Waiting Room - Taipei, Taiwan
So sometime around October/November I started noticing that my Plot video was getting views from the address http://www.waitingroomtw.com/
Clicking through blew my goddamn mind. You have to understand that every time I’ve gone to Taiwan since I was young I’ve tried to find anything related to punk/hardcore/metal online a few weeks before I had to fly there and I always ended up with nothing. Last time I went to Taiwan in 06/07 the only record stores I found were terrible pop music stores that sold mainly books/CDs and had records only as decorations.
Waiting Room turned out to be a punk/hardcore/metal record store (What?!) and I ended up spending a few hours clicking through to other sites trying to learn about the Taiwan music scene that seem to have sprung up since the last time I was there.
Me being an idiot, I forget the address and name of the record store as soon as I get to Taiwan but finally found it again after digging through old Youtube Analytic reports. I knew this was one of the first places I had to go today as soon as I got time to explore the city by myself.
I left the apartment at 8 hoping to get the store by 830 but after getting lost for an hour (not an exaggeration) trying to find the store, I look up and by pure chance manage to see “Waiting Room” in crisp white letters. I spend another 10 minutes circling the building trying to figure out how to get up to the shop on the second floor (because again, idiot here) until the nice lady at the tea house explained that it was a residential building so I had to ring the apartment buzzer to get in and holllyyy fucking goddamn:
Stray Observations:
1) Store dude: “Oh I used to listen to a lot of hardcore but now I mostly listen to Stoner Metal”
*Spit double take*
2) There is definitely an Integrity, Born Against and Minor Threat record on that wall. Also a Q and Not U featured CD with blurb.
3) Dudes and Dudette knew what the Che Cafe was.
4) THERE IS A GODDAMN BORN AGAINST RECORD ON THAT WALL. UP THERE. ON THAT FUCKING WALL. IN TAIWAN.
This next year is going to be so righteously weird.
I’ll post a Video Postcard of the store when I find a better internet connection. The place I’m staying at has dial up speeds.
Moral of this rambling story: I am so goddamn stupid. Also? I need to find a phone with GPS or I will literally die.
