I’d seen a new storefront at 2579 N. High St near the Hudson intersection (by Kobo), and I’d heard rumors of a new pop-up record store going in there. DeVille has now confirmed it’s a new pop-up record store from Sour Records’ Steve Louis, appropriately called “Pop-Up Records.” It seems Louis has about 50,000 records he’ll be selling on weekends for $2 apiece at the storefront he’s leasing for a year.
DeVille also mentions another store, Vinyl Frontier, opening in August at 53 E. Gay St. downtown.
Any new place to go crate-digging sounds fun at first mention, but — not to be a Debbie Downer here — how many record stores is too much? I don’t know the finances of all the record shops in town, but I do know Elizabeth’s Records made it public on its Facebook page that the store needed a lot of last-minute help in order to make the rent payment this month. I imagine other stores have experience a similar pinch.
I think it’s great that record stores in Columbus, in general, stick together and help each other out instead of vying to be the only fish in the pond. But with not one, but two new shops opening up, I have a feeling a casualty or two could result. Have we reached the “more the merrier” breaking point?