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Today in "Oh, Gosh, Really?" news, retail outlet Urban Outfitters claims that it sells more vinyl records than anywhere else.
For those of you unfamiliar with Urban Outfitters, they are a clothing store / lifestyle hub for the burgeoning hipster and are most usually found in or around college age in big and mid-sized cities. For those of you unfamiliar with vinyl records, they are those black flat things that your Dad has a few of somewhere in a box that contain music. Think of them like giant Spotify playlists that can scratch and break easily.
Urban Outfitters actually doesn't "sell records" but rather rents out the bins in the front of the store to around 100 different vendors, making vinyl part of the urban hipster lifestyle branding. It's not neccesarily a bad thing: the more people that buy Bob Dylan and Nas's "Illmatic" (not to mention Dave Brubeck's quite awesome "Time Out" LP) the better—but dropping serious coin on the $200 Pendleton x Crosley turntable might not be such a great idea.
New York City, being the hub of cool cultural activity long before Urban came along, naturally has a bunch of great record stores, such as:
- the fantastic Rough Trade records (pictured above), a massive store with it's very own performance and practice space.
- There's also the ubiquitous Other Music in Manhattan, which has been spoofed by Aziz Ansari.
- Black Gold, in Cobble Hill, is a collectors paradise (if a little pricier than the other 2) and it doubles as a food and drink spot, too.
Take a peek at Time Out New York's full list of cool record stores here.