Small Business Saturday, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, 11/30/13

The Saturday after Thanksgiving has been proclaimed “Small Business Saturday.” This proclamation has come down from a large credit card company that certainly stands to profit from such a day, but that doesn’t mean you need to use a credit card when patronizing local businesses.

But, anyway, I visited Phoenixville’s new local record store, Deep Groove Records, this evening. Frank, the owner, is selling all of the CDs in the store for three bucks apiece, two for $5.00. He’s doing this to make room for more vinyl because, get this: vinyl is back!

Vinyl records aren’t going to replace digital downloads, but on a certain level, vinyl has regained a commercial foothold, while compact discs seem to be on the road to uncool obsolescence. This is funny to me, as I was working in chain record store at precisely the moment that vinyl dropped off the radar in favor of CDs. The conventional wisdom at the time was the CDs would last forever, leaving vinyl a vague memory.

Now, here we are practically in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century and the once sleek and modern compact disc is increasingly being seen as a relic of the late 20th century. Meanwhile, at Deep Groove Records, the racks are filled with vinyl, with more to come.

The Globetrotters Meet the Cha Chas, Boothwyn, Pennsylvania, 9/1/12

I had gotten a tip that one of the shops at Booth’s Corner Farmer’s Market was selling records four for a buck, so after Donna was done work, we took a family trip to visit Booth’s Corner, a place I visited often with my family when I was a kid (and also where Bill Haley of “Rock Around The Clock” fame got his start).

When I got to the shop that I thought would be selling the records, I had been told the sale had ended, but then was shown the bins of records that were still available for that price. So I dived in and found about 12 cool records. In fact, I found a few more than 12, but a few of them were pricier that four for a dollar, so I left those at the store and walked away with the 12 for three bucks. I will keep a few of them and make notebooks covers out of the rest.

The most interesting record I picked up was the 1970 soundtrack to The Globetrotters, the Saturday morning cartoon show featuring the basketball legends. I’m looking forward to listening to it, in part because several of the songs were written by Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield!

Here, the Globetrotters pose with Lisa’s Cha Chas. More on them another time.

Princeton Record Exchange, Princeton, New Jersey, 8/25/12

Donna and the kids and I made a whirlwind trip to Princeton, New Jersey this afternoon. I am certain that there are many fun things to do in Princeton but the five or six times I have visited town I have limited my activities (other than occasionally grabbing a quick lunch or snack) to two things:

1) Visiting the gravesites of Grover Cleveland, Aaron Burr and others in Princeton Cemetery; and

2) Spending time in my favorite record store, the Princeton Record Exchange.

Sometimes, I’ve pursued both activities, though not always. The first time I visited Princeton, Jimmy and I went to the cemetery on a rainy Saturday morning to get some photos of the Cleveland and Burr sites. Then we headed back to Pennsylvania to catch a WWE wrestler autrograph signing. This was the perfect Jim-and-me date back in those days. We didn’t hit the record store that day and, in fact, I didn’t even know that it is just a block from the cemetery.

Today, we might have visited President Cleveland if we’d had time (Donna and Chris have not been to Princeton Cemetery) but I was focused on selling a box of CDs and we needed to get back home relatively early. So it was a quick visit, but a good one.

More on Princeton another time.