Grand Rapids, MI | Where to Find Vinyl Records in GR: Vinyl is back! In 2018, almost 10 million vinyl records were sold in the United States. With 2018’s double-digit sales growth, according to The Verge, the vinyl revival continues. Grand Rapids alone has plenty of places to buy new and used vinyl records and turntables to play those records. Vertigo Music: Located downtown, Vertigo offers one of the largest selections of new vinyl records in the area. Vertigo Music carries more than 26,000 new records, all of them priced cheaper than typical market price. Some of the most popular genres of records Vertigo sells are metal, punk, hip-hop, jazz, folk, and indie. Vertigo Music buys and sells used vinyl as well, with more than 10,000 used titles in stock. In addition to records, Vertigo also sells new turntables, CDs, DVDs, cassettes, shirts, patches, posters, and more.
Ames, IA | The man behind the music: how the Vinyl Cafe became more than a coffee and record shop: The aroma of fresh coffee beans pours out a single window. A white door hangs wide open, welcoming the next person that takes the six steps down to the Vinyl Cafe. Blake Delaney is sitting on the stool that is typically occupied by a customer chatting him up. A regular named Matt steps inside the basement shop. Delaney sings to the customer and hugs him before taking his reusable cup and making him a pour over coffee. As the caffeinated beverage is dripping, he’s picking on a small plastic-stringed ukulele marked with a black “B” sticker that he keeps behind the counter. “Sara Smile” by Daryl Hall & John Oates plays in the background. As a middle schooler, Delaney was required to journal in school. He grew up in Arizona and then moved to Colorado. He was outdoors a lot, doing things like fishing, golfing and hiking. But also, he would journal about his dream of opening a record store. He loves records.
Little Rock, AR | New record store, Control, opens Saturday in Hillcrest: Crate diggers, rejoice: Hillcrest is getting a record shop. Wes Howerton and Michael Shaeffer have been operating under the name Control for a year now, spinning records for Soul Brunch at South on Main and selling carefully curated long players at pop-up spots wherever they might, well, pop up — in the back room of Electric Ghost Printing, at Community Bakery’s and Boulevard Bread Co.’s SoMa spots, at The Meteor in Stifft Station. Now, they’ve got a brick-and-mortar in the Hillcrest Historic District of Little Rock, opening at noon this Saturday. We talked with Howerton and Shaeffer about the opening… “We first started doing pop-up shops as Control almost exactly a year ago. We were part of the “Pop Up in the Rock — Stifft Station” [project] in June 2018. We continued doing pop-up shops until we found this permanent spot a couple of months ago.”
Sacramento, CA | Dimple Records to close after 45 years in Sacramento area: A family-run, Sacramento-area record store is closing its doors. Dimple Records is going out of business, spokesperson Andrew Radakovitz said Tuesday. Liquidation sales begin Wednesday, but there is no firm closing date. Radakovitz said it could take months for all the inventory to sell. Dimple was founded by John and Dilyn Radakovitz in 1974 and has remained in the family. Their son, Andrew Radakovitz, said his parents are retiring. He also said declining sales, particularly the decrease of DVD sales, are among the reasons Dimple is closing. Andrew Radakovitz said vinyl sales were up and CD sales were doing OK.
Asheville, NC | Vinyl record-pressing business proposed for downtown Asheville: A new vinyl record-pressing plant may land in downtown Asheville, according to city construction permits. A construction permit filed Monday asks for “early assistance” for a proposal to build a music cafe complete with a restaurant, bar, as well as a record pressing facility and record store. The project name is listed as “AVL Vinyl.” The location is 14 O.Henry Ave. That location is known as the Asheville Citizen-Times building. The newspaper’s corporate parent, Gannett, sold the three-story newspaper building to David and Nathan Brown, a father-and-son team in Asheville last year for $5.25 million. The newspaper plans to remain on one floor of the building, but the developers said at the time of the sale that they were looking for new ground-floor tenants while developing the top floors for residential use. There’s a website for AVL Vinyl, but it doesn’t have any content yet. A website description for AVL Vinyl states: “Pioneered by a small group of local music industry vets, AVL-VINYL aims to offer full service vinyl record pressing for music groups of all sizes by 2019.”
10 Different Ways To Store (and Display) Your Vinyl Records: …I came by record collecting indirectly. I inherited my grandfather’s very sizable bluegrass collection, and have been sorting through them little by little. With two old milk crates around four feet long, I’ve hardly made a dent. Meanwhile, I’ve started finding my own second-hand records and new releases from artists I like. Dealing with my growing collection made me realize, however, that while vinyl is back, home designers haven’t exactly caught up yet. Options that go beyond the basic require a little digging. Here are some of my favorite storage solutions I’ve found over the years. Note: I know there are people who handle vinyl with extreme care and have strong opinions about how to handle records. (I’m actually dating one of them.) I tend to subscribe to the theory that a little care (store records vertically away from direct light and away from humidity/moisture) will go a long way, but to each their own.
