To Have and to Hold: My Vinyl Year

Asheville, North Carolina reminds me of Portland, Oregon in the late 1990s.  Research independent bookstores in Asheville and the question comes back: Are you looking for a feminist bookstore? An anarchist bookstore? One that serves wine? Are you looking for a bookstore that sells coffee? A coffee shop that sells books? (Cue Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein.) When I moved to Portland in the late 90s, people would say to me: Huh…why Portland? Just a few years later, the nation was a bit more aware of the city. (I will claim little to no credit for that.) Walking around Asheville gives me that vibe… a smaller city that’s got a good thing going and would be happy enough to keep it a secret. Smack in the center of town there’s a warehouse-sized resale shop, where you can browse a few dozen old typewriters, vintage movie posters from the 70s and 80s (remember Krull ?), and more crates of records than one could reasonably flip through in a day.  It says something about a city w...

Byrdland Records is new.  It’s one of many new things in a D.C. warehouse district that—until somewhat recently—was industrial, mainly home to food wholesalers and restaurant suppliers. This neighborhood’s new life began with the arrival of Union Market, an upscale food hall where every vendor is the very best in its class.  It didn’t take long before high-priced condos went up, and hip cafes, bookstores, even a second food hall. Along with this growth came a music venue, SongByrd , and—a block or so away—a record store, ByrdLand. This March, I set out to find something at BrydLand. ByrdLand is small, as many of these record stores are, featuring a main room and then a backroom. The place is squeaky clean, and, being new, why shouldn’t it be? The main room includes an old fashioned recording booth (I’d seen one of these before at Third Man Records in Nashville). ...and then the backroom has some used records, a couch and some chairs... ...and then—mostly as décor—an old jukeb...