Above and Beyond (Section)

The New Yorker
June 30, 2008

?BROOKLYN RECORD RIOT?

Everyone knows that the music business is in turmoil and that CD sales are collapsing. (According to the Recording Industry Association of America, sales fell more than seventeen per cent last year and just over twelve per cent the year before that.) Suddenly, though, old-fashioned vinyl records are hot: the R.I.A.A. says that sales of LPs jumped thirty-six per cent last year. How many people know that? Though only 1.3 million LPs were sold in 2007 (compared with more than five hundred and eleven million CDs), the group of vinyl lovers is growing, and retailers have responded. ?Target is now selling turntables,? says Steve Gritzan, the proprietor of Iris Records, an eleven-year-old vinyl-record shop situated in a converted Jersey City pharmacy. On June 29 from 11 to 8, Gritzan is inaugurating the ?Brooklyn Record Riot,? at Warsaw, a club in the ballroom of the Polish National Home, in Greenpoint. It brings some thirty-five dealers from as far away as Quebec to hawk platters at all price points and in all genres. Check your iPod at the door. (261 Driggs Ave. For more information, visit www.irisrecs.com.)