A Visit to A Record Store, Upstate NY Edition
Sometimes you are lucky enough to find a decent jazz vinyl score where you would least expect it. Here’s one for you. The other day I was scheduled to pick up The Lovely Mrs. JC at the Amtrak station in Hudson, NY, for a weekend in The Berkshires. I’ve already checked out the record store in Hudson more times than I can count, so not much interest there. But I happened to do a search of record stores in the region and, voila, there was a complete guide to them all, courtesy of an online publication called Chronogram. I have wanted to check out the one in Beacon, NY, called Hudson Valley Vinyl, because our friend and sometime-contributor Clifford has recommended it to me in the past. Not to mention that it is on the way when I drive up from Manhattan to The Berkshires. But, alas, timing hasn’t worked out, yet. In the meantime, I noted one of the stores was a new one, just opened in April of this year. It is called Spike’s Record Rack and it is in Catskill, NY, just 10 minutes or so from the Hudson Amtrak station. The listing in the article was quite sparse because the store was quite new when it was written, but I had some time to kill before The Lovely Mrs. JC’s train was due to arrive, so, I figured, what the hell. At the very least I would get a lovely drive over the Rip Van Winkle Bridge and the Hudson River during the peak of fall foliage up here in the mountains. Read more