In Harlem, 2 Record Stores Go the Way of the Vinyl

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January 21, 2008

In Harlem, 2 Record Stores Go the Way of the Vinyl

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS, NYTz

On Saturday morning, Bobby’s Happy House, a music store in Harlem that opened in 1946, was in a state of chaos.

The store’s owner, 91-year-old Bobby Robinson, who was wearing a dark blue suit and his trademark black fedora, seemed bewildered as he surveyed his store. Albums were stacked on the floor, photographs of him with Fats Domino, James Brown and others had been pulled from the walls and the store’s glass display cases contained only a few scattered CDs and cassette tapes.

A few hundred yards northwest, at the Harlem Record Shack on 125th Street, an employee with a handmade sign was urging passers-by to sign a petition to keep that store from being evicted.

Inside, the voice of the store’s owner, Sikhulu Shange, 66, rang through the Record Shack as he vowed not to go easily, even though he was under a court order to leave within a few weeks, after 36 years in business there.

Mr. Robinson and Mr. Shange, who have been friendly rivals for Harlem’s music dollars for almost two generations, are on the cusp of being forced out of business here within weeks of each other as Harlem continues its uneasy transition from being a haven for some of the city’s poorest residents to a place where apartments selling for $1 million and tripling commercial rents have become unremarkable occurrences.

Bobby’s Happy House, on Frederick Douglass Boulevard near 125th Street, is closing on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Mr. Shange has been given until the end of March to vacate his store.

Each man represents a distinct generation of black men who arrived in Harlem as young men seeking to contribute to a neighborhood they had long heard about and had admired.

Mr. Robinson, originally from South Carolina, came after World War II. He speaks in the language of that time, using words like “colored,” which has long been retired.

Mr. Shange, who arrived from South Africa in the 1960s, came of age during that era’s tradition of protest. He wears dashikis and repeats words like “empowerment.”

Each man said the runaway pace of change in the neighborhood during the past few years was unlike anything they had seen before.

“Everything you see here, I built,” Mr. Robinson said, waving his arm around his store as friends and family members boxed up decades of mementos. “How do you think I feel?”

On the other hand, Mr. Shange, who was at the center of an eviction battle in the 1990s that culminated in gunfire and an arson attack that killed eight people, left no doubt about his feelings. He was angry.

“There was a time when everybody was running away from Harlem, but we stayed, keeping the culture alive,” he said, as shoppers surveyed the small store’s African, gospel, jazz and R&B selections that are kept in locked glass cases. “We don’t have nothing to show for being in the community all these years and keeping it beautiful. Tourists are not coming here to see McDonald’s and Burger King. They are coming here to see black culture.”

The two stores have survived so long, the owners say, because they offer services and products customers cannot get anyplace else.

At Bobby’s Happy House, those services included recording albums onto cassettes or CDs for customers and allowing visitors to pull up a plastic chair and chat with Mr. Robinson, who was a noted record producer. His work included Wilbert Harrison’s No. 1 hit “Kansas City” in 1959 and groundbreaking hip-hop songs by Doug E. Fresh and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five during the late 1970s.

The inspiration for the name of Bobby’s Happy House, which has had various names over the years, was a doo-wop song Mr. Robinson wrote for Lewis Lymon & the Teenchords in 1956 called “I’m So Happy,” a hit in the Northeast. (Lewis Lymon was the younger brother of Frankie Lymon, best known for a song with the Teenagers, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”).

At the Record Shack, customers have found in Mr. Shange, a former dancer, an authoritative source on American soul music and hard-to-find African music. In a nod to their customers, both stores continued to sell records and cassette tapes, formats most other stores have not sold for years.

“A lot of old people are ashamed to go to a store and ask them for cassettes,” said Mr. Robinson’s daughter, Denise Benjamin, who has managed Bobby’s Happy House for her father in recent years.

Both Mr. Robinson and Mr. Shange said it was unclear what role the downturn in the record music industry has had on their stores, but HMV and the Wiz, two large retailers that sold CDs and other items, have closed stores on 125th Street during the past few years.

Mr. Robinson and Mr. Shange said they had been caught off-guard by their evictions and the transformation of the neighborhood. Each has a different landlord. Within a few blocks of their stores are more than a dozen construction sites for projects that include a 19-story hotel, office towers and luxury co-ops and condominiums.

Once the last of the old records have been cleared from Bobby’s — and other tenants in the block-long building have moved out — the new owners, a partnership of the Sigfeld Group and Kimco Realty Corporation, have said they will tear down the structure and replace it with a four-story office building, including retail space on the ground floor. None of the old tenants, including Mr. Robinson, said they had been invited to set up shop in the new building. Several store owners have filed a lawsuit contesting their evictions.

Ms. Benjamin said family members decided not to join the lawsuit because they wanted to save their money to find a location nearby.

Representatives for Sigfeld and Kimco, which bought the building for $30 million in August, did not respond to phone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment. Mr. Shange’s landlord, the United House of Prayer for All People, won a court order forcing Mr. Shange to leave the store empty and “broom clean” by March 31. The church has not announced its plans for the space, and a church representative at its headquarters in Washington declined to comment. David M. Grill, the attorney representing the church in New York, did not return a phone call and an e-mail message seeking comment.

Mr. Shange, who has been paying $4,500 a month — about $500 more a month than Mr. Robinson at Bobby’s Happy House — said that he was willing to pay more, but that the church, which is above the store, had refused to negotiate.

Mr. Shange said the store was organizing a protest rally on Sunday at 11 a.m., when many of the church’s parishioners will be arriving for services.

A flier at his store advertising the rally reads: “Protest Greedy Landlords! We will not be moved from Harlem!!! We must reclaim, preserve and protect our historic black community. If we do not, no one will!!!”

Eight thousand people have signed a petition opposing his store’s eviction, he said.

When Mr. Shange faced eviction in 1995 during a dispute with a different landlord, who held the sublease for the Record Shack, weeks of demonstrations over the plans of the landlord, who was white, to evict the black-owned store took on a racial tinge. The dispute ended after a protester walked into the landlord’s store, which was next to the Record Shack, carrying a handgun and a container of paint thinner. After shooting and wounding four people, he set the store ablaze before shooting himself. He and seven other people died in the blaze.

Mr. Shange said he expected the coming demonstration to be peaceful, just as others in support of his store have been in recent months.

Unlike Mr. Shange, Mr. Robinson’s daughter said she did not particularly object to the changes occurring in Harlem, which have included new bank branches and grocery stores.

“I don’t mind change, but when people have had to endure everything — and you know if you’ve been here 60 years you’ve endured a lot,” she said, her voice trailing off. “This is everything to him.”

[BruceH]

Not surprising, but very very sad.

[sidewinder]

This sort of thing is happening to vinyl emporia just about everywhere. All the interesting places shut down and we are left with a plethora of condos, coffee shops and 'designer' boutiques.

Edited January 21, 2008 by sidewinder

[paul secor]

Bobby Robinson is a legend in the worlds of blues and r&b. At age 91, he deserves better than this. Unfortunately, no one cares - least of all the business/real estate people who have the power.

[bakeostrin]

Sad story, but it fits in with many others posted here regarding the closure of record stores.

The phenomenon affects other businesses, such as second hand book shops, which are disappearing. In my area of Los Angeles, a developer has purchased a block and is tossing out the neighborhood hardware store.

Support what is available, for example, Grooveyard/Rick Ballard Imports, mentioned on another thread.

The factors underlying "gentrification" undoubtedly are complex; but insofar as the purchase of secondhand/collectible books, cd's and records, the internet has been a double edged sword. Anyone reading this post can sell inventory on online sales or auction sites, but at the expense of the "brick and mortar" store.

At the other extreme, Virgin Records on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood is closing this week. Los Angeles tends to build over its own culture; I remember when developers tore down the Schwab's Drugstore (ironic to have a drugstore as a cultural icon; and I believe that was not even the original location of the Schwab's) and a "Googie" style coffee shop (along with a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor) to build the complex containing the Virgin store. I decry the displacement of people's lives when businesses fail; however, I don't regard Virgin's closure as a great cultural loss.

Hopefully the record stores in Harlem can relocate, but it seems like an uphill battle for them and a great loss to the community's identity.

[Christiern]

I know these stores very well, they are both within walking distance of my apartment and this has been an ongoing battle. Harlem has in many ways changed for the better, but with that change comes the loss of character and--for far too man Harlem residents--the loss of a home or business. Frederick Douglass Boulevard is, basically, the street on which I live, it just changes names at 110th Street. In my 45 years at this address, I have seen the neighborhood go from good to bad to good. I had to stop walking to and from 125th Street when Nicky Barnes' drug empire reigned and a large segment of the population was nodding and doing anything they could to feed their habit. Now, that stretch of blocks is no longer boarded up, there are little restaurants with pretentious names, bank branches, and real estate offices. Buildings are being totally renovated or replaced with condos, and the faces are getting whiter by the week.

I guess one can't have everything and restoring Harlem to what it was before the influx of drugs and real estate developers simple could not have happened. So, it is better to be infested with bankers and real estate people than with drug dealers, but Harlem's rich culture, the magic that attracted extraordinary people and generated immeasurable creative energy is--in this latest morph--becoming as bland as a hospital waiting room. To many lives, the gentrification is as upsetting as Katrina. To be sure, it is a slower, more subtle intrusion, but the end result is the same: a callous, greed-driven attack on cultural values. When Duke Ellington first arrived in Harlem, he is said to have exclaimed, "It's just like Arabian nights." To me, as a jazz-bitten young European, Harlem was equally magic, a place one hoped one day to visit. When I finally got off that A train, in 1957, there was enough of the creative energy left for me to feel it, absorb and become inspired. It is difficult to describe, it was just something in the air, something in the people that gave one different and--I think--healthier outlook on life. I didn't have any money, but that somehow didn't matter. I used to walk up to a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant on 116th Street where the sisters of some religious sect gave you a fantastic meal and a glass of lemonade for a couple of bucks, but with that male they also served humor and warmth. It made not a bit of difference that I looked different, they knew that my pockets were as empty as theirs. We hear so much about racism on both sides, and it surely has always existed, but I perceived that financial status was often the real divider. I used to hear white people joke about black people living in shacks and driving a Cadillac. The racism in such remarks was not subtle and it was difficult for me to convince people that this incongruity had nothing to do with ancestral background, that in Denmark (where I worked for a chain of music stores) I had often seen poor families purchase (on the installment plan) the most expensive of audio consoles, rosewood conversation pieces to be placed among furniture that was but a step away from a milk crate. It is human nature to wish for one possession that flies in the face of one's lowly stature in society.

Getting back to Harlem in this far too long narrative, the current metamorphosis is a mixed blessing. I think of the people who are uprooted by it--where do they go? How does it feel to be forced to leave a lifetime of memories. We find it odd to hear that some people in Iraq wish for the return of Hussein and the misery he brought, but there are degrees of suffering and so we sometimes find ourselves opting for the lesser pain. I know some Harlem residents who now see unfortunate past circumstances in a more favorable light, but are forced to move on and make room for the haves. That's life, I guess, but it can suck.

[porcy62]

Chris,

I can understand you.

We faced and still facing the very same process over here in Rome.

For the guys that don't know the spirit of Rome, I suggest you to look at some italian movies, like Pasolini or Fellini, overall most of the italian cinema was shooted in Rome.

I am not native of Rome, but when I came here I felt suddenly at home. Neighbourhoods retained the old spirit, Rome was a sort of sum of small villages with different social shade. Street markets, grocery shops...and music shops.

The first shot was the invasion of US citizens falled in love with Rome after La Dolce Vita. And one the most lively and charateristic neighbourhood of Rome, Trastevere, slowly became a tourist trap, old people were pushed out by the rising price of rent and houses. And the process is currently affecting other neighbourhoods.

On the other hand I still can see 'true roman' struggling with the same eagerness of Jimmy Stewart for his farm.

I have mixed feeling about it.

Progress? Yes, we are richer, did we loose something in the process?

Sadly, I have to answer with a "yes".

My dad spent the last fifteen years of his life interviewing, and recording, old countrymen's stories in the mountains where he growned up. He wrote some books about it. He didn't want the older men's memory and knowledge fades away.

Sorry for derailing the thread.

[Big Beat Steve]

The writing must have been on the wall for a long time for those "authentic" neighborhood stores, especially those that cater to a niche market in culture.

When I noticed (to my great disappointment) in the fall of the year 2000 that the Compendium Book Shop (where I had done a lot of my music book buying for years whenever I was in London) in the Camden Town district of London had closed down for good (with a very bitter sounding notice to the former clientele, blaming it on real estate developers etc., still displayed in the bare shop windows) I realized a page had been turned for good.

On the other hand in that same year I had just signed with eBay and the years that followed showed that internet opened up a whole wide world of buying opportunities that no array of brick and mortar stores catering to the "collectors" segment could ever have supplied. Within a scant few years I managed to complete gaps in my collection by buying items many of which I had never ever been able to see for sale anywhere (despite mail order and visiting specialist shops and fairs wherever I went) for almost 20 years before.

Not to mention geographical boundaries. One rare book I had been searching on the web for many months finally came my way from an eBay seller from South Dakota! Not likely even the keenest overseas collector would pick that area as his favorite hunting grounds during a U.S. visit ...

So the internet that contributes to the demise of those specialist shops is a mixed blessing but on the bottom line it is a tradeoff of the new vs the old where not all of it is really bad.

What I do regret, however, is the colorful neighborhood atmosphere that goes out the window at the same time. But often we are only to blame ourselves. The prices in those small shops are often higher than those in the huge retail outlets so the consumers' urge to save as much as they can on standard items is another step towards the demise of those small shops because they just cannot survive on the special items (that only they carry and that are the main impetus for visiting these shops).

[sidewinder]

On the other hand in that same year I had just signed with eBay and the years that followed showed that internet opened up a whole wide world of buying opportunities that no array of brick and mortar stores catering to the "collectors" segment could ever have supplied.

You raise a very good point. The internet has opened up the opportunity to get hold of vinyl that would never, ever have appeared in the old neighbourhood stores (especially here in the UK, where you needed the secret password and a funny handshake to ever get to even view the Blue Note stash ). Just wished that we could have both - the internet outlets and the old neighbourhood stores.

'Compendium Book Shop' - that one rings a bell. Was that anywhere near the old Honest Jon's store in Camden, up near the market?

Edited January 22, 2008 by sidewinder

[Big Beat Steve]

No, Sidewinder, Honest Jons is at the upper end of Portobello Road and has been there for a very long time AFAIK.

The Compendium Bookshop was more or less opposite the Camden Lock on Camden High Street (quite a bit away from Portobello Road). Always a great selection of both music books and mags.

As for the possibilities of the internet vs. whatever brick and mortar collector stores could ever have offered in the way of long-OOP items, you are right that even "way back when" the really desirable items would have been reserved for a certain "in crowd" (befriend the owner/clerk to get a chance to at least get a look at those goodies ). In retrospect, this was one all too common trait of those shops that meant they ultimately dug their own grave. Who would have gone back there once he discovered other international sources via the internet where he might just chance upon somebody clearing out his/her granddad's attic via an internet auction?

But it's not only a matter of vinyl but also of all sorts of printed matter connected with our hobby. Would I ever have been able to get all those books/mags after having visited ANY number of fleamarkets, garage sales, specialist shops, collector's fairs (most of them outside the country where those items were originally sold anway)? And at an overall better price? No way!

Edited January 22, 2008 by Big Beat Steve

[sidewinder]

No, Sidewinder, Honest Jons is at the upper end of Portobello Road and has been there for a very long time AFAIK.

The Compendium Bookshop was more or less opposite the Camden Lock on Camden High Street (quite a bit away from Portobello Road). Always a great selection of both music books and mags.

Steve, I'm thinking of Honest Jon's from way back (early 80s) when there was a branch at Camden Lock (now a girlie boutique I think) as well as branches near Charing X and Portobello. That Camden branch was near my old student digs and the basement was stacked full of jazz vinyl (drool..). I picked up many a 'brown bag' and 'Rainbow' Blue Note as well as blue label Libertys there. Invariably cutouts.

Edited January 22, 2008 by sidewinder

[Christiern]

All very well and good, but the customers most affected by the closing of these Harlem stores are not going to e-bay for anything. The closing of the Harlem stores raises a very different issue--it's not at all about a search for vinyl, or dearth of same, it's about avarice and financially-based discrimination in which the race factor cannot be ruled out. Forget about the merchandise, that's not what matters here. This thread is about the death of a neighborhood, a culture, a rich past. You can get your damn vinyl in any place as long as you have the money, but no amount of money will buy you back the heart of Harlem, a culture that has had impact way beyond its streets, a culture that created the very sounds on your vinyl. Blue Note would not have existed without the culture that Harlem represented.

I realize that times change and that we have to move with them, but there are ways of doing that without trampling on people's lives.

[sidewinder]

This thread is about the death of a neighborhood, a culture, a rich past. You can get your damn vinyl in any place as long as you have the money, but no amount of money will buy you back the heart of Harlem, a culture that has had impact way beyond its streets, a culture that created the very sounds on your vinyl. Blue Note would not have existed without the culture that Harlem represented.

Can't argue with that.

[paul secor]

All very well and good, but the customers most affected by the closing of these Harlem stores are not going to e-bay for anything. The closing of the Harlem stores raises a very different issue--it's not at all about a search for vinyl, or dearth of same, it's about avarice and financially-based discrimination in which the race factor cannot be ruled out. Forget about the merchandise, that's not what matters here. This thread is about the death of a neighborhood, a culture, a rich past. You can get your damn vinyl in any place as long as you have the money, but no amount of money will buy you back the heart of Harlem, a culture that has had impact way beyond its streets, a culture that created the very sounds on your vinyl. Blue Note would not have existed without the culture that Harlem represented.

I realize that times change and that we have to move with them, but there are ways of doing that without trampling on people's lives.

Very well said, Chris.

[Big Beat Steve]

I wouldn't want to argue with that either.

But unfortunately it's happening everywhere.

I know of lots of other long-established small enterprises that secured the income of their owners in other trades but that had to give way due to all sorts of real estate redevelopment plans.

Or ask Sidewinder about the change of the Docklands in London, etc. etc.

Maybe we did get sidetracked because it was easy to boil this down to another variant of the story of the death of the "brick and mortar stores".

However, I really feel there are two sides of the coin. If I correctly understood the gist of what Chris said above, some changes in Harlem are certainly for the better. Now how can you improve things substantially (and improvements of this sort invariably cost money) without allowing money to overrule EVERYTHING? Not an easy one to answer once you have reached a certain level of business interests at stake.

[Stefan Wood]

All very well and good, but the customers most affected by the closing of these Harlem stores are not going to e-bay for anything. The closing of the Harlem stores raises a very different issue--it's not at all about a search for vinyl, or dearth of same, it's about avarice and financially-based discrimination in which the race factor cannot be ruled out. Forget about the merchandise, that's not what matters here. This thread is about the death of a neighborhood, a culture, a rich past. You can get your damn vinyl in any place as long as you have the money, but no amount of money will buy you back the heart of Harlem, a culture that has had impact way beyond its streets, a culture that created the very sounds on your vinyl. Blue Note would not have existed without the culture that Harlem represented.

I realize that times change and that we have to move with them, but there are ways of doing that without trampling on people's lives.

I agree. However, we can't hold on to the past forever, especially here in the US, where we pave over our history.

[jon abbey]

yeah, and it's not just Harlem, it's all of Manhattan.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

There are three issues here. One is change. There is always change. We hope that, on balance, this will be for the better. But unfortunately it isn't always. But whether good, bad or indifferent, you can't stop change. And that's good - even when change is for the worse.

Second issue is how you bring that change about. And, in particular, whether you trample on individuals or not. And in this case, on whom you trample. As Paul said, the world OWES Bobby Robinson. That he should be a victim in this particular trampling way is terrible. (And the same goes for Shango, though there isn't the world legacy there, as is the case for Bobby; there's little doubt that the local legacy is important.)

The third issue is, in this particular case, the culture that Harlem represents. And this can be looked at in two ways. From the outside, which is my perspective, and that of most of us, something indescribably unique and valuable is being destroyed.

But from the inside something else is true. And that is that culture is made by people and happens wherever they happen to be. It will be different. But that doesn't matter, because it will be real.

And this is not something new in Harlem. People have had the "Get out of the ghetto blues" for a long time. And, increasingly, following the Civil Rights movement, they have been able to do so. And who is to say they were wrong? Certainly not I. Isn't this what the Civil Rights movement was essentially aiming at?

So that the culture of Harlem has been weakened for decades by the flight of the middle classes to suburbia, simultaneously with the flight to the suburbs of manufacturing industry, which provided jobs for the unskilled or minimally skilled, leaving a larger proportion of poor and even poorer people who, for a number of reasons, including crime and drugs etc, were and are less able to fight the tramplers - or at least to secure better terms. Because terms are the essence of this. It is fruitless railing at corporate greed when Harlem represents a patch of real estate that is incredibly convenient for downtown New York. I'm obviously not a New Yorker, but there can be little doubt that New York, as a network, NEEDS that real estate. That SHOULD have improved the ghetto's bargaining position but, without the middle classes, the bargain couldn't be made.

I am really saddened by this. I don't think that has come through in what I've written. But my view is from the outside.

MG