It's a Friday morning in Civic and I'm standing outside Landspeed Records, where noise is already at a fever pitch.

It's nothing to do with the music piping out of the store's speakers, though, and more to do with the jackhammers digging up paving outside.

Thirty years old and counting, Landspeed is one of Canberra's oldest businesses, and has recently been voted Australia's favourite record store. And for 27 of the past 30 years, it's been in the same premises, on the Bunda Street edge of Garema Place.

I'm standing with owner Blake Budak, inspecting the mess and reminiscing about old times; I used to work there, back in the late 1990s when it shared premises with a clothing shop called Cowboys & Angels. Like many long-term Canberrans, we've both watched the city, and its central bu

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