![]() at an Evanston bank in the 1990s, he said he would kill time downtown until Kay opened Vintage Vinyl at 11 a.m. After finishing his overnight shift around 10 a.m. Store manager Tim Breitberg said he started as a regular at Vintage Vinyl in the 1990s. The store’s long history has also meant it’s won many devoted customers. In the 80s and early 90s, Kay said, Vintage Vinyl sponsored WNUR, the University’s student radio station, by giving student DJs records that had just arrived from overseas. Over the last four decades, Kay said he’s developed deep ties with the NU and Evanston communities. Kay said both of these programs have helped maintain business. Vintage Vinyl initiated a curbside pickup service as mail orders accelerated during the height of the pandemic. Kay said it has been difficult for the store to keep up with its day-to-day tasks while managing the influx of material. “People have been selling their record collections in unprecedented amounts more in this one-and-a-half year period of time than in the last 40 years that we’ve been here,” Kay said. Meanwhile, Kay said, many older collectors who previously drove the market are realizing they no longer have a connection to their records. Kay noted that in recent months, many record collectors with large collections have passed away, while others have moved or downsized. Until then, Kay is utilizing the space to process the large number of records the store has acquired during the pandemic. The store has been closed for in-person shopping since March 2020, but plans to reopen by Thanksgiving for Record Store Day, an event celebrating independent record stores on Black Friday. A few years ago, Kay bought an adjacent storefront to sell budget records around $5 apiece, compared to the collector’s item records in the main store that are priced at $25 and up. While he focuses on catering to collectors, Kay said the shop has also received rave reviews from casual listeners, especially as records have become more popular in recent years. ![]() “We’ve never tried to appeal to mainstream taste.” “We’ve always specialized in looking for records that are long out of print, but also in top condition,” Kay said. ![]() Vintage Vinyl has also operated a mail-order service, VVMO, since 1998. The store sells records from the 1950s through the present, with an emphasis on the music of the 1960s, Kay said. ![]() In 1979, he opened Vintage Vinyl in Evanston because he felt the city lacked a business that served a “specialized” community of record collectors. And that just changed the world.”Ī New York native and avid music lover, Kay came to Chicago in the 1970s to complete his master’s degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. “I had an aunt who got me my first record player and my first 45s, and that was it,” Kay said. Several decades later, pink and black - Elvis’s favorite colors - adorn the walls of Kay’s record store, Evanston shop Vintage Vinyl. The “King of Rock and Roll” launched Steve Kay’s interest in music at the age of five. ![]()
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