle one. In reality, after the introduction of the CD, vinyl records should’ve gone extinct.

“It’s sort of a strange comeback story,” Karl Martin, professor of literature at Point Loma Nazarene University, who also teaches Rock and Roll History at the university, said.

According to Martin, the vinyl record saw its heyday in the 1960s when the album became a gold standard in artistic production. Rock and roll embraced full-length albums that were designed and constructed to be played from front to back. A trait that the vinyl record was especially good at. It’s much harder to skip a song on a record player than it is to skip one on Spotify. This also allowed artists to explore complex ideas on their LPs, something which came to be known as the concept album.

The introduction of cassette tapes in the 1980s failed to challenge the vinyl market because of its lackluster sound quality. The Compact Disc is what decided to really bury the vinyl for good. According to the Record Industry Association of America, by 1990, vinyl sales revenue had dropped by nearly ten billion dollars from 1980. It seemed like the clunky, oversized vinyl record was ready to be laid to rest for good.

However, since around 2010, vinyl record sales have slowly increased, rising to $1.2 billion in 2022, a staggering number compared to a measly $10.6 million in 1993. The answer as to why isn’t so straightforward.

“I wish I knew,” Martin puzzled.

Martin noted that the sound quality is supposed to be better on an analog system compared to a digital listening experience. However, even Martin admitted that the difference was nearly unnoticeable. So, if most listeners can’t distinguish analog from digital, then that leaves most of the reasoning behind the spike in record sales to the desire for physical media.

“I still feel there’s something about holding a product in your hand and feeling like I have invested enough in this, that it is mine,” Martin said.

Emma Peters is a 23-year-old woman who willingly and joyfully buys vinyl records. She also used to stop into Cow Records every so often when she lived in San Diego.

“It’s a physical manifestation of the music we listen to,” she said “It is a whole ritual you get to partake in: digging for records, lifting them up, examining the artwork”

Her desire to shop for vinyl records also has something to do with the intention that comes along with it. Streaming services often curate songs that a user might like, but at a record store, the only curation you’re going to get is recommendations from a guy like Hildebrand.

“Going to a record store is a discovery,” she said.

Hildebrand is aware of this shifting landscape. Although he’s caught breaks over the years, often having the entire record collection just handed over to him, he’s still perplexed by the young people who walk through his doors. In between stories of obtaining the largest reggae collection he’s received and shouting with the Death Grips DJ, he told a story about a young girl who frequented his shop.

One day he asked the girl why she was buying all these vinyl records with her friends. She explained that she was the founder of a record-listening club at her high school.

“The idea of a social club where you get together around records and play things that you like and you talk about them, if you want to or not and that just couldn’t sound nicer to me”

For Hildebrand, his store means so much more than just trying to sell as much vinyl as he possibly can. It’s about the community that takes place around the things he sells. That community just happens to be OB, a place where a Grateful Dead cover band still plays every Monday night at Winston’s Beach Club. In a place steeped in nostalgia, Cow Records stands as a cornerstone for Ocean Beach’s young and old generations alike. The vintage posters plastered on the walls and thousands of new and used records would light the eyes of any music lover, young or old. That simply does not happen on Spotify.

Introducing you to Cow Records

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Introducing you to Cow Records

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