Vinyl, Velocity, and Where the Glue Gun Lives
☕📰 05.03.25 The Saturday Rundown
The fragile and the fierce emergence in real time—handmade legacy, scrappy strategy, stories that remind us of who we were before the algorithm, rooms remade for new purpose. This past week's through-line is about how people, markets, and cities rise when the stakes are personal.
We watched a record shop become a civic compass, not by marketing but by mopping floors and remembering every album by heart. We saw a daughter leave home, and with her, the quiet reshuffling of identity, space, and how love sometimes looks like sarcasm and a plea for moving boxes. And we tracked a market mid-mutation—less panic, more precision. Less frenzy, more friction. It’s not about waiting for the perfect moment but building with what’s already here.
In every story this week—whether vinyl, real estate, or family—something rose with the kind of intention that sticks.
💭 This Week’s Big Ask:
What’s in Your Junk Drawer? Open the drawer. You know the one. The scissors, batteries, mystery keys, expired coupons, and rogue rubber bands all jumbled together like a time capsule of every half-finished project and noble domestic intention.
Send me a photo! Bonus points if there’s a glue gun (respect), or double bonus points if there’s something with googly eyes.
The Last Real Record Store
Tattooed, sharp-eyed, and smiling like he’s halfway between sermon and story, Todd Radict built the kind of vinyl shop he grew up idolizing. One part museum, one part family hangout, all parts real. Skele-tone Records channels the ghosts of Bleecker Bob’s in Greenwich Village, Second Coming in Manhattan, and Tower Records at Broadway and East 4th. All g…
No Warning. No Mercy. New Rules.
I’ll be holding open office hours this Tuesday at Breakaway Café from 10 AM to 1 PM. Schedule something official—or just walk in, grab a coffee, and drop into the chaos with me.
🎧 Vinyl& Voltage: The Fragile, the Fierce, the F’n Glorious | A Playlist by Coffee with Steve
This week’s playlist we snuck in a few Ramones—because CBGB deserves its ghosts. It’s also a nod to The Last Real Record Store, and to every basement, bar, and busted speaker that ever made you feel something.
We start hard: All Said and Done by The Radicts hits like a steel-toe boot to the ribs. From there, we glide into Public Image Ltd., which doesn’t quite feel like punk—but sure as hell doesn’t feel like anything else. Rise is a longwinded anthem with cymbals just because it can be. Then we land in Springsteen’s sepia-toned Americana gospel like it’s a hometown altar call.
The Ramones? Pure fun. No explanation needed. But then we pivot—straight into the smoky-eyed Vietnam disillusionment of Fortunate Son, because rising isn’t always loud. Sometimes it limps. Sometimes it haunts.
There are curveballs—Florence, Bowie, Paramore—but they hit because they stretch the voltage without pulling the needle off the tonearm.
And of course, we close with Twisted Sister. Because if you're gonna rise, do it loud. And don’t you dare go quietly.
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