To Have and to Hold: My Vinyl Year

Snow is a big deal if you live in a place where it rarely happens. My area got eight inches on Monday, January 3, and for a day, it was magical.  By that weekend, we were irritated. The town remained crippled. Shovels were sold out at the hardware stores. People fought online about whether someone owned a parking space after spending hours clearing it out. (As a former Chicago resident, my take would be: fuck yes, you own it.) That Saturday was windy and cold. The snow, now impacted into snowbanks speckled with gravel, had long since lost its magic. Christmas and New Year’s were long gone. This is the part of the year that just plain sucks. I am embarrassed to admit I had to Google local record stores. I went to the one closest to me: Crooked Beat Records .   Crooked Beat is tucked away in Old Town, Alexandria. Old Town is an odd mixture of cobblestone kitsch and subsidized housing. The main drag, King Street, is lined with boutiques and restaurants that get just en...

Hi. First things first: I have no claims to make about vinyl sounding better, or warmer, or whatever, than CDs or cassettes or iPods or whathaveyou. That's not why I'm interested in it. Second things second: I'm not alone in being interested in it. As is well established: v inyl is having a moment. More than a moment. I mean, here’s what’s on sale at Target: My gut reaction to that is to cringe--but why? I mean, a world where A Love Supreme can end up in your shopping cart along with toilet paper and a family-sized jar of Skippy seems like not so bad a world. But then, of course, if you buy that record at Target, one thing you’re doing is not buying it somewhere else.  Like, for instance, a record store. This got me thinking.  See, I got a turntable recently. Which is not to say I’m new to vinyl. I’m just new to owning a turntable. They’re expensive and delicate and—in my younger years when I was always broke and moved around a lot—a turntable seemed like just one ...