Brooklyn Flea Market Aims To ‘Rejuvenate Record Buying Scene’
By Sarah Ryley
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
WILLIAMSBURG — James Dier’s record collection takes up two storage units, two-thirds of his New Jersey loft, leaving meandering paths leading from place to place, and a wall of his girlfriend’s Williamsburg apartment, where he stays.
“It’s more like a library,” Dier, who for 15 years has performed under the name DJ Small Change, said of his loft. “It’s time to thin out the collection.”
So, he accepted an offer to sell a portion of his library every Sunday at Brooklyn Flea, which would be the borough’s largest flea market when it starts operation in April.
Eric Denby, charged with booking the vendors, has known Dier since they both started spinning records, and said he was a natural choice when looking to fill that genre at the flea market, which would have everything from antique furniture to modern clothes by local designers. “I am also aware of his record-buying addiction, which he’s been struggling with ever since I met him. And he’s always talking about how to get himself out from under his piles of vinyl.”
With the decline of the neighborhood record shop, perpetuated here by high rents and the digital age, flea markets offer an attractive alternative to ‘sellers on the side’ and vinyl enthusiast who like to touch and hear their selections before buying. “At a flea market, things are more loose,” said Dier. “Anybody who has 50 bucks to set up a table can sell any wacky thing they want.”
Denby said he hopes to have roughly six vinyl dealers at Brooklyn Flea, and just received a call from the owner of a beloved Brooklyn record store that recently became a causality of the real estate boom. “Sustaining a store has become challenging for record sellers, but a flea market is perfect because it’s basically a low-rent store,” said Denby. “There is nothing I would like more than to rejuvenate the record buying culture in Brooklyn, and have [Brooklyn Flea] be a place where record junkies can feel at home.”
Technological advances in equipment that mixes digital media and online sellers like eBay started to cut into record stores’ profits around the turn of last century, despite the booming dance music scene at that time.
Vinyl still makes up roughly the same portion of the market as it did 10 years ago, at 0.6 percent last year in comparison to 0.7 percent in 1997, according to The Recording Industry Association of America. People just buy and download music more often online — where the market share has gone from virtually nothing to 15.9 percent last year — versus in stores, where during the same time period the market share dropped from 51.8 percent to 35.4 percent.
Cassettes are the format that has lost the greatest portion of the market share to digital media, dropping from 18.2 percent in 1997 to 0.8 percent last year.
Dier said he has been unloading his collection little by little online, while at the same time making new acquisitions, but the effort is often not worth the income once the time listing the record, communicating with the customer, and shipping the purchase are taken into account. “Then it comes out to like $5 an hour,” he said.
Dier likened the flea market culture to that of the underground parties in Brooklyn and, increasingly, Queens, where the atmosphere is more free than the swanky scene club owners provide in order to pay high rents. “Some of the best parties in New York are happening in [secret location] and [secret location],” he said. At high-rent places, “things just aren’t as cutting edge. There’s an inherent conservatism with having to throw a lot of money into a space.”
He also gets the opportunity to play his more obscure records there, and on his weekly shows for WFMU and East Village Radio, while he keeps a staple of classic favorites for weddings and private parties. At the flea market, Dier said he plans to unload classic favorites, Hip-Hop, Dance Hall, Funk and Soul 45s, Jazz, and Soul.
Brooklyn Flea, started by Brownstoner, will operate out of the Bishop Loughlin schoolyard, on Lafayette Avenue between Clermont and Vanderbilt Avenues, starting in April. Denby said he’s still looking for vendors, and would ultimately like to have 100–200.
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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