story by Sean McCarthy | photos by Bridget McQuillan
"Going out of business" sales tend to bring out a vulture-like element in people. A place might be a beloved institution, but love doesn't pay the rent if you're a business owner. That's why on Sunday, Sept. 30, Antiquarium Records opened its doors for a ?re sale. CDs were a dollar. All vinyl half off. And a bunch of walking-wounded patrons were ?shing through the rapidly vanishing inventory.
Almost 10 months after its esteemed former owner, Dave Sink, passed away from complications from emphysema, Antiquarium Records is closing its doors. And on Sunday, none of the current owners felt like talking about the store's legacy, the increasing difficulty of maintaining a business in the Old Market or the internet's role in the decline of the record store. Sunday was about moving inventory, finding friends (hopefully truck owners) to help move and ringing up the number of converging customers who found out about the store's closing through friends and Facebook.
Antiquarium Records has been praised before in music and culture magazines, especially earlier this year with the outpouring of stories about Dave Sink. But nostalgia for places like Antiquarium Records has a horrible track record in translating lip service into cash. The premise and setup of Antiquarium Records was hardly conducive to making a heavy pro?t.
Patrons usually found themselves stumbling across something rather than ?nding a speci?c release. The hundreds of CDs in the "Cheap CDs" section weren't alphabetized, forcing people to sort through copies of such used bin staples like Run DMC's Crown Royal and Pearl Jam's Vitology in hopes of stumbling across a copy of Blondie's Parallel Lines or Luna's Bewitched. In short, Antiquarium Records rewarded patient customers not only with a bargain discovery tucked between some new releases, but by eventually getting a listening recommendation from a staff that treated blues and jazz with the same reverence as punk.
Mike, who preferred not to give his last name, said he used to hang out at Antiquarium Records when he was a teenager back at its original location in the basement of The Antiquarium bookstore at 12th and Harney. Mike moved to Los Angeles, but returned to Omaha in 2008. Since returning, he's helped out at Antiquarium Records. On Sunday, he sorted through a few records and spoke briefly about the increasing difficulty of doing business in the Old Market.
"The corporatization of places like downtown blows," Mike said. "Thanks to the internet, no one leaves their house anymore."
For almost 30 years, Antiquarium Records served as much as a gathering place for music fans as it did a music retailer. Growing up around Antiquarium Records, Mike likened it to a community center. In a tribute article for The Reader earlier this year, Patrick Buchanan of Mousetrap referred to Antiquarium Records as the "ground zero of underground culture in the city."
Records and CDs bought at Antiquarium Records had a way of standing out in a person's music collection. Unlike other retailers, most of the prices were handwritten on stickers. Some were informative ("UK Pressing"), and a few would feature some editorializing ("Could be a long lost Ennio Morricone ?lm score. Recommended.").
According to Antiquarium Records' Facebook page, co-owners Joseph Tingley and Brian Byrd hope to reopen the store once some debts are paid off. Places like Benson and Dundee were mentioned by a few patrons as possible new locations. But the general dif?culty of trying to maintain a record store has taken its casualties. In Omaha alone, Homer's has gone from three locations to one. Drastic Plastic, once primarily a record store, now splits its in-store space almost equally between clothing and music.
"If people care about the record store, they better support it before it's gone," Mike said.
Sean McCarthy is a Hear Nebraska contributor. Reach him at seanmccarthy@hearnebraska.org.