Rachael Vacanti
CONTRIBUTOR
Recycled Sounds, a locally-owned record store, just made the move from Lincoln to Omaha, with its grand reopening on Saturday, coinciding with Record Store Day.
Owner Stuart Kolnick was forced out due to the city of Lincoln finally getting enough money to build a hotel at the site of his old store to get rid of a hole in downtown Lincoln.
While Kolnick would have liked to stay in Lincoln, he said didn’t get much of a choice.
“I looked around in Lincoln and I couldn’t find anything that I could afford that would make sense to me,” Kolnick said, noting he preferred to stay in the downtown area.
Kolnick may have been in Lincoln, but discovered the business of selling records in Omaha. The move back has allowed older customers to come back in.
“I’m now seeing old customers that remember me from 20-25 years ago,” Kolnick said.
In the time span of about three weeks, often working 12-hour days nearly every single day, Kolnick and friends managed to move most things into the new store.
“At this point, not counting the car trips, we’ve done about 23,000 pounds of records and display cases and stuff like that,” Kolnick said.
However, Kolnick’s collection is impressive.
“A medium sized box of records weighs around 70-80 pounds and we’ve moved probably around 300 boxes,” Kolnick said.
Due to the fact sad fact that the store is only 2/3 of the size of his old one, Kolnick still has some stuff in storage and is having to resort to more online selling.
Kolnick sells everything at his store, from 50s records to cassette tapes and old magazines, calendars and posters. Popular artists are most notably The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.
Since Kolnick is the sole owner of the store, he is often very personable with his guests, booking local bands to play in the store or even sometimes just having a jam session with consistent customers inviting them to come in and play for a few hours.
Recycled Sounds in located at 322 N. 76th Street, about 4 blocks away from Crossroads mall and is open Monday-Saturday from 12:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. and Sundays from 1:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m..
