A New Record Store Is Bringing Latin Vinyl Home to the Mission District

With its bold block letters above 24th Street, the Discolandia sign is an icon of the Mission District. But Discolandia, a Latin-focused record store, closed over a decade ago. Since then, there’s been no record store in the neighborhood that caters specifically to the Mission’s Latinx population.

That finally changes this week with the July 15 opening of Discodelic, which specializes in vinyl from Latin American and Caribbean countries, offering Latin soul, cumbia, salsa, boleros, Cuban music, reggae and more.

The store, a physical home for the record label of the same name, will operate at 3174 24th St., in a space where two vinyl record stores, Pyramid Records and Explorist International, once stood years ago.

A musical archaeological expedition

Discodelic founders Ruben “Ruffy” Rangel, 43, and Maria Jose “Majoo” Salguero, 30, met through MySpace 13 years ago, bonding over their shared love of ska, rocksteady and reggae. Their conversations soon grew into travel plans.

“Since the ’90s, I have always been looking for discos in stores, at swap meets, everywhere,” said Rangel. “But I never traveled much until I started traveling together with Majoo.”

The duo began to travel all over Central America, looking for vinyl that was pressed in the 1960s and 1970s, much of which was presumed lost due to wars in the region.

While both were passionate about their mission, it was especially meaningful for Salguero, who is Salvadoran; record stores were practically nonexistent in the country in the early 2010s. This crate-digging mission turned out to be a musical archaeological expedition.

“We went to old bodegas, old radio stations, and houses,” Rangel said. “We went looking for artists, old labels that were closed for decades, and we ended up accumulating a large amount of old recordings.”

In 2015, the duo opened their first brick-and-mortar record store, Discodelic, in El Salvador. But they weren’t content to just sell records — they began to track down musicians and collaborate with record labels to reissue some of the older records they’d found. This soon became their very own reissue label — also named Discodelic — which now has 10 releases under its belt.

“In the beginning, we knew we only wanted to be in El Salvador for one year because we’re ‘Discos Viajantes de Otros Dimensions (Traveling Vinyl Discs from Other Dimensions),’” Rangel said, a name that came out of years spend traveling around Central America to find vinyl. “We stayed in El Salvador to start a vinyl community there.”

Though the Salvadoran store was a success, attracting young people first learning about vinyl as well as older folks who shared stories about the music, Rangel and Salguero decided to pack it up in 2016 and move to Guatemala.

Rangel wanted to bring something to Guatemala beyond the retail store, so the Discodelic duo began connecting with DJs in Guatemala and from other countries to start parties, working with artists and DJs from Mexico, Japan, Costa Rica, Germany and more. Soon, the duo’s interests expanded beyond Central American music. They set off to visit neighboring countries like the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Cuba, Barbados and Panama.

When it comes to buying valuable records in countries where vinyl might not be popular anymore, Rangel said that Discodelic maintains their own code of ethics, and they want to be known for paying a fair price.

“When we went to Mexico, we gained a sort of reputation,” Rangel said. “‘The Discodelics are the crazy ones who go around the world looking for strange discos.’”

The San Franciscan connection

Making DJ connections at parties came easily for Rangel and Salguero. One night, they befriended a 37-year-old San Franciscan named Miles Ake, a chef and a part-time DJ.

In 2018, Discodelic invited Ake to DJ at a music festival in Mexico City called Latinos Con Soul. Ake helped the duo with contacts in the States and with shipping vinyl. Working together, the three brought the festival TropiSol to the Bay Area in the same year.

That reputation and connections helped the store flourish — but again, the duo missed traveling. So in the same year, they packed their house into a storage room and went on an 18-month tour to buy more vinyl, visiting Guyana, Surname, Turkey, Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, Portugal, Bolivia and Peru.

Soon after the duo’s return to Mexico, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and closed the physical Discodelic storefront.

Around the same time, back in San Francisco, Miles Ake lost his job as a chef. Ake suggested the duo open a Discodelic store in the Bay.

“I knew that the location of a Discodelic would be perfect on 24th Street,” Ake said. “It’s just a way to bring back a Latin record store to the neighborhood.”

Ake also knew that there was a local scene ready to support and benefit from a Latin and Caribbean-focused record store, with the DJ collective Chulita Vinyl Club, Latin soul collectives, vinyl collectors and numerous Bay Area fans all eager to embrace a new space.

The store on 24th Street

The three business owners have an ambitious plan for the storefront, promising art exhibitions, conferences, the launch of their book publishing company Que Bonito, a podcast and, of course, DJ events.

LPs and 45s on offer represent a wide range of artists, from Latin America and beyond, including Joe Baatan, Ralfi Pagan, Clive Zanda, The Skatalites, Rabbits & Carrots, Leo Acosta, Mulatu Astatke and Poder de Alma. One of Ruben’s favorites is Leo Soto’s “Caballo Psicodelico,” a rare 45 they were able to find in Mexico.

Discodelic’s inventory will also include records from their own label, and new music the team enjoys, like that of É Arenas, a founding member of Chicano Batman. There’s also Bay Area music, like Oakland’s Ritmos Tropicoso.

The prices also vary widely, with some records priced at $10, and other rarer ones at $80, $500 and up to $800. Those are special outliers, though, and “we have a lot of classic records at accessible prices,” Rangel said.

While in San Francisco, Discodelics’ founders want to strengthen connections here: they hope to collaborate on events or reissues with Jose “Chepito” Arias, a percussionist who recorded with Santana, as well as Poder de Alma in San Leandro, and Los Vampiros, who hail from Stockton.

“We want this place to be a place of entry for nostalgia,” Salguero said. “What better place than the Mission District?”