I enjoy not going in mainstream stores, because I am nonconformist.
Heh, nah just kidding, I got a thing for cosy backstreet independant stores.
Especially dusty cramped recordstores. There's this little place I go to top up my 12" collection, called "Dark Side", they got masses of underground drum and bass, jungle, and electro/ambient/avant garde records, you can find some real awesome tunes if you're prepared to sift. Since it's always highly likely that you've never heard anything from any of the artists there, you kinda just gotta go by what the names sound like... or just come up with random stuff like "I'll only pick out records by artists whos name begins with B A." or "I'll only pick out stuff from 1998" and take a pile of records to try out on the turntables. Weed out the ones you like, dump the ones you don't. You could spend a whole day there just listening to all these whacky sounds, and spooked out atmospheres, all while taking in the smell of dusty damp record sleeves and warm vinyls... the crackling of the records... the creaking of the floorboards... mmmmm it's like the experience of eating a tastey sandwich made flesh.
And you know, the most awesome thing about it is they have this attic that's got a sofa and some records, but most importantly a soundsystem and turntables. It's usually empty too, so you can go up there, kick back and enjoy your purchases. The guy who runs the shop occasionally does DJ lessons up there but if you've bought some records it's usually ok to go up there... he's so laid back and you can just get the most awesome sounds in the most awesome environment. So not like any other shopping experience.