Records & listening bar — Cedar Falls, Iowa — est. 2019 All ages till 8 PM
Two thousand used LPs, a wall of new pressings, and a back room with the good speakers. Bring your want list; leave with somebody else's collection. The coffee is free while you dig.
First dig of the day. The good stuff goes in the front bins Friday night; early birds know.
A few of this week's arrivals, play-graded on the shop rig. The full list posts Fridays; the good ones rarely survive the weekend.
Friday night we seed the front bins with the week’s best buys. Saturday morning looks like this.
The table that grades everything we sell. If it pops here, it's priced like it pops.
“Every record in this shop has been played in this shop. If we won’t listen to it, we won’t sell it.”
— Marta Reyes, owner
Rotates when Marta says it rotates. Arguing is part of the service.
A basement in Waverly: first pressings, one owner, sleeves like the day they were bought. We paid fair and we'll price fair.
Alphabetical is a lifestyle. Dividers are hand-lettered; mistakes are Dev’s.
Three of us behind the counter. Tell us what you're chasing — the want list is a shop institution, and it works.
Owner & buyer — jazz, soul, and the estate calls
Marta priced her first collection at nineteen and still has the receipt. She does every estate visit herself, grades hard, and pays fairly — sellers come back, which is the whole business. Ask her for the story about the Coltrane.
Floor & rig — hi-fi questions, honest answers
Dev built the listening room out of a rumor and a crate of drivers. He’ll match a cartridge to your budget without flinching, and his Friday want-list calls are the best phone calls you’ll get all week.
Counter & socials — new pressings, preorders
Frankie runs the new wall and the preorder book, hand-letters the dividers, and DJs the first Thursday of the month. If it dropped this year, she’s already heard it and has opinions.
Grading is Goldmine, play-tested. If a copy’s borderline, we grade down and say why on the sticker.
Eight seats, two turntables, and the pair of speakers Dev won’t say the price of.
Thursday through Saturday the back room runs as a listening bar: one album front to back on the hour, requests between sides, decent wine, no talking during the quiet songs — house rule, gently enforced.
First Thursdays Frankie DJs 45s. Album nights post on the chalkboard and Instagram; seats are first-come except the good chair, which you can book with any purchase. Yes, you can bring the record you just bought. That’s the point.
One album, front to back, on the hour. Requests between sides.
Follow the sign. The neon was here before us; we kept it.
State Street, under the old RECORDS neon. If the sign's lit, the bins are open.
509 State Street
Cedar Falls, Iowa 50613
Street parking free after 5; the city lot behind us is free Saturdays. Bikes park inside — bring it in, we mean it.
Tell us what you're chasing. When it walks in — and it always walks in — you get the first text, and 24 hours before it hits the bins.