Malboro

However, in a city where the unemployment rate remains at 4.7 percent (as of June 2004), Johnston says she also does it because it's a job.

Romer, who says that she receives about 55 job applications from prospective employees each week, adds that, in general, the store hires about two people per month -- and, she is quick to add, anyone who thinks working at an indie record store in one of the world's trendiest cities is glamorous need not apply.

"A lot of our people have worked at record stores somewhere, but some apply because they've seen films like 'Empire Records' and 'High Fidelity,'" Romer adds. She is careful not to hire people who think a gig at a record store is hip. At Rasputin, everyone, including Romer, dumps the garbage, deals with the long queues of customers and does an elevator shift.

Yes, the elevator shift. Romer says the elevator is a necessity because there are no public stairs from the second floor to the fourth floor. And, because the store carries more than 100,000 used records, CDs and videos and is visited by a high population of tourists, the operator is there to keep an eye on potential thieves.

The elevator job often piques the interest of Rasputin customers. "[Employees] get asked questions like, 'What is it like working here?' and aren't they bored?" Romer says. Although Romer opened this branch of the store (an offshoot of the original Berkeley location) at the tender age of 22 four years ago, she herself has done the shift a couple times. "If someone did this every day, they'd get burnt out," she adds.

In the spirit of the store's grungy atmosphere, Romer christened the elevator "the transporter room (formerly an elevator in the 21st century)" and painted a mural of stars and galaxies around it. "There's a whole kind of alien thing going on, or some space-age thing," Johnston says semi-mockingly as she sips a Frappuccino during lunch.

In order to combat monotony, Romer has stocked the elevator with a rechargeable stereo and a bin of CDs and music magazines, and , but it is also very expensive, says Johnston, who arrived two years ago with $2,000 and crashed in the Berkeley living room of her close friend Sean, a fellow classmate from her Ohio University days.

Since then, she has been surviving on her shoestring Rasputin salary while pursuing a master's degree at the San Francisco Art . She has an extensive entertainment collection: more than 400 CDs, 250 vinyl records and at least 30 DVDs. "I like classical and hip-hop, but I'm a Beethoven girl," she says. "I like some Chopin, Shubert and some Rachmaninoff. I really love Billie Holiday -- you would probably never guess it, looking at me." Malboro

Despite the reserved young woman's selective frugality, she doesn't think twice about spending her money on movies or another favorite: books. For example, one of her favorite titles is William Burroughs' book "The Third Mind," now out of print. "I dropped $100 one time to purchase the book," she says proudly.

Her remaining earnings go to supporting her friends -- most of them painters, dancers and poets -- by attending their shows and exhibitions. "I find a lot of my friends spend money on supporting the arts, going to see their friends' dance performances, and dance is ridiculously expensive -- the tickets are $18 to $25," she says matter-of-factly.

Johnston shrugs and laughs shyly when asked about her budget, and she admits it is nonexistent. However, her 27th birthday around , where, she says, vegetarians are relegated to eating cheese sandwiches and entertainment consists of smoking Marlboros and going to church. She spent a lot of time alone because there were few children in the tiny rural community, and she was very shy, and immersed herself in film and books. Her mother was a bookstore manager at Kmart and Waldenbooks, and her stepfather was an engineer. (Johnston says that she never really knew her paternal father and that her stepfather adopted her.) Although her parents encouraged her to debate over the dinner table, and they read classics such Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead," they were also disciplinarians.

"Since I was the only child, and we lived in the middle of nowhere, I had to do everything, from mowing the lawn to chopping the wood to shoveling snow," she says. "And I got an allowance.

"I totally respected the fact that my parents were responsible adults," she adds. "They were raising me and taking care of me, and giving me food and shelter, but I also went to school and was involved in all kinds of extracurricular stuff like the marching band and Model United Nations, and I was kind of like, 'Why do I have to do all of it?' I guess they were just trying to raise me to be conscious about my environment -- give me some kind of clean-values thing."

Her stepfather, whom she describes as a "supertechie, fix-it, computer, science-fiction, NRA-type Midwest guy," was very strict. "For a long time, I thought my stepdad believed having a child in the house was like having an indentured servant."

In her teens, she earned spending money by working at a variety of retail outlets, including Ritz Camera and Hardee's fast-food restaurant, plus bartending and, later, working at an independent video store, Quentin Tarantino style.

"Oh, it was awful," she says of her Hardee's experience. "I was a cashier, a line cook, rotated frozen stock, cleaned out grease traps, and all kinds of life skills I gained there."

Ohio was constraining in other ways as well. Johnston recalls that, when she tried to rent a cute farmhouse in Ohio with her girlfriend, the landlady turned them down after finding out they were lovers.

She got her first taste of the world outside Ohio when she studied abroad in Prague while attending Ohio University. Johnston says she fell in love with the capital of the Czech Republic and felt at home there.

So, how did she end up with the elevator gig? When she first arrived in San Francisco, she applied for several retail jobs but didn't receive any offers. Even Virgin Records rejected her. In retrospect, she says she wouldn't have wanted to work for a corporate entity anyway.

Although the elevator offers her a place to think of her art, it is also a reminder that she would like to move beyond it.

What are some of the most important things to her? "Wow, that's a deep question," she says. "That's like a 'What is the meaning of life?' question." Her turquoise-blue eyes are steady behind her black-rimmed glasses.

Her art, making films that matter to her, is important, as is not selling out, she concludes. Even working at an indie record store gives her solace that she hasn't done that.

"I and will soon commemorate her third anniversary as a San Franciscan, and she feels she needs to get it all in order.