Best Pawnshop

With all due empathy for those who must hawk personal belongings in order to eat or pay rent, we look for one thing in our pawnbrokers: selection. We come to shop. Here we find two rooms of immaculately arranged, clean, classily presented items, including the usual array of jewelry and home electronics. There are hundreds and hundreds of CDs (three bucks per); several acoustic, electric, and bass guitars; a homemade guitar; violins; even a Russian balalaika. You can find a couple of sets of congas, keyboards, a clarinet, a saxophone, plenty of amps, microphones, equalizers, and even a sixteen-track Alesis mixing board. We also inspected the motorcycle helmets, tools, bikes, refrigerators, videos, golf clubs, and air conditioners... Don-Z has a vast cache of cameras and lenses, including some top-of-the-line collectibles (displayed in their own cases), such as a Nikon F, Rolleiflex, Leica R4, and a Swiss-made Alpa. The 25-year-old store has scales, lamps, vacuum cleaners, typewriters, and computers. The place has great service, great prices, and treats its customers with dignity. We even love Don-Z for what it does not have: guns.