Rough Trade New York moving to ?

Discussion in 'Music, Movie and Hardware Store Guide' started by Mazzy, Jan 19, 2021.

  1. elgoodo

    elgoodo Forum Resident

    Location:
    Jersey City, NJ
    I think See Hear was the NYC outpost for Maxwells tickets before Other Music opened.
     
  2. jjhunsecker

    jjhunsecker Senior Member

    Location:
    New York city
    God, I remember going down those steep broken stairs so many times
     
    AlmanacZinger likes this.
  3. JuanTCB

    JuanTCB Senior Member

    Location:
    Brooklyn, NY
    Totally! I moved down here in '97 and they were still in the basement - my mind was blown that there was a store dedicated to rock books & mags. I loved that place, to put it mildly.

    And yeah - they had lots of weird porn as well!
     
    hi_watt likes this.
  4. inaudible

    inaudible Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    They'd have had an easier time getting me to go to Bushwick, and I live in Manhattan.
     
  5. Tommyboy

    Tommyboy Senior Member

    Location:
    New York
    It’s not good news if you are a New Yorker
     
    tkl7, bad_penny and JoeRockhead like this.
  6. motionoftheocean

    motionoftheocean Senior Member

    Location:
    Circus Maximus
    this makes zero sense
     
    hi_watt and Mazzy like this.
  7. ralphb

    ralphb "First they came for..."

    Location:
    Brooklyn, New York
    There is a lot of available retail space here in Brooklyn Heights and in Dumbo. Considering the younger age slant of a lot of the residents (especially in Dumbo) and the tourist trade, a good record store somewhere in the area seems like a no brainer. I really don't get the Rockefeller center location at all, and I can't imagine that hot new indie band from London or the Midwest playing the freakin' Rainbow Room.
     
    tkl7, AlmanacZinger and Tommyboy like this.
  8. rubberhead

    rubberhead I've never made a bad record

    Location:
    NYS
    I lived within walking distance of Rough Trade from the day it opened until last year and while I went there often, mostly to kill a few minutes, I rarely bought anything. There were never more than a few other customers present, giving the place a depressing, grave-like stillness. Apart from the concert venue, which was fine for its size and had some good shows, the record store seemed like a vanity project, a small-scale attempt to create the feel of a bygone era for no good business reason. On a few occasions I went to buy a new release on release day, in a desperate attempt to recapture that nostalgiac feeling, and was thwarted every time since they never had what I was looking for in stock. Truth is records are cheaper from Amazon and new releases were delivered earlier. Regardless, I suppose someday I will start to feel nostalgia for Rough Trade itself.
     
  9. bad_penny

    bad_penny Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn
    The venue was better than "fine for its size" and had some great shows---both paid and free. Rough Trade carried a lot of titles that other local stores did not and having accessibility to those records will be missed. People who buy records from Amazon don't care about record stores.
     
  10. jimod99

    jimod99 Daddy or chips?

    Location:
    Ottawa, ON
    That really isn't true.
     
  11. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient

    Location:
    new york city
    Agreed. Not all people who buy records from Amazon care about record stores - true - but I would say that most people care about record stores also buy from Amazon.

    Hey, I like to support my local stores too, but there's no way I'm buying very many new records at a physical local store, because I can't return them when 1 out of every 5/6 needs to be returned for some kind of significant flaw.

    Record stores get better margins on the used stuff anyway.
     
    FrixFrixFrix and MattyRedSox like this.
  12. rubberhead

    rubberhead I've never made a bad record

    Location:
    NYS
    Of course not, but without inane assertions of the attitudes and beliefs of millions of people one has never met, this forum would be a ghost town, too.
     
    eddiel likes this.
  13. Danby Delight

    Danby Delight Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston
    No, but that hot new indie band may film their performance on The Tonight Show or Late Night inside Rough Trade.
     
  14. bad_penny

    bad_penny Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brooklyn
    Of course it's true. If you walk into a record store and decide that you can buy the records cheaper on Amazon, then you don't care about the existence of brick and mortar record stores.
     
  15. jimod99

    jimod99 Daddy or chips?

    Location:
    Ottawa, ON
    And every single person who buys off Amazon does that?

    Don’t talk utter nonsense, that’s up there with the other forum favourite that every single Discogs seller is a rip-off merchant.
     
  16. JamesRR

    JamesRR Trashcan Dream

    Location:
    NYC
    I think it closed in the early 2000s - I live around the corner and remember it. So many of the Villages little music shops have closed in recent years.
     
    jjhunsecker and AlmanacZinger like this.
  17. vamborules

    vamborules Forum Resident

    Location:
    CT
    The location really added to the sense you were seeing stuff you didn't see everywhere. Secret information.

    And when they first opened it really was stuff you didn't really see other places. I remember way back in like 1989 or something, MTV News did a story on 'zines and they went to See Hear. I was in there after they did the interview and overheard the the guy complaining that they asked dumb questions like "what's a zine." But they were asking questions like that because they knew a lot of their viewers didn't know.
     
    JamesRR likes this.
  18. jjhunsecker

    jjhunsecker Senior Member

    Location:
    New York city
    I know think the 1990s- early 2000s were the peak of musi buying in NYC- You had the Big 4- Tower, Virgin, HMV, and J&R-there was Record Explosion and stores like the Wiz and Circuit City, Best Buy finally opened here , Sam Goody was still holding on, the East and West Village both had tons of little shops that sold imports and ahem..."grey market" CDs . Even Borders in the World Trade Center had a decent CD selection

    We didn't know how good we had it !
     
    BNell, brownie61, Mazzy and 1 other person like this.
  19. Tommyboy

    Tommyboy Senior Member

    Location:
    New York
    What do you guys/gals think is the best record store in the New York Metro area now?
     
  20. JamesRR

    JamesRR Trashcan Dream

    Location:
    NYC
    Yeah it was good at that point. You could buy bootlegs in one tiny shop, used in another, mainstream in yet more. The Virgin imports section was HUGE. And J&R had a great jazz level. If you felt it, and wanted it, it was there. An impulse music buying dream. The amount of music sitting on shelves on one tiny island - pretty insane.

    So ironic how I also recall the big launch of the iPod in 2001 at J&R. That was the beginning of the end.
     
    jjhunsecker and brownie61 like this.
  21. Danby Delight

    Danby Delight Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston
    The three that I walk out of with the most LPs in my bag are the Jazz Record Center -- I've never gotten out of there for less than $300 -- Generation and Captured Tracks.
     
    Tommyboy likes this.
  22. Jeff Kent

    Jeff Kent Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mt. Kisco, NY
    Good times indeed. I worked at the HMV on 72nd and Broadway from 1993-1996. On Sundays after the Upper West Siders had read the NY Times and been to brunch, they flooded the store. If an album or box set was reviewed in the NYT it would almost always sell out.

    Even with Tower Records in roughly the same neighborhood it was packed.
     
    tkl7 likes this.
  23. Tim 2

    Tim 2 MORE MUSIC PLEASE

    Location:
    Alberta Canada
    WOW, $50,000 a month plus a multitude of other expenses, no wonder so many stores are closing.
     
  24. manicpopthrill

    manicpopthrill Forum Resident

    Location:
    ICT, Kansas
    Although in this case, RT are moving in order to pay more in rent, not less.....or am I missing something?
     
  25. tkl7

    tkl7 Agent Provocateur

    Location:
    Lewis Center, OH
    I lived on 74th in the late 90s, and remember shopping at both HMV and Tower.
     

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