Nothing To Write Home About

[MylesBAstor]

[Rob]

I don't know NY real estate very well but gentrification of older neighborhoods is pushing out weak businesses that cant swing the rent. We're seeing it out here, the 'arts district' east of Little Tokyo and west of the LA river, rental rates there have skyrocketed driven by hipsters that want to work and live there

Our vinyl scene in L.A. is fairly healthy from where we were 10 to 15 years ago in part because there are sub markets around the city where rents are stabilized for the forseeable future.

[MylesBAstor]

I don't know NY real estate very well but gentrification of older neighborhoods is pushing out weak businesses that cant swing the rent. We're seeing it out here, the 'arts district' east of Little Tokyo and west of the LA river, rental rates there have skyrocketed driven by hipsters that want to work and live there

Our vinyl scene in L.A. is fairly healthy from where we were 10 to 15 years ago in part because there are sub markets around the city where rents are stabilized for the forseeable future.

Yes that's why you see what's left of the records stores moving to the other boroughs. But it's such a let down from the Golden Age hey day of record stores in NYC. Stores like Gryphon, Academy, J&R, Discophile, Tower and my personal favorite, G&A Records (run by one of the backers of Fi magazine).

It's impossible to operate a record store in NY and stay in business. Not enough profit to pay the rent. Plus I don't think they really want to put the work that it entails finding record collections and picking them up. If it falls into their, great. Otherwise, too much work.

The few in NY are either like present day Academy and sells books, records and CDs or like In Living Stereo that's a high-end audio stores and record store. Princeton Records is a shell of its former self. Of course, some of them sell on the internet too.

[Rob]

If you're being bled to death paying rent there's no moolah left to buy collections, I feel for the shop owners and collectors in NY they eventually all loose out to ebay and the like. I was talking to the guys at Atomic in Burbank and most other dealers around L.A. will tell you they stumble onto the "mother load" of collections on a regular basis. Its a function of timing and space limitations. Atomic has storage boxes waist high and above your head of un-filed records crowding the stores isles, the store room is backed up floor to ceiling, they've run out of space.

[MylesBAstor]

Does anyone wonder where all these records that we're looking for went to?

[Rob]

Does anyone wonder where all these records that we're looking for went to?

Myles, they're out there. Here, dealers still get a shot or they end up going to the highest bidder which intern flips them online or sadly, the dumpster. I won an auction on ebay for a dozen records, the guy lived on the backside of echo park overlooking mt washington so I drove up one Saturday morning to meet up. He was a music video director and from the looks of his house, very well off. In his free time he scours Craigslist and follows any leads he gets for vinyl collections that need rescuing. The week before he saved a massive collection of 78's from a condemned home that was about to be raised. He gifted the collection to a few institutions and later discovered many of the records were historically important and literally irreplaceable.

that story had a happy ending but me thinks online dealers are paying top dollar and their cast offs that don't fetch as much online end up on the shelves of local shops as "new arrivals" A dealer has admitted he buys whats left of picked over vinyl from a few online dealers only interested in certain genres, R&R mainly.