Park BlvdRecords, the only specialtyrap and hip-hop store in Oakland, known for its rare and eclectic selection of cassettes and vinyl, will closeits storefront at 2014 Park Blvd. on June 16.
The company announced the move onInstagram和Twitter星期四,5月30日:“所以这里h has changed in the four short years since we opened — in rap music and in record collecting, in The Town and in the world — that our already stubborn mission of running a highly specialized neighborhood music store has started to feel like a full on fool’s errand.”
The store’s owner, AndrewNosnitsky— who goes by Noz — told The Chronicle on Thursday that the shop had not been working on a number of levels, and that the decision to close thephysical space had been a long time coming.
“I’m shocked that we’ve been able to do it for four years,”Nosnitskysaid. “Every step of the way, it seems like it’s been such a struggle. It’s just been a lot. The shop has always been a labor of love.”
Nosnitsky, who moved to Oakland from Washington, D.C., in 2011, opened the record shop in 2015 with Jason Darrah, a rap blogger who sold albums online. Both of them were ardent collectors, and openinga store felt like a logicalnext step. Darrah left the business in 2017, but the store had already earned a reputation as the premier resource for rap and hip-hop collectors in the Bay Area.
“I’ve been buying records since I was 10 years old,” Nosnitsky toldThe Chroniclein 2017. “Eventually, your apartment fills up and you have to figure out what to do with them.”
There was noshortage of customers — though having more wouldn’t have hurt,Nosnitskysaid— and the store’s landlord had been accommodating with the rent. Instead, one of the biggest factors inNosnitsky’sdecision to close the store was that it has become a struggle to get the right records because ofthe store’s ultra-specialized style. Aside from the variety of rap and hip-hop albums that wereorganized by region,the store also had a large collection of house, electronic, ambient, rock and R&B offerings.
The store’s online shop will also close temporarily, but will reopenlater in the summer.Nosnitskysaid movingout of the physical space is his main focus at the moment. He addedthat he isstill processing his thoughts about closing the store.
“It’s been a good experience,” he said. “I’m glad that I did it. I’m glad that it could exist, especially for younger people who’ve never been to a store that’s filled with rap records. I don’t know, maybe it will inspire some people.”
The news of Park Blvd’s closing camejust a day after Second Line Vinyl, a West Oakland record pressing plant, announced that it was going out of business. Just two years ago, Second Line Vinyl said it plannedto build a recording studio and venue alongside the plant — the first in Oakland since the 1930s. That move was initiallyreported by KQED Arts.
Champion Sound Records, aspecialty record shop for soul and dancehall music in Oakland, was priced out of its space and closed in January.
In February, Reid’s Records, California’s oldest record shop and one of the oldest African American businesses in the Bay Area,said it would closeits South Berkeley shop in the fall.
Nosnitskysaidin Januarythat it isa tenuous time to be running an independent record store, and expressed concern over the “bougiefication” and lack of connectivity within vinyl culture that he’d noticedon the retail side of vinyl collecting.
“Still thanks are due to all of you who understood and appreciated what we were trying to do, who always came through and showed us love,”Nosnitskywrote in the statement. “We will love you in kind forever.”
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