via NYTimes.com

Record Stores: Out of Sight, Not Obsolete

By BEN SISARIO
Published: September 29, 2009

It was Wednesday at Downtown 161, and that meant it was Vinylmania day.

Most of the time Downtown 161, a record distributor in Lower Manhattan, is off limits to the public. But once a week it becomes an unusual kind of record store for friends of Vinylmania, a Greenwich Village shop that closed in 2007. Customers run their hands over items in fancy packaging, chat with the seller and brag about their collections — all the typical stuff that grows more endangered every time another store closes.

“In the old days, when I was really selling a lot of records, this was verboten,” said Charlie Grappone, a dance-music specialist who opened Vinylmania in 1978. “You would never let people off the street into a wholesale distributor. Because why would they buy in a store if they could come in here? But it’s changed now. There aren’t any stores left.”

At Downtown 161 one sunny Wednesday recently, patrons greeted one another with hugs, then a few minutes later could be spotted with armfuls of records, hovering intently over the turntables there. In one corner of the small office was a simulacrum of Mr. Grappone’s old store, complete with wall racks. The sales began as an invitation-only event for Vinylmania’s 100 or so top spenders. Word has since gotten out, and a new face appears now and then, but still, the population of 12-inch dance collectors is not large. (Mr. Grappone also sells CDs, but only a few.)

To survive in a market in which most products are just a click away, the dealers serve micro-niches, catering to ever fewer but more discriminating customers. One Vinylmania shopper, Jusoong Sun, 47, said he preferred the tactile and social aspects of nonvirtual retail: “To me the whole experience of buying is coming here and feeling the record, putting on the turntable. It’s still tangible.” There are other benefits to in-person shopping: Mr. Sun snagged an autographed test pressing of a new single by a producer, Antonio Ocasio, who stopped in.

J. D. Martignon, 57, a wry and wiry Frenchman who opened Midnight Records in Chelsea in 1984, has continued to sell in his nearby apartment since the store closed five years ago, a victim of rising rents and a lengthy legal battle with the Recording Industry Association of America over bootlegs. The apartment is laid out much like his old store, with alphabetized bins of LPs for browsing. Garage-rock fanzines are arranged by a window, and even the kitchen has some vinyl on display.

Mr. Martignon said he got a customer or so each day; sometimes they just browse, but sometimes a whale comes along. “I get these Japanese guys that spend a few thousand bucks,” he said. “All out-of-print rockabilly stuff.”

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In related news, If Music has set up its own boutique space in Central London. Drop by for a cup of tea, pick up some wax and let Jean-Claude ease your troubles away.

If Music
42 Langham Street, London W1W 7AT.