Toxic Toast Records

Toxic Toast Records is rooted in downtown Long Beach, with a customer base that reflects the city around it: working-class shoppers, younger collectors, art school students, queer community, and people willing to travel for rare Japanese records. Andy describes a shop known for punk and underground music, but also for City Pop Saturdays and careful import curation.

Interview with Toxic Toast Records

Toxic Toast is on Pine Avenue in downtown Long Beach. How would you describe the shop and its place in the local vinyl scene?

I don't know it's best to ask me the place in the local vinyl scene. I will say, we were one of a solid group of record stores in the Downtown Long Beach vinyl and music scene.

Unfortunately, Fingerprints moved to the high income area of Bixby Knolls, Record Box closed, Bagatelle's owner passed, Dex Records closed. We are left with Toxic Toast and Twelves for the only downtown stores. There is Footworks who carries specifically electronic dance music, but I've heard they are having issues finding a new space and are being pushed out of their current rental.

Long Beach has its own identity, separate from the rest of LA. Who comes through your door?

Long Beach is more diverse than LA in a lot of ways. We don't have defined districts that break up working class from middle and wealthy classes; everyone is living on the same block, and it can simply be the quality of the building that is different. I do believe we have a lot more working class and young customers at our shop, than some of the bigger named stores in LA area. Our specific location is near Renaissance Arts High School, so we get a lot of art school kids coming into our space. We also are open about our queer ownership, so we tend to attract a lot of the LGBT community; Long Beach has a very large LGBT community, and we strive to be a part of that as often as possible.

On the other hand, when we do our special "City Pop Saturday" events, we get people coming from LA, OC, and even as far as San Diego. We release LPs that are so rare, you can't even find them on discogs, eBay, or easily find them in Japan itself. Those events are sporadic and always advertised well in advance on our tik tok and instagram pages.

What genres do your customers reach for most?

For the record store, our biggest selling genre at the moment is City Pop. I went to school in Tokyo, and that is how I got into importing records from Japan to sell in the USA. Thanks to my language and cultural abilities, I am able to travel the country searching for the rarest Japanese vinyl. We are definitely known as a "punk" record store, and we definitely carry a lot of Punk, Metal, Goth, and ska. Basically next to City Pop, it's the alternative/underground artists within those specific genres. We try to offer things you can't easily find on amazon or ebay or amoeba music. This is also why we focus more on original pressings over reissues whenever possible.

What's the record that keeps turning up in local collections?

I don't know if there are specific albums that turn up in our local buys often; its pretty eclectic. I would say genre wise, a lot of 80s hair metal and a lot of 2000's and later era mainstream emo arena type bands. Stuff like My Chemical Romance, Fall out Boy, etc.

When someone wants to sell records, what's the best way to start, and what makes a collection an easy yes?

We just ask people to come in when I am available to look at a collection. We first look to see if the albums fall into the genres we carry and specialize, and the thing that makes it an easy yes, is when the records are in good quality. More often than not, we get what I'd call thrift store quality records; vinyl that would fall into the VG or lower on the goldmine standard of grading (you can find the grading definitions on discogs.com).

What's a find or a customer story that captures the shop?

I guess I can say our Takanaka collection in general. It's so hard to get these records, even the reissues, and even if you go to Japan yourselves. Definitely the most in demand artist at the moment, and the American distributors are trying to convince Universal Records to make thousands of copies for the US and EU markets. A lot of happy customers have found their holy grail Takanaka record in our shop. It usually requires waiting in line at a City Pop Saturday event, but even then, the experience of socializing in line with other collectors of the same music, creates community and experiences that leave a memory and impression.

What do you wish more people knew about Toxic Toast?

That while we are a collectors store, we spend a lot of time curating for the best quality and best prices. We actually carry a whole section of $14.99 and under LPs that are usually Japanese pressings with OBI strips and inserts. Of course if you want the record everyone wants, it'll be more, but expand and ask for requests. I wish people knew we pay some of the highest prices for good collections in excellent quality.

First visit to the shop: what should someone dig through first?

There is no one section to dig first. I guess, I can say the new arrivals section, we combine different genres (by divider) in the same area, including the $14.99 and under section of original pressing LPs in EX condition. We usually ask the customer if they collect a certain genre, then explain the layout of the store. We divide everything into very specific categories. For example, if someone is only looking for punk and goth records, they don't have to search every record in the store.

Last updated: 2026-07-28