Silver Sprocket decamps the Upper Haight for move to the Mission

Silver Sprocket decamps the Upper Haight for move to the MissionPhoto: Camden Avery/Hoodline
Camden Avery
Published on February 03, 2020

Last week was the end of operations in the Upper Haight for Silver Sprocket, the comics publisher and record label that opened its first brick-and-mortar retail shop at 1685 Haight in 2017.

Silver Sprocket will be moving from the Haight to the Mission, sharing a storefront at 1038 Valencia St. (at 21st) with 1-2-3-4 GO! Records.

"We're moving in with our buds," said Silver Sprocket founder Avi Ehrlich. "It's not our own space; we're splitting it 50-50 down the middle, like a '90s sitcom. We're going to draw a line and sit on our side."

Silver Sprocket will move in with 1-2-3-4 GO! Records on Valencia Street. | Photo: 1-2-3-4 GO!/Facebook

Silver Sprocket always knew its space in the Haight would be temporary, Ehrlich said.

"The landlord was absolutely fantastic to us, [but] we knew all along it was their intention to do an earthquake retrofit early in 2020," he said. 

1-2-3-4 GO!'s Valencia Street storefront has a lease through spring of 2021, which will give Silver Sprocket more stability.

And despite making a good go of it in the Haight for two years, "I feel like the Mission is a bit more appropriate for what we're doing," Ehrlich said. "We're not really a Summer of Love-type store."

Despite that, he said, "it was a fantastic space and we made good use of it."