I am not a hipster, and I am not someone who owns a record player, but I often fancy myself as the type of person who could someday be both of those things. I like many hipster-y things, and I love the idea of being a person who owns a record player. Records, for me, are whimsical relics of the past. They remind me of my childhood and my dad’s record player and his vast collection of albums with their often-puzzling covers (The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls always intrigued me) and the lovely little scratching noise the needle of the record player makes when it hits the vinyl. Except it was always so annoying to try to find the start of a particular song. I don’t miss that part. Or when a wonky record started to go all haywire and start skipping and going cray-cray. Anyway. I love hearing when successful hometown folks come back to support Detroit. So I was happy to hear that Jack White had opened a Third Man Records store in Midtown, right next to good ol’ JP (Jolly Pumpkin!). I’m not a Jack White aficionado, but he seems like a cool dude, and I admire his talent and his unremitting creativity, so I was eager to check the place out.
The inside of the store is impressive – very visually engaging, and bedecked with carefully arranged displays of records, t-shirts, and other merch. And a self-recording booth where you can make your own record (sold out on my visit there)! But my favorite part? The listening booths! Ok, no self-respecting music store is not gonna have listening booths, but how many of them in this day and age have vinyl-centric listening booths where you get to handle and listen to real records? Probably more than I know of with the recent resurgence of vinyl, but still, it’s just cool.
441 West Canfield St.
Detroit, MI 48201
100 Places in the D 