Greenpoint Vinyl Sojourn 4 (main chorus)
The big day! After my quick snack of dried mango, we headed out at 10:20 A.M. The Thing (at 1001 Manhattan Avenue) is not much to look at from the street. It presently has no awning (as was earlier seen in photos), and looks like a used books and collectibles store. It is not readily apparent that this is a used vinyl mine of enormous size.
Even inside, it still seems doubtful.
But once you arrive at the rear of the store, the heart begins to race.
It doesn’t seem possible that there could be this much vinyl stacked floor to ceiling, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
The stairway leads to the basement with three aisles crammed full of records.
It truly is staggering! This deposit is NOT organized in any way. I knew this would be the case, but it is still mind boggling. It takes a few moments to grasp the vastness and calm one’s nerves to focus on the task at hand. We were looking for House Music 12″ singles, preferably Test Pressings or Promotional Singles. I was also looking for any copies of Disco LPs or singles that I coveted. The only way to start is to just pick a spot and begin searching through every crate and shelf. My friend started upstairs where the most recent arrivals are crated. I put on my nitrile gloves and started at the far end of the leftmost aisle. I was finding some great things right away. You can’t bounce around, however; you just need to go through each crate one at a time and restack in a new pile until a section is complete. We spent 6 hours prospecting like this. During this time, many others ventured in but did not last. We met an amazing DJ from London named Livinstone, who has a huge collection in both London & New York (40,000+), but comes to The Thing for the same reason we do. We all were impressed that there were still some desirable 12″s in this stash. We surmised that DJs don’t want to do the work necessary to find the gems; the internet has made this task so easy and unfulfilling.
My friend located the “find” of day 1:
2 perfect copies of the Yellorange Records Test Pressing - “YO-Sampler”
One copy had both the hype sheet and a clean response sheet!
The Thing charges $2 (cash only) per vinyl slab; it really is a great deal for piles of music that give so much joy. We each left with around 80 to 90 records. We had to run up to Bank of America to get cash. After 6 or 7 hours it was time to call it a day.