A record shop that never updated its sign
The lettering outside says 1994. Inside, the carpet says the same thing, and so does the smell.
The shop is on the second floor of a building that has been repainted four times without anyone touching the sign. The sign is hand-painted on a board: the name of the shop, a treble clef that has lost one of its curves, and a telephone number with one digit too many. Nobody has corrected it because, the owner says, everyone who needs the number already has it.
His name is Mr. Park. He opened in the spring of 1994 with three hundred records, most of them bought from a shop that was closing in Itaewon. He still has about forty of those originals. The rest of the stock has turned over so many times that the shelves are a record of what people in this neighbourhood were willing to pay for, decade by decade.
The listening room
Behind a curtain at the back — heavy, green, and older than the shop — there is a room with two chairs, a turntable, and an amplifier he rebuilt himself. The rule is that you can listen to anything, but you have to listen to the whole side. No skipping. He will make tea if the side is longer than twenty minutes.
What sells
I asked what sells now. He laughed, because the honest answer is "nothing, and then everything". A box of Japanese city pop that sat for six years went in a fortnight after one song appeared in a drama. The jazz section is steady, mostly to men in their fifties who buy one record a month and stay for an hour. The classical section is his own collection, technically for sale, priced in a way that suggests otherwise.
The thing that does not sell, he said, is anything that requires an explanation. If a customer has to be told why a record matters, they will not buy it. They will nod, put it back, and buy the one with the cover they recognise. This is not a complaint. It is the whole business.
The economics of a shop like this
He owns the building's second floor outright, which is the only reason the shop exists. Rent in this neighbourhood has roughly tripled since 2010, and a record shop cannot pay tripled rent. He is aware that this makes him a landlord's problem rather than a businessman, and he is at peace with it. The shop opens at eleven and closes when the last person leaves, which is usually around eight.
When I asked what happens when he stops, he said his daughter has been told she can sell everything except the listening room. The listening room, she has been told, is to be given to whoever wants it, on the condition that they keep the rule about the whole side.
How to go
Take the subway to Mangwon, walk toward the market, and look up. The sign is on the second floor, hand-painted, one curve short of a treble clef. Bring cash, because the card machine has been "being replaced" since 2019, and bring an hour, because you will not be allowed to leave in less.