I was in St. Louis, Missouri a couple months ago in my first trip outside my home state in many months. I was staying not terribly far from a college campus, so I figured there’d be at least one good record store nearby. Sure enough, Vintage Vinyl was about a fifteen-minute drive from the hotel.
Unfortunately for me, I got there with only about fifteen minutes to shop before they closed. The place is open 11am – 6pm during the week. 6pm seems like an odd time to close a record store located in a busy campus shopping area, but the hours were probably altered due to COVID-19 restrictions – as the store’s website says they’re typically open until at least 8pm. I’d love to go back because I could’ve spent over an hour in this place.
As you can imagine, with a name like that the store is heavy on new and old vinyl records. This is just a small sampling of their large and eclectic collection.
A spoken word record featuring Aleister Crowley sandwiched between a record about baseball and another about stenography. Stuff like this alone makes the place worth a visit. They also had DVDs, shirts, and, of course, CDs.
That $1.00 bargain bin is where I decided to do my ten minutes of shopping. I scored albums by The D4 and Soulwax…for $2.21 total. I’m sure I would’ve dropped at least ten times that if I’d had more time to shop.
Take extra money for parking when you go. Finding a spot in the area can be difficult, and most of the spots have parking meters that will only let you pay for up to an hour at a time.
Take even more money for the store.
Keep your mind open.
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